After the rain

When I saw the light
of that lamp post blinking,
After this restless night
it made me thinking

I feel like that often
showing, then hiding,
So my heart can soften -
a chance for surviving

Like that light hides behind
the leaves of a tree moving,
Or I'd rather be tree to find
certainty in all things

This morning

In this dream that I had
I was holding someone's hand,
So that I could stand
on a train, bus or a tram

And he didn't mind at all
he held mine tight and stood tall,
And there were others hanging on
how many lives we can support

I remember how grateful I felt
for that helping hand that I held,
Of the others I didn't feel blue
and when I woke up, I knew it was you

the time of your life

It's a bit hard to believe that Bowie only covered his eyes (at least on his physical body) in his last two video clips, because he didn't want to see death coming for him. In Lazarus he even said that he'd be free like that bluebird. So why would he not look forward to it?

I believe, it was all the things around him, and around all of us, that he closed his eyes on. Instead he was focusing on what was coming. And I don't mean all his death wish, and the end of the world kind of lyrics from before, at all.

That makes me remember again that night when I woke up as a child, and suddenly I was thinking that one day I shall die, and there's nothing I can do about it. And I was just sitting in my bed, in the dark, wondering about the meaning of it all. Is there a meaning to it, after all?

from "A Year with swollen appendices" by Brian Eno

the audio file
It's an unusual day
Sometimes it's winter and sometimes it's summer
There are crocuses

Even within half an hour the seasons change and change about
(?) storks and the pom-pom trees
There are crocuses
They are early
This is confusing for dogs

Between yellowing trees big gulls slide down the bright air
Shadowed by newspapers and peeling among dry leaves
Blank words tumble out of context
...  ...

No account
All others
Universal
Heartache
They are early
All the energy
Repeat

Bellona, the recombinant city or...

...is it your mind being constantly re-arranged by your ever changing environment? Just like one of my fav quotes says 'It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.'

I've started again this 800-page sci-fi book, Dhalgren written by Samuel R. Delany. It's been years since I last read it, and I remember I found it both difficult and awesome at the same time. Anyhow, I love it to bits and pieces. Here's some more of what makes feel like that:

'Western independence? He had hitched this sector of country enough to decide it was all manic terror.'
'All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch... how coffee tastes after you've hold it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute.'

By the way, the book stood behind some others on a shelf, and I 'by coincidence' found it there, after I'd read a story from Neil Gaiman about a man lost in the city's dream he's been living in, and when finally having found a chance to escape back to reality (?) he flees to a faraway place, terrified by the thought what if the cities wake up one day.

sunglasses at dawn

When you take a ride
on the early train,
You can try to hide
from the bright sunray

But if you close your eyes
there's a caleidoscope,
Of colours and lights
like your dreams untold

They change as fast
as the weather last night,
There's nothing to last
so you better don't fight

Just lean back and watch
how life itself's moving,
Then reach out and touch
the whole world's a movie

Ambjørsen on dreams

It was very interesting to read about dream sequences from one of my favorite Norwegian authors, right after I'd started to get back to this topic here. Another so-called synchronicity, isn't it?

In one of his short stories the protagonist visits his hometown after many years. This makes him realize that in most of his dreams he has been doing so for a long while. But not in the first years after having moved to another place.

However as he got older, he experienced such memories to come back from his childhood nearly every night. Not only about places, but people he grew up, and went to school with. And so came back the feelings he had towards them, mixed with his everyday life experiences and feelings.

And so he wonders, if he plays a role in their dreamlife. Has he done or said anything that makes them think about him? Though they no longer know each other.

This brought up a lot of memories in me. And though it worked out for me in a different way, but the sequences, it's something really interesting, and the reason behind it all. Are you so busy in a new life that you don't have time for memories, not even in your dreams? Or you simply don't need them, or rather you don't think you do?

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