Dancing Queen

An image that remained with me today. I was at my volunteer job at Cancer Research, and because there were hardly any volunteers there today I was stuck behind the cash register all afternoon. Not my favourite, but you get to chat with nice customers on occasion, and I like that. 

A Kylie Minogue Best of CD was playing, the third time already, because the player in the back was so blocked in by bags and donations that all we could manage was to reach the play button, not any other CDs to change the music. But really, there is only so much Kylie I can take, and at some point I dug a way through just to get some other music, The Beatles, incidentally, and half of the customers in the shop sang along, including me... But that is another story.

So, back to Kylie. An older lady came in with her... daughter? Niece? Friend? A younger woman anyway, and handicapped, blind and she had some speech impediment as well. Anyway, the younger one obviously loved Kylie, and smiled all over, not just her mouth, she smiled with her entire body, if you understand what I mean. And she started dancing, on the spot but nonetheless, shaking to the rhythm. It's hard to describe, but it was just such a beautiful sight, everything about her was entirely happy and engrossed in the music, and without any notion of self-consciousness or inhibition. She simply enjoyed the moment, and everybody who saw her couldn't help but smile with her. 

I envy her. I remember a time when music could sweep me away and become my entire world for the moment, but I've always been more on the shy side, and just dancing all by myself in a shop, I couldn't have done it. Sing along quietly, yes, possibly audible to people near me, and wriggle a foot or even a leg, ok, but I wouldn't have had her courage. 

She told me later that she was afraid of walking around by herself because people on the street would abuse her or take advantage of her disability, so she may have been quite conscious of her surroundings despite her blindness. But at that moment she just seemed to feel completely safe in herself, probably knowing the other lady was there to take care of her, and she appeared to be completely lost in the song, her blindness shutting her off from all around her that could make her become self-conscious again by catching her eye, so maybe she did not really realise, or just did not care, what was around her. In any case, it was a beautiful sight, and I hope that more people like me who saw her today remember this image, and smile whenever they do, and maybe try to get at least some of this feeling back ourselves when we were able to become completely engrossed in something we loved. 

And I hope that she, this young woman I met today, will always keep on dancing.

Of Roots and Trees

Sitting in a train in Hamburg, looking out at the houses out there. This is where I used to live. A long time ago, more than a decade now. I used to know this area so well, my favourite cafe with the plant growing in through the window, the wonderful music shop where I bought all those CDs that mainstream shops didn't have, the cornerstore with fresh Turkish bread and sheep cheese... Things have changed. The streets are the same, but have dressed in different clothing. The cafe has lost all its charm, the CD shop is now a coffee shop chain, everything looks different, yet weirdly familiar. 

This is where I grew up, the place I spent most years that I have ever lived in one city, and even though I only moved here when I was eight I still consider it my origin. My roots. This place has shaped me, has educated me, has given me the ideas for my life that drove me on onto my path. Nonetheless, I have known ever since I started learning my first foreign language at age 5 that there was more, and I needed to go find it. I needed to travel to other places, experience other cultures, learn how other people lead their lives, and then pick and choose what I want in my life. I knew I needed to leave. 

Now, at this point in my life where, despite me having finally picked a place, I am struggling hard to settle, essentially because I cannot seem to find a job to make a living, the prospect of having to come back here is uncomfortable. Yes, my roots are here, I enjoy coming back to visit, but I have grown out of it. It is not that I dislike it, but the thought of living here, under my parents' roof at first until I can pay for a place to live, strips me of my dreams, it feels stifling, small, restricted. I have seen things out there, I have lived my life in a way that I cannot fit in here anymore. The sapling has broken out of the earth towards new skies, and the roots remain hidden underground. I can grow into other directions, into new things, but bending back and merging with the roots... It doesn't work that way. 

I don't mean to say that people who chose to stay here are restricted, not at all. It is all about choice. And my choice is to find ways of learning new things, extending my experience, and integrating them into my life to create something new, and never stop. I am slowing down, in the sense that I don't want to move all over the globe anymore, I appreciate the things I can find in one place, but I want this place to offer me enough newness, enough strangeness, to keep me interested. And not be based on German. I don't live in the German language anymore, if that makes any sense, I think in English, I dream in English, I even translate much of what I want to say from English into German. German humour has eluded me ever since I can remember, whereas British comedy is among the greatest... ok, not all of it, but the black humour, best in the world. This is what feels right for me. Other people look for other things. And that is great. 

