the big wheel

I wanted to write this down a couple of weeks ago or so, as it seemed much more important when it hit me than anything else. And definitely more vital than anything else I'm talking about here, for sure. All the little everyday struggles, though I'm trying to capture them as part of something bigger. And so give them more meaning, as I'm still after that. Trying to makes sense of it all. And how all that we create, and all that we are effects us and others in respond.

What I'm talking about is this scene towards the end of Bowie's last video clip. He's sitting at his desk, and scribbling something so desperately as if his life was up to it. And indeed. Or maybe the meaning of it all. Something you can help, at least try and grab. Life you can't. Not any longer than it lasts.

And I wondered whether it is the same force that drives us to do anything that is not necessary, as Eno put it. That is all things we don't need to do to survive. But don't we? I feel like I'd long given up, had I stopped to use my brains. It's killing me anyhow, just to see the way the world we're making goes surely towards a total annihilization of creativity, and personality. Whatever it takes for you to be you, and for me to be this person who's saying all this.

To me it seemed that he, Bowie, was reflecting, maybe for the very last time, on these things. Is it why I write or draw, or put together music mixes - to leave a trace behind me, and thus survive? Forever? Or is it only done for myself? So I can go on with my life as long as it lasts. That is always, while I'm still here. With other words - for ever. So what's the difference once you're gone?

dreams written, forgotten, remembered

Not so long ago I mentioned to a dear friend all my dreams where I was standing in front of the mailboxes back in the house in my home town. It seems like I had countless of these memories turned into dreams. I was maniacally searching for letters in our box, but often even in others', too. Sometimes I found plenty, they were just pouring out of the box, and I couldn't hold them. Then on other occasions there was nothing there. I was even asking the neigbours who lived on the ground floor, if they knew where my post went, and why I didn't get any.

At least once while I was standing there I got chased down to the basement. The door that led there was right next to the mailboxes, under the stairs. I've never went down there in real life, as it's been closed all the time, and even the door handle was missing. But I remember that I was trying to get out of the deep water that gathered inside there. Very likely I recalled a big downfall from my childhood when I overheard some people saying that even that place was flooded. Then later in my dream, or maybe in another one, I was outside, and hiding there, in front of that door, from someone running down the stairs.

Now that I wrote that down, I can recall that I often had dreams where I was standing on the top floor, in front of our flat. Then hearing someone coming upstairs, I headed up to the roof exit, and tried to hide there, holding my breath. Funny that it all came back now. It's a strange thing memory, and then thoughts and dreams playing their games together. Often there was an extra floor with a gallery full of big, tropical plants up there. That is in my dreams. I guess, only to make this hide-and-seek game even more interesting.

And so I suddenly had a flashback. In another one of these nightmares I was riding a bycicle, which I can't in reality, though I've tried to learn it several times. It felt like flying, and I enjoyed this kind of freedom a lot. Then I came to that square with the horrible statue of a skeleton man hanging on a tree. This was a real place that I often crossed on my way home from school. As I was circling round that little elevation with the statue on top of it, I noticed a man in hoods approaching me. I tried to get out of his way, but he seemed to cross mine all the time, so that I could only avoid the crash at the last second. Then I understood that I was being hunted by him, and knew if I was caught, it meant certain death.

all the world's a stage

When was thinking 'Thank God, it's Friday afternoon!', on my way home, and taking a lovely sauna on the tube, I just had to realize that life still had some surprises for me. It happened when we stopped at the biggest junction, and the doors were kept open for a little longer.

First it was just a distant noise, then it became a definite shouting. So I got a bit worried that someone might got hurt. Finally I had to realize that some folk had a rather nasty argument going on. And as they came up to the very door that I was standing by, I could actually hear the outcome of it all.

It went like this:
- Fuck off, fucking foreigners!!
- You fuck off!
- Fuck you, FAGGOT!!
- Fuck YOU!

So, there was no real danger, apart from the usual mindless xenophobia, homophobia, and so on. What surprised me, the guy who was trying to send the tourists back home, was dressed like a worker on a construction site. Still, he had pretty good pronunciation skills, and well, not a beginners' dictionary either.

There was another guy standing opposite to me, reading a book in English. He also looked up from it, wondering at the hassle, but I couldn't read any appreciation from his expression. He might have had other criteria to judge by. However, I don't think it could have been played any better, were we at a theater.

cry baby

We have a saying in Hungarian that goes 'If stupidity would hurt, s/he'd scream'. Well, maybe there's the key to my (even for me) surprising, sudden nervous breakdown last week, after all the kerfuffle with only one day off...

Unfortunately I broke into tears with all the stress, in front of a person about whom now I know that I shouldn't trust. Rest assured she spread the word all around the office, and then for about a week was avoiding me at all cost, which of course, only made it all more suspicious when I heard back unmistakable comments...

Now, I believe this saying can also go for the likes of me, who are (according to the fantastic standards of present days) too sensitive, something like 'When others' stupidity hurts, it would make even you cry'.

why's a patient called a patient?

Well, my fellow passengers on this journey called life, today I had an appointment to get my kidney stone crushed by ultrasound. I got to show up by nine o'clock which I did, and also get plenty of water with me, which I also did. I was slightly shocked by the fact that they couldn't provide drinking water in a health center. But anyhow, I remembered that there was a little shop on the opposite corner, so I planned to buy it there. Also some food, as I wasn't supposed to eat before the operation took place.

Now, the shop wasn't there anymore, so I had to go back some corners to another one, and do the shopping there. Still I turned up in good time, and asked to make sure if I only had to wait and would be called by name. After another hour I walked up to the reception again to double check if I was at the right place. I was told not to worry, and why they'd already told me wait.

And I'll be darned if they didn't call for me in only yet another hour's time, and we were done and ready. It's another thing that I still had to chase the assistents and the doctor for another two hours, just to get my papers, and a time for a check-up. But then it was probably for the best, as they told me beforehand, I should stay after the op for a while, to see if there was some result. No, not yet.

Maybe the funniest part I left out for the first time I published this, was when the nurse came in just as I was sitting up on the bed, and asked me 'And who are you?' I felt that it was now getting really somewhat like a comedy, so tried an answer fit to the situation, and said 'Just a patient.' Then she might have got herself a bit together, realizing that to ask this from someone who's just gone through an op, is a bit weird. So she said, now with a little smile on her face 'I didn't mean it like that. What's your name?'. Turned out she was responsible for these kind of ops, but the other assistants forgot to tell her I was already on the bed.

Unless I consider that I got pretty tired of all the fuss that took to get me on the bed, and out of the place. I saw a lot of folks there, all of them totally confused, both patients and staff. I wonder if the doc printed out one paper for me next door to the surgery room, and sent me up two floors to get the rest - that he'd just typed in there, while asking me about possible causes and history - out of tiredness or being a bit mixed up, or just to get me going, and so help to get out of me that had to come out.

But after all is done and said, I found everyone and they were done with me, though on the papers there's another doc's name on the stamp, as mine couldn't find his. Let's just hope the rest goes on all natural and without further help, so no more cuts will be needed. Somehow I feel that I had more than enough of all that, from my childhood through my adolescence up to the recent years. After all, why's a patient called a patient...

P.S. Yesterday I read about a doctor who got a call from a friend that pissed blood... Today I had another book with me, but there also mentioned the protagonist, a man in his eighties something about his urinating issues. Then I came home and found this on the main google page...

air conditioning or conditioning?

No, this is not my usual dilemma whether I dare to spend a lot of money on one of these kits installed at home, or continue boiling in my skin now as the summer heatwaves are coming. It's the same old story at work where we are at least a hundred person in the same wing (not even the whole floor) sharing the same air. There, in the office we do have air-conditioners, but we don't use them...

To get to work I take a suburb train (from the fifties) with no air-conditioning, then the longest underground (also from about the fifties) with no air-conditioning. So, even though I take a shower in the morning before I leave home, I might as well take another one when I arrive at the office.

Instead, since we don't turn on the air-con there, I sweat for another hour, while trying to focus on my work, and adjust to the airless, humid heat. And why don't we use it? Simply because some sit under the airholes where the cold air blows off of the system, and they freeze or even develop a cold. 

And when you suffocate or freeze, or both only at different places on the same floor, then you start to wonder:
- are they experimenting with the system,
- are they experimenting with us,
- is it the system experimenting with us,
- who is it experimenting with our systems,
-is there a system in it, at all?

It wouldn't be that difficult to put all the thermostats on the floor on a low-level fan speed with an ideal temperature, then maybe lock them so it couldn't be changed all the time. But then I remember how it was when they did that, and also removed all the window handles at another place I worked at.  Actually it was my first multi-job, and well, to put it mildly, it wasn't quite a humane solution.

Here at least, we have a little committee that used to go around on the floor at regular intervals. They check the thermostats, sometimes set something on them. Then it usually becomes even worse, but sometimes they succeed to help for a while. Today they even asked some of us how satisfied we were with the system. I can foresee an email sent around with voting buttons...

Well, anyhow, as far as I can remember, everywhere I worked at,  this was an issue with no solution.
So, I guess I just have to dress accordingly, as they cannot expect us to boil in the office, and work like that, or can they?

sometimes, it takes a lie to kill a lie

I crossed the border, and so I could see there was none
only in my mind, and it was there that I understood it all,
Then I came back here, that we call a life and the world
and so I made a change, based on a decision in return

it shines when it shines

I should write more about dreams again. After all that's how this blog started. And sometimes (or always, I risk to say) there's so much more to it than tedious everyday life thingies. But also, like that thing I saw when I awoke from the nightmare full of witches, dreams carry on in this waking world. At least their effects...

Many many years ago - I was not yet a teenager, but entered that troubled period - I woke up once, in the middle of the night, and just knew that I would die one day, and that there was nothing I could do about it. And though I can't recall what - if - I dreamt, but I still have some vague memories about not being able to accept or reject the truth of it.  I felt so infinitely numb, as it just hurt too much to feel the pain, or because I simply couldn't comprehend what it meant to leave forever?

Then there was this daymare in the kindergarten when I suddenly saw everyone very much unlike humans. Though, since I was but a mere kid, I couldn't explain what happened to me, so I was just screaming on top of my voice 'Devils! Devils!'. And when the nanny took me up, and was trying to console me, I felt even more helpless and terrified, because she looked the same. Even after having closed and opened my eyes again and again, I saw these strange creatures instead of the people who were there only a few minutes ago.

I wonder where these sights came from? Dreams, other dimensions, or is it just a different way to see things? Some say it's a gift, but certainly scary for a child. And even for a grown-up who's unaware of what it is.

P.S. Yes, I knew this was something I'd mentioned before, and then it's a good thing I'm trying to keep track of it, as now I also might have a clue why I'm doing it: Yesterday was Monday

'that goddamn social life, it's torture dressed as fun'

It's a very strange experience when you realize what's behind all the smile you gave in to. And even though that's how you see the people you spend so much time with, as they really are, for some strange reason - I wonder if they understand why - there's no place for honest talk there.

I guess some are raised like that, they can talk about all the useless nuances, and they make a great interior designer, for instance. But in their family it was not allowed to talk about the important things that can - and should - change your life. So, they became afraid of reality, and of discussing it.

Though, as I see it in my experience, that's a veil you put up not only to protect yourself, but also to cut off all kind of communication, and any chance to understand others. Much like you just don't care; you say your part, and that's it. Then it becomes a social theater, a talk show.

I don't know, it might have been also like a painful thing for some when they tried to be straightforward, so they gave up on that habit. As for me, it always hurts, because I make myself vulnerable by doing so, but it's also important that I let others see what I have on my mind. Otherwise it's impossible to understand each other.

And if some decide to make fun of other's being true, and at the same time they just roll their eyes when you ask them why do they think that by making half-loud comments they can help anything, instead of sitting down, and listening to and talking with each other, well, no-one else can help you, if you don't let it happen. Good luck with a real life, and real friends you make this way.

on so-called social media

Believe me when I say it, it's a great feeling when you make up your mind and write to your friends, then after a while they answer to you. Unless you simply decide to talk. Technically it's possible, suppose you have the equipment.

I don't say that forums, blogs (oops!) and other kind of open virtual places are not good. Personally, I prefer one-to-one communication. Especially with people we've been knowing each other for a while. It makes it real, and well, yes, personal.

At such forums as for instance, facebook, I miss this honest and to-the-point quality. To me it's like small talk. Then I rather use my time for taking care of special connections.

