'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.

Value's in dreams, boy!

One of the big advantages of being paranoid is that you see things where others don't. It can be frightening sometimes, but also wonderful when you feel there's such a synchronicity to the world. And then again what is paranoid? Who said the world isn't full of "invisible" wonders, even from a scientific point of view. And it's built on synchronicity, otherwise it couldn't exist.

I've read one of the Sandman stories again the other day, in which the protagonist recalls a dream he had as a child. He was trapped in a house full of witches, so he climbed up on the roof, but then was casted down by it. And ever since then he had a fear of heights and falling.

Oddly enough, the first dream I can remember is also about being surrounded by witches. I can still tell they were really terrible ones. I woke screaming, not so much because of the dream, but the huge, white head with empty eyes, like a Roman statue, staring at me from my bedroom door. Even after my Mom came in to comfort me, and I have shut and opened my eyes several times.

Back in that story they mention three options in case you have a dream where you fall from heights: 1) You die as you hit the ground. 2) You wake yourself. 3) You fly.
I used to fly without noticing it, just walking and suddenly finding I'm high above all. Sometimes I start to come down against my will, and folks or dogs jumping up can nearly catch me .

But I remember a dream, maybe the first one I was flying in, where I was walking home in our street. As I was getting closer to our door, I realized that I was already at the same level where we lived on the fifth floor. But doing so, I also started to fall, and before I hit the ground with my back, I woke. Not to reality though, instead to a kind of interval, and probably phased into another dream as usually. Surprisingly, the guy in this story also wakes himself to a dark, in-between place in dream, to escape from the witches.

In other dreams I often levitated to our balcony on the fifth floor, to look in through the windows, or actually get into the flat like that, even in the recent years.

Now, the next day I've read another story, and strange as it sounds, the conclusion was that things can seem very different in another dimension. As it happened, the protagonist there could catch sight of an example of this. He saw, exactly like I did as a child, when I woke up from my witch dream, a huge head watching him.

the miracle

I saw a girl from the window. She went down the little alley where they had cut off all those wonderful, huge trees. And only then planted some small ones in their places.

She stopped by one of them, and I wasn't quite sure if I saw it right, but she seemed to touch the stem of it, so suddenly and gently. Then she continued to click on her smart phone, but stayed right there by the young tree.

I got so touched and excited, nearly delirious, that I was hanging on, awaiting if she'd reach out again. For a moment I was thinking, maybe they came up with an app to send samples of things you had physical contact with. Actually, I'm almost sure they did.

After what seemed an eternity, the girl touched the tree again, and when she pulled her hand back, as if stroking the bark, I could swear she kissed her palm. This seemed even stranger, for she was still typing, and holding her eyes on the screen of her mobile as she went on.

But then this felt like the highlight of the day. Now I thought this was a message to me, because I looked out of the window exactly then. Now I imagined a world where we all smile at each other, and my heart felt young once again.

on the institution of radio

I had a shocking flashforward about the host announcing another commercial, right after the news, and then getting back to the listeners to offer more commercial followed by some other useless pile of information, and going on like that the whole day long.
Mind you the channel still might have a name that refers to music.
Except that no-one knows why any longer.
As a matter of fact, nobody wonders anymore.

Hello, and this is Write a haiku each day,
especially if you have a silent lunch break
With nobody to talk to, and nothing to say,
when you can think a bit, while eating your stake

The smell of the wooden floor, the noise of nothing,
while you're idling away in the distant humming
Seriously, let's go out, have a drink!
Instead of using up more digital ink

Breakthrough of the mind

I saw a dragonfly today,
it was trying to get free
It crashed against the windowpane,
because that it couldn't see

But the other side, the world,
it saw as clear as day 
so it tried, even if it hurt
for knowledge numbs the pain

'Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.'

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.

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?

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.