Where it does become a problem is when my family starts pushing. Come back here, start again here, live here and leave everything else behind. For them this is the best place to be, but they cannot understand that the thought of having to move back feels to me like giving up on my dreams and destroying all I have worked for. They don't understand, and feel offended when I don't want to jump at the suggestion and pack my things. But I can't give up. Yes, these are my roots, but I can't bend back down...

       

Fighting Blandness

Here I thought Shepherds Pie must be one of the blandest things the English cuisine has to offer... Well, it is, but that doesn't mean I gotta stick to the recipe my ex used to follow - and love, but we'll leave further inferences be for the moment - right? So, dear English, I know you see condiments and herbs other than pepper and salt as suspicious and possibly dangerous, but let me implore you: Your food needs more chili! Just spice it up a little, darlings! 

Another thing the kitchen here traditionally cannot live without is meat. I do eat meat on occasion, but really I prefer veggies. And there are plenty options in the country, don't get me wrong, and even traditional British food can be made with meat substitutes - and not just beans beans bean as some people seem to believe. Our frigde was brimming with veggies that begged to be used, so I threw them all together with some onions, a can of chopped tomatoes, and then put them in the oven under a - yes, shudder to think but it worked - instant mash cover. No meat, plenty of spice and herbs and a good dose of chili! And it turned out really nice, I must say. 

So, is that all the kitchen here in this country needs to appeal? Spice? I will try and see... what shall I tackle next? Probably another kind of pie - never liked them much as they all just tasted greasy salty potato-y, in short: bland. Spices and me, here we come!   

The Last Train Home

Mmh, just an observation I made the other night. I was out with some friends, having a few drinks with some people I haven't met in a long, long time on the occasion of one of them being back over here on a visit from Montreal. It was so lovely to see them again, catch up, have a few beers... So when the one pub closed at eleven we went around the corner in search of one with a longer license. Which we found in the form of a Wetherspoons, yes, I know, which has a license until twelve, enough time for another drink or two and then still catch a train home. London's tubes and overground stop around midnight, but unlike some other major cities such as Tokyo London has at least a nightbus service, so I wasn't too worried. Still, we managed to get the last tube up North-East, while they were closing off the entrances and passages behind us. Kind of a weird feeling, being shut into an underground system, much like being shut into a cave. 

Anyway, so we hopped on the train, which was almost empty. An empty tube in London is something I have not really seen before, I must say. Yes, there are times when it is easier to get a seat, but apart from us there were maybe a handful of people on the entire train. Ah well, ok, maybe two handfuls, but the principle still stands. And it just made me realise how different some cities' dynamics are. London, being overcrowded at almost any other time of the day seems to scare off the last few customers on the tube, maybe because in this grey zone, when you are not sure if you can still make the train all the way down three floors under ground, it is just easier or just more relaxing to opt for the bus in the first place, which you know will run all night. 

Whichever the reason, I found the experience quite fascinating. The main reason being that the last city I was depending on last trains quite a lot, more so than in London since they do not have any night service at all, as in none, zilch, zero, nothing to get you home but a taxi, a bicycle or your feet, was Osaka. Same time of the evening, as in around midnight, the last train would leave, and if you weren't on it, well, let's say night-time karaoke and then a long extended coffee in Royal Host has been a frequent occurrence. But these trains, my, how different an experience they are from the tube. The last train in Osaka is the drunk train. Not that the handful of people on the last tube aren't also drunk, I know we were, in various degrees. But the last train back home to Kadoma from Yodoyabashi was a sight for sore eyes. In the sense that sometimes you wished they were sore and you didn't have to witness this. The funnier things involve drunk suited businessmen sleeping all over the place, benches on the platform, in the train on the seats, or simply somewhere on the floor. And - the train is usually crowded. As a good Japanese you know your timetable. No grey zone, you know exactly how long it takes you to get to that train. And many take advantage of that. So while the trains around 10pm may be fairly empty, the last train at 12:20 is crammed. And being squashed closely to a bunch of really drunk people, well, it's not the nicest of experiences. Even if you are a head higher up, the smell still reaches you. Blessed be the custom of having a bath after you get home in the evening. 

Well, these are just two last train home experiences. I can not for the life of me remember what it was like in Hamburg when I was living there, nor in Kuala Lumpur, since there I more regularly missed the last train if I had to get it, thanks to the loose definition of a timetable of the bus services. My saviour there usually was my friend who took it upon herself to save me from evil people at night, and instead lead me to the best food places on earth, and I love her forever for that. But that leads us away from the trains, so I will just leave you right here for the night, on whichever train you see fit.