I don't only mean that these days any real friendships became like something rare and precious. I think they've always been like that. That's the point. No use in pretending.

we can make it harder

No, I'm not talking sex, but daily life made more difficult by and for each other. You know, colleagues, neighbours, whoever, whenever have the chance. It's still a mistery for me after nearly fifty years, why is making drama and big theater out of nothing is easier for some then listening to what others say, and clear communication.

But the way I see it, these creatures are just keen on the game, and even if subconsciuosly - if that's possible - but are looking for an easy target to play their game out on them. Then they can lean back, smile, and pretend as if nothing happened, maybe even showing that they excuse you for them not being quite in their right mind...?

Yes, I do wonder how much such people are actually aware of the full potential of their insanity, their deranged reality and personality. Or if they really only play a game. But then again, that doesn't mean they're not affected by it, on the contrary. How can their victims be mad for them who start the whole game?

steal a kiss

Where I get off the suburb train, and try to make my way out through a rather narrow walkway, there are always at least half-a-dozen folks standing there, handing out newspapers for free, with equally valuable content. It's the same thing at the entrance to the underground train, once again.

Then this morning, as I successfully passed through the most difficult part, I caught sight of a girl, who arrived on the same train, and went up to a guy waiting there, to share a passionate kiss with him.

So I immediately got an idea that probably sounds strange, at least for the first time. What if these people who stand there, instead of trying to get rid of some useless paper, could be kissed. Suppose you found them attractive enough for some reason. Just a thought...

any day now

I remember how excited it made me feel when I read in a book about near future possible inventions, about such glasses you can surf the net with, and basically chat, talk, and do all you can now on a laptop, tab or a smart phone.

And you can imagine my surprise, when a month ago or so, I heard it on the radio that they've actually come up with contact lenses that can do this, if you have a mobile phone in close vicinity, like in your pocket. That all happened very fast, considering that the author of this book put things on a time scale spreading through a hundred years from now.

The other news I heard that day was a bit less of a discovery, but more like a 'solution' for airline companies. Namely that they want to start selling double seats for big passangers, and standing tickets to use up all the possible space on board.

Then a week ago, I heard it from a friend that cheap airlines have already started, at least announcing, to introduce such changes on their flights.
Well, I can understand their wish to sort out placing issues, but then I much prefer such sleeping capsules that they used in this movie The 5th Element. What do you know...?

dog-eat-dog world

Ha! Can you imagine a little guy wearing a litte fish eaten by big fish eaten by even bigger fish t-shirt? And it says it all. Must be a reason why that was put in front of my eyes, don't you think so?

cultural differences

It's great that you can meet people from other countries also at the many multinational companies. It's really interesting to hear their stories, why they chose to come here, where they've been, and it's good to have a chance to practice their mother tongue with them.

Though sometimes it seems the only thing these people can offer here is their language skills, which honestly is not that much, when you learn it as a child while growing up. At one of my jobs my boss who didn't speak the language we used to support our customer, and had no experience either in the job or as a boss, used to question my language skills repeatedly, without any reason he could give to do so.

After about a year of growing chaos, that was also mostly up to this bosses unreliable and irresponsible way of being a leader of our team, I decided to leave.  I could have given them the reason which was also true, namely that I left for a new life in another country. But am I really sorry for not having done so, but instead honestly telling about how the chaos and lack of support effected me in my work? Especially when this boss is still there, but my team members are all gone by now. You wonder why...

And when there was a boss who had both the language skills, and the professional experience, and also as a boss - and that meant he was really listening to us, and trying to help - he was switched to a youngster who was a native speaker, but failed some basic tests necessary for his previous job, and therefore had been fired from it.

I mentioned it, when I gave my notice, that only because that guy can speak his own language fluently,  he should not boss around, instead he should take his share of the work like everyone else was doing it.  When I asked that guy who he thought he was, when he talked in a rather unacceptable way with me, a girl who came from the same country as him, told him very fast in their own language that he should keep his superiority (sic!). But right after that she told me how sorry she was about what I experienced... After this he was given the leadership. Fortunately I'd left by then.

I can't call this an issue of cultural differences, no matter how hard many at such global firms try to convince people about it. It's simply an issue of using people, and abusing them. That's all.