falling in love – Page 2 – a lover of the road

Fear and loathing on a white coach

“What are you doing? Are you socializing?” the guide, a dull guy in his mid twenties, asks with a wide smile that makes his eyes almost invisible.

“Yes, we are.” we both reply almost at the same time, cringing away from his unpleasant presence.

And these loud people are making jokes and taking photos and filming videos and posting them on Facebook, tagging and commenting and checking in. And there’s something vulgar about them, a lack of real connection between them, a distance and a way of living that’s like floating on the surface of life like patches of oil on the surface of a deep, blue water, filled with numerous colorful fish and other creatures they never get to touch. Their homes are in shallow waters, the current sometimes makes them drift away and fear brings them back most of the time.

This is not where I belong, I think to myself and I panic again, taken over by the same fear that’s been tormenting me for about two months already. I am taken over by this powerful ocean wave and I cannot resist its might. I do what I can to push my head above the water from time to time and take short, lifesaving breaths. This is too difficult. A part of me is thinking of running away again. And my chest hurts. And I want to be made to stay. I want to be held tightly, so tightly that my ribs threaten to crack, shattering all traces of fear. I really want to be made to stay.

The sleepy coach taking turns, staggering and cutting through the grey evening like a long white pill being swallowed is making me dizzy, but I cannot be sure if my nausea is caused by my own panic or by the nature of the coach trip. I feel my fate being carried by this white coach filled with loud strangers with whom I have only fear in common. The blue bus is calling us, Morrison’s sweet voice sounds in my head, soothing some of the pain and making the unsoothable part even worse.

You know, Sylvia Plath, that depressed writer I did my BA paper on, wrote a book called Johnny Panic and the bible of dreams. I remembered her talking about panic and the way it rules the world, so I looked for the precise quote. Here it is:

“Maybe a mouse gets to thinking pretty early on how the whole world is run by these enormous feet. Well, from where I sit, I figure the world is run by one thing and this one thing only. Panic with a dog-face, devil-face, hag-face, whore-face, panic in capital letters with no face at all—it’s the same Johnny Panic, awake or asleep.”

And I take it she’s right. All these people so afraid of leading meaningless lives that they strive to keep up the appearance of a personal life, of having friends, the fear I see so close to me – that of losing your freedom, of not getting enough, of settling down for less that your highest possible reachable potential, that of losing control, that of leading an unhappy, mediocre life. And my own fears…

Well, Sylvia ended up head in the oven, gas turned on, kitchen door sealed with duct tape, children asleep in the other room. She did also say, in the same book, “Wear your heart on your skin in this life.” That is what I have been trying to do, this is one of my goals. It’s crazy, I know. And I don’t know if it’s a good idea to follow Sylvia’s advice, either. You know, considering…

On the other hand, who is really afraid? Which part of me feels fear? Only the ego can ever be hurt (or create the convincing impression of being hurt). The heart knows no fear. And the opposite of fear is not courage. It’s love. I finally remember the only way out of the pit is changing the focus of my attention. Maybe this is why my eyes see everything bathed in this strong light. Life is trying to remind me to look at the bright side, to focus on the positive, on the light. And what’s the worst thing that can happen? And if that happens, so what? Throughout the entire history, personal and global, the world has never really ended. The journey never ends. Every step opens new possibilities. And I am excited to explore them.

“A wise person knows that fears are always your road companions through the desert of life. But you never let go of the harness of your camel. You are in charge.” a dear friend reminds me.

First week of the new year in Sweden. An identity loss/ change adventure

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

“Gott nytt år!” a tall, thin blond woman in a group in front of a house turns to us smiling as we’re walking down the street after the fireworks, about half an hour after midnight.

“Happy new year!” we’re both answering in English almost at the same time, as the whole group turns looking at us.

“You said they were not so friendly, didn’t you?” my travel companion asks me and we conclude they must be friendlier on account of the large quantities of alcohol on the menu on New Year’s Eve.

We’re walking, the two of us, along the narrow streets of Sollentuna, lined with their beautiful houses surrounded by quiet gardens hiding wild animals and numerous beings of the etheric realm, living peaceful undisturbed lives. This is our first walk together in the new year, hand in hand, quiet or talking in low voices, we’re looking around and inside. Every few steps we stop and kiss. And I can’t help thinking this is a beautiful beginning.

We then head back to the house and spend a couple of hours dancing and laughing with my cousins and our friends and playing foosball before I kidnap him. Later on, after we all wake up, we take our new year walk to the long and narrow golf in Sollentuna to visit the sea. Her majesty is quiet, cold and sunny. My cousin is taking pictures and I get my new year’s portrait and pictures of the two of us. Again, something new. I try not to think about it too much. Though that’s like trying not to breathe too much.

Stockholm is waiting for us after sunset and it does feel like I’m taking my travel companion on a trip through my life – showing him people and places and things that I like. If he likes it, he may stay, I think. If he doesn’t, he’s free to go. And I have nothing to lose, so I shouldn’t become too possessive or scared or controlling. I am just a guest house.

There’s this process of adjustment and disclosure and strings being tied between us as others snap with a sