Just last night we talked about old stuff with my boyfriend, and he told me a story about their knitting classes in primary school. Everyone did a little patch to a given size, then they sew together all the pieces that the class made into one blanket, and gave it away to children in poorer countries.
The only problem with the piece he made was that it wasn't the good shape, that is, a square. So he could keep it to himself. He's not that good at making things to measure. And I guess, that's one of the reasons why I love him. This also means that he's full of surprises. Another reason. Well, this is all thinking backwards, these are not the real reasons. Are there reasons in love?
Anyhow, this morning while slumbering away on the subway, after having myself successfully assembled into a suddenly freed gap on the seats, I was having a nightmare about a society of people with the exact same shaped and sized heads which fit together perfectly, and where I would definitely not have a single chance to fit in.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Friday, April 15, 2016
How did I become a polar bear?
A few weeks ago I mentioned it to someone how much it made me afraid to have such warm weather this early in the year, and that I don't even dare to think about how it will be like in the summer. For which she only said that she loves warmth.
Then I told her that I'd got burned in the sun in the middle of February, while I was sitting outside for not more than a quarter of an hour. But she had an answer for that too, and told me that she had a light-skinned friend who exactly for that reason, starts to take sunbaths already at this time of the year.
I didn't want to go further into this, as my concern was not only problems that too strong radiation can cause, but in general the so-called global warming, and its everyday effects on our lives. Like when you see the acacia trees and lilacs in full bloom in the first half of April, and even the poplars spread their fluffy seeds that should actually happen in mid-summer...
Maybe it's only that I've got used to the temperate climate we used to have here in Middle-Eastern Europe, with real transitions between summer and winter, that makes me feel so uncomfortable these days. Though I can remember that I've always loved something in all four seasons, my favorites used to be spring and autumn. Times when you can feel some kind of a change, a proof that life goes on, and renews itself.
I remember, with a sense of nostalgy, those times when I could enjoy the sun and the summer heat at the end of July and in early August. Still, back then thirty degrees was the most, even at the height of summer. Nowadays, when we have summer temperature in the middle of the springtime, and as soon as the sun hides it sinks ten-fifteen degrees immediately, I just can't stand it anymore.
Well, we haven't had snow, and now I'm talking about real snow that stays on the ground for the whole winter, in a long long while. Instead, some kind of murky, in-between nothingness which leaves all the germs and bugs alive, and only gives us all months of flu and headache, and so on. But at least, you can get on more clothes if it gets real cold now and then. Unlike during months of heat waves and heat records, when you can only survive with air-conditioners or North of the Arctic cirle.
However it suits very well today's main-stream commercialist ideology - we want all of it and right now! Or we think that even if we cannot have everything, then at least, for our money, we deserve of what we can get the bigger, and faster and better. The question remains, how long it will be better for us like this?
Then I told her that I'd got burned in the sun in the middle of February, while I was sitting outside for not more than a quarter of an hour. But she had an answer for that too, and told me that she had a light-skinned friend who exactly for that reason, starts to take sunbaths already at this time of the year.
I didn't want to go further into this, as my concern was not only problems that too strong radiation can cause, but in general the so-called global warming, and its everyday effects on our lives. Like when you see the acacia trees and lilacs in full bloom in the first half of April, and even the poplars spread their fluffy seeds that should actually happen in mid-summer...
Maybe it's only that I've got used to the temperate climate we used to have here in Middle-Eastern Europe, with real transitions between summer and winter, that makes me feel so uncomfortable these days. Though I can remember that I've always loved something in all four seasons, my favorites used to be spring and autumn. Times when you can feel some kind of a change, a proof that life goes on, and renews itself.
I remember, with a sense of nostalgy, those times when I could enjoy the sun and the summer heat at the end of July and in early August. Still, back then thirty degrees was the most, even at the height of summer. Nowadays, when we have summer temperature in the middle of the springtime, and as soon as the sun hides it sinks ten-fifteen degrees immediately, I just can't stand it anymore.
Well, we haven't had snow, and now I'm talking about real snow that stays on the ground for the whole winter, in a long long while. Instead, some kind of murky, in-between nothingness which leaves all the germs and bugs alive, and only gives us all months of flu and headache, and so on. But at least, you can get on more clothes if it gets real cold now and then. Unlike during months of heat waves and heat records, when you can only survive with air-conditioners or North of the Arctic cirle.
However it suits very well today's main-stream commercialist ideology - we want all of it and right now! Or we think that even if we cannot have everything, then at least, for our money, we deserve of what we can get the bigger, and faster and better. The question remains, how long it will be better for us like this?
Saturday, April 9, 2016
More idols than reality
It's a great thing to socialize, and I especially enjoyed doing it in these last few months when I had no work. So, if it wasn't for the language course - that I've been attending for about a year now -, then I wouldn't spend that much time with people.
First, because I finished work - when I still had one - relatively early, then just to keep the habit, I used to arrive there half an hour, sometimes even a whole hour before the course would actually start. And so have been doing many others, and we would spend that time with talking about whatever we'd pick up as a topic.
I found out that after our class had become bigger with some new members, and a few months would fly away, I felt less and less happy to be there early. Then recently, I realized it was probably so, because one of us, who obviously feels like being responsible for keeping the conversation alive, started to say rather annoying things.
I don't mean the stories he repeats again and again where others seem to be all assholes, while he, in some miraculous way, always comes out as a clever one. It's only becoming boring, but otherwise not so disturbing.
But, for instance, when they showed a movie in the same institution where the course is held, about how gay men who flee from humiliation and certain death in Palestine, are thrown back from Israel, he told us a story about how another man in a public bath tried to feel him up, whom in return he knocked out. And as the moral of the story he added, that his connection with homosexuality has ended then and there.
I personally don't think people can be changed, maybe influenced, but still it usually is like a very superficial thing, in my experience, at least. So, I didn't feel like explaining to him - in his late sixties or so - that being gay doesn't also mean that you're lurking around in public baths, awaiting your chance to harrass everyone passing by.
Nevertheless I appreciated it when a woman of his age said it's rather hard for gay people here in Hungary. Then I added, that I believe it is so everywhere around the world. She agreed that it might be so, but she knows how bad it is here. For which I said, yes, to make negative comments on homosexuals, full of prejudice, is just as fashionable here, as it is on Jews.
After some time the above mentioned man said he was sorry, and he didn't mean what he'd said that way. However, he proved it some other times later on, that he loves to call folks and things faggot, when he, for some reason or other, doesn't like them.
Not so long ago, when we talked about socialism, he said that it was safer both jobwise and in many other ways, especially with regard to social and health care. Then the next time we gathered he mentioned it in a rather worried way, that he wondered how much time it would take, before our country would be able to get rid of the bad influences of socialism, so that people could once again learn to stand on their on feet, instead of relying on protection.
Of course, there were both positive and negative sides of the previous political system, exactly as it is the case with the present one. My private opinion on the matter is, however, that there's never been socialism, here, at least. There was some kind of ideology, and then there was a corrupted system - not so unusual and different these days - where people tried to survive, all in their own ways, while holding others responsible for it.
It might very well be that he meant the same. I didn't ask him, being already somewhat insecure in how serious he is in all his ways of storytelling, maybe only for the sake of being the center of attention.
He reminds me a bit of my father who never ever mentioned it to me that he was a Jew. Then after my mother had divorced him, for our - the children's - sake, he left for Israel, where he married a war widow with three children, whom he raised up as his own. Thus he also escaped to pay family support- to help mom with us, his real children -, which was actually not such a big sum.
As much as I am being myself, instead of pleasing someone else by doing something that is not me, and most of all, not living someone elses life, I do understand that people can be influenced from a very early age to suppress their feelings and thoughts, and so they miss to discover their real identities.
I am happy to feel free and unaffected of most of that stuff, while I don't believe I lack all kind of self-righteousness, at all. Instead, I'm still trying to understand people, and not judging them. But I have to admit, sometimes it feels like there's a wall between us, made of useless feelings on both sides, that keep us apart, and it builds but further misunderstandings and chaos in our minds, and in the world as we make it just the way we do.
First, because I finished work - when I still had one - relatively early, then just to keep the habit, I used to arrive there half an hour, sometimes even a whole hour before the course would actually start. And so have been doing many others, and we would spend that time with talking about whatever we'd pick up as a topic.
I found out that after our class had become bigger with some new members, and a few months would fly away, I felt less and less happy to be there early. Then recently, I realized it was probably so, because one of us, who obviously feels like being responsible for keeping the conversation alive, started to say rather annoying things.