  

Reality Bites... or Reality Can Bite Me

Reality is what you make it. It's all in your head. Isn't that what they say? Well, starting from Plato's cave I suppose it is true. We all perceive reality in some way, but never see the whole picture. Each time science, or philosophy for that matter, discovers something new our view on what constitutes reality changes. We now know that what we see is not all there is to it. And just because we cannot see something does not mean it is not there. I'm not talking about ghosts, although I would include them in this category. But just think of bacteria crawling on a table. Now that we have microscopes we can prove they are there, but without it we don't see them. 

And more, everybody sees things in their own way, on the basis of their physical and psychological situation: the table I see is not the same table that you see. We may see the colours differently, or maybe I grew up in a culture where I have only ever seen tiny little wicker tables and suddenly, when seeing a wooden dinner table seating 8 am astonished that this is possible. And even further, just the word table, assuming we both speak English and understand its meaning, will summon a different picture in our minds, and will never include everything a table in reality is or can be. It is only an approximation, Derrida sends his regards... But this is not really what I want to talk about.

So, back to reality. What is real? And who says it is? If I experience something, with my senses that lead the information into my brain, which in turn interprets that in some way, then I experience a reality. Say, if I touch that dinner table, and feel that it is cold, that the wood has this slightly grooved pattern, I can see it is brown, I might even still smell the wood if it's new, or the polish someone used to make it shiny, then my senses send this information to my brain, which tells me after interpreting all the facts that this is indeed a table. It is real, empirically. So how is this experience then any more real than if I had the same experience in a dream? An experience that I have experienced should mean just the same, if in a dream or when awake. How do I even know if I am awake, would Descartes ask, if my experiences in a dream feel the same? How do I know that this reality here, now, is not all a dream? It does not make much more sense than a dream, so what is the difference? Do I wait for a pink bunny to hop by to decide which is real and which isn't?  And if it did, how would I be sure that pink bunnies in fact do not exist after all? Maybe someone just went a little crazy with a can of spray paint?

No, don't worry, I don't think I have gone mad. I do like these thought experiments, though. Reality is what you make in your head, reality is what your brain summarises from all the information it gets from you, whether through the senses or even through memories, and sometimes through false memories or dreams, which is where it can get tricky. But it is not always something substantial in the 'real world' that let's me experience something. Why else do I get sad when thinking about breaking up with the last boyfriend almost 3 weeks ago, even though I saw the reasons for it to happen? Logically there is no reason to be sad, psychologically (ha, I love that this has logic in it too, the logic of the psyche, as in opposed to rational logic...), however, my body reacts to the experience with tears and that sagging feeling in my stomach. Experiences turn into physical manifestations. Your body makes them into something, it reacts. And strangely enough, sometimes the body reacts to something, in some way, even though you know that there is no real reason for it to do so. And strange situations ensue. 

The other day, when everything came crashing down on me all at once, from every imaginable corner of my life, and it was all too much suddenly, I had a panic attack. A mild one, if I go by accounts of it. But frightening nonetheless. And I knew it was a panic attack, I knew that the feeling of choking and my body fighting for breath was just my body reacting to too much stress, and that even though it felt like I might, I would not die. I even knew I had to reach out to someone to calm me down, and started texting whoever came to mind, which in my confused state was quite random, asking for someone to arrange to meet. Even if not right then, the prospect of a chance to just cry on someone's shoulder would have helped. Only my ex replied, which I am still grateful for, even if he was definitely not the best choice in the situation. But I was panicking. I still needed someone to calm me down though, and simply accosted my one flatmate who was at home, who looked very scared, but managed to calm me down, say the right things, and just let me breathe. Other than the other one who, when he got home, somehow managed to make everything worse, and every single sentence he said was like a kick in the guts while I was already down. Even though I know he just wanted to help, all I wanted was for him to shut up, but I couldn't say anything, not even get up and leave the room. Anyway, throughout all this I was aware that all my bodily reactions, the choking and the cramps in my stomach, were not actually based on anything other than my thoughts. 