I don't mean the stories he repeats again and again where others seem to be all assholes, while he, in some miraculous way, always comes out as a clever one. It's only becoming boring, but otherwise not so disturbing.
But, for instance, when they showed a movie in the same institution where the course is held, about how gay men who flee from humiliation and certain death in Palestine, are thrown back from Israel, he told us a story about how another man in a public bath tried to feel him up, whom in return he knocked out. And as the moral of the story he added, that his connection with homosexuality has ended then and there.
I personally don't think people can be changed, maybe influenced, but still it usually is like a very superficial thing, in my experience, at least. So, I didn't feel like explaining to him - in his late sixties or so - that being gay doesn't also mean that you're lurking around in public baths, awaiting your chance to harrass everyone passing by.
Nevertheless I appreciated it when a woman of his age said it's rather hard for gay people here in Hungary. Then I added, that I believe it is so everywhere around the world. She agreed that it might be so, but she knows how bad it is here. For which I said, yes, to make negative comments on homosexuals, full of prejudice, is just as fashionable here, as it is on Jews.
After some time the above mentioned man said he was sorry, and he didn't mean what he'd said that way. However, he proved it some other times later on, that he loves to call folks and things faggot, when he, for some reason or other, doesn't like them.
Not so long ago, when we talked about socialism, he said that it was safer both jobwise and in many other ways, especially with regard to social and health care. Then the next time we gathered he mentioned it in a rather worried way, that he wondered how much time it would take, before our country would be able to get rid of the bad influences of socialism, so that people could once again learn to stand on their on feet, instead of relying on protection.
Of course, there were both positive and negative sides of the previous political system, exactly as it is the case with the present one. My private opinion on the matter is, however, that there's never been socialism, here, at least. There was some kind of ideology, and then there was a corrupted system - not so unusual and different these days - where people tried to survive, all in their own ways, while holding others responsible for it.
It might very well be that he meant the same. I didn't ask him, being already somewhat insecure in how serious he is in all his ways of storytelling, maybe only for the sake of being the center of attention.
He reminds me a bit of my father who never ever mentioned it to me that he was a Jew. Then after my mother had divorced him, for our - the children's - sake, he left for Israel, where he married a war widow with three children, whom he raised up as his own. Thus he also escaped to pay family support- to help mom with us, his real children -, which was actually not such a big sum.
As much as I am being myself, instead of pleasing someone else by doing something that is not me, and most of all, not living someone elses life, I do understand that people can be influenced from a very early age to suppress their feelings and thoughts, and so they miss to discover their real identities.
I am happy to feel free and unaffected of most of that stuff, while I don't believe I lack all kind of self-righteousness, at all. Instead, I'm still trying to understand people, and not judging them. But I have to admit, sometimes it feels like there's a wall between us, made of useless feelings on both sides, that keep us apart, and it builds but further misunderstandings and chaos in our minds, and in the world as we make it just the way we do.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Earth keeps on rolling
Not only dreams are like places (and especially in our minds), but also times of our lives. You arrive there and linger for a while, before you decide to move on. Of course, you might return to some of these events and occasions, for several reasons.
You might like them (or so you want to believe it), maybe you've simply got used to them, and you think they make you feel safe in your life. It could be for necessity's sake that you need to switch day by day between different times, and experience the same again and again.
However when your time's up (whether you decide so, or the circumstances) you still have a chance to haunt that particular period with your kind memories shared with the others you spent it with. The little details in color, standing out of the infinite gloom of the everyday life.
This way you can become a part of something that seems so volatile and intangible, as if it never even existed. Though when you attach yourself to the moment, in some miraculous and incomprehensible way, you also make it stand firm, unaffected by the endless ocean of time. An anchor by itself, captured by you, and you captured by it.
You might like them (or so you want to believe it), maybe you've simply got used to them, and you think they make you feel safe in your life. It could be for necessity's sake that you need to switch day by day between different times, and experience the same again and again.
However when your time's up (whether you decide so, or the circumstances) you still have a chance to haunt that particular period with your kind memories shared with the others you spent it with. The little details in color, standing out of the infinite gloom of the everyday life.
This way you can become a part of something that seems so volatile and intangible, as if it never even existed. Though when you attach yourself to the moment, in some miraculous and incomprehensible way, you also make it stand firm, unaffected by the endless ocean of time. An anchor by itself, captured by you, and you captured by it.
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