So how real are thoughts then? I mean, I know that now I am broke, I have no job and trouble finding one, and am alone again without a man who is there to hold me and give me at least the illusion of a partnership. I also know that I need to focus on things I like, and things I need, to counterbalance the negatives. And I know that things will get better soon, because I have always found a job, and chances are much better in the next couple of months than they have been until now, purely statistically speaking. I know that I will survive for money, because there are ways to deal with my situation, like benefits and lovely flatmates who agreed to help by postponing the rent. And I know that I can live my life without that man, maybe even better, and that there are so many things I enjoy doing, and so many people to enjoy these things with. How do I know if any of that is real? How do I know that maybe not the negatives are the reality, and that my other flatmate was right when he said it was my fault I didn't get that last job because I posted a comment about me wanting the job on Facebook, and that I will never find a job if I don't get happy pills right now even though taking pills will make me feel so much worse because I will consider that like I'd have crossed that last line? I mean, all this sounds just so wrong to me, but how do I know that maybe this is what's right and I am the one who's wrong? Because my gut tells me?

Well, reality is what you make of it. So all I gotta do is decide what I consider to be real, right? Decide, and the body will follow, eventually. At the moment it just sometimes takes too much energy to decide, or even to notice that there is a choice. I mean, there is always a choice, even if I don't see it. It is all a matter of what my mind lets me see and what not. Or rather, what I let my mind allow me to see. After all, I am the one creating my reality, and my choices. I just wish I had finally figured out how to control all that a little more, so that I can decide on my experiences and my reality, and not let experiences create a reality for me. Tricky...             

Fighting the Zombie in Me

  I have my Japanese dad staying with me at the moment, and he will be sharing my room for two months. I know I will probably wish for some solitude at some point during this time, but right now I am so glad that he is here. And he has made me notice in just what state I have been in lately, something I had not realised, not to that extent at least...

  Shortest way to describe it: I've been zombified. Spending days on end on job search and applications, being glued to the computer, sounds like I should be wanting to get out and run around every chance I get, right? I kind of do. Doesn't work that way though. 

  At the moment this situation drains every last bit of energy, to the extent that if I don't pay attention I don't manage to get out at all into the fresh air (well, this is London, so fresh air is a relative term, but you know what I mean, right?). Worse, I get so drawn into these applications that I have even on occasion forgotten to eat or things like that. And it is difficult to conjure up the energy to take initiative and meet friends unless they call, which is very isolating. I am a social person, I need human contact, an evening out with friends to catch up, sitting around and just having a laugh and a nice chat about something, anything, as long as it's not exclusively about finding a job gives me so much energy... 

  Unfortunately my mind won't come up with topics by itself these days, as all revolves around applications and the misery of existential fears creeping up on me. Which eats away on my energy. Which makes it harder to arrange to meet friends for a change of scenery. Which keeps me stuck with more applications and thoughts about fears. Which drains more energy... you see where I'm going with this? A bottomless downward spiral...

  Having my otousan here has forced me to wake up. He is one of those people who can hardly stop smiling, or talking for that matter, and even if it is all in Japanese and trying to dig out that vocabulary somewhere in the back of my mind to follow his stories or reply myself takes a lot of energy, it has a different effect on me. My brain seems to work again! Well, in the sense that it can bring up stories or anecdotes again that have nothing to do with throwing in key words such as flexible or multi-tasking. And I remember that there were actually things out there that I was interested in. Like books! Like history! Like art and museums, and just learning new things! And I love taking friends around and showing them London, finding things or places to interest them so that they can fall in love with this place the same way that I have.

  So, even if I'll have no moment of quiet in a while and no spare time between job hunt, my volunteer job, and taking otousan around London, at least that means I will also have no time to dwell on breaking up with the boyfriend or on worries about what will happen if the job hunt doesn't bear fruit anytime soon. And I can finally fight the zombie off and start to think again! Reclaim my brain, the slogan of the day...

  

     

Step by Step...

... and no, I don't mean the song by New Kids on the Block. I just realised that it's kind of strange, that I know exactly that I have to go through this step by step. Breakups tend to go through this pattern with me. First there's the hurt and the sense of failure when I realise that my feelings are not reciprocated and the relationship is not going to work. Then logic sets in and between bouts of illogical hurt and tears explains that this is the way it is. Mostly I get to anger about the same time, and betrayal because he was not honest about his feelings, pretended too long and had me believe it was something mutual. Anger is the easiest part for me to deal with, easy to talk about, easy to let out, easy to overcome. The sense of failure is the hardest, and I still don't know how to handle it. Then at some point the next step is almost unnoticeable, but suddenly it gets better, things that happened don't matter that much anymore, and the realisation that this is just another experience, and the next one will come, sets in. It still hurts on occasion, but not that much anymore. 

I know this is what is going to happen, I just wish I could already be out of this paralysing feeling of hurt, which blocks out logic and reason. Well, I guess it's gotta be one step at a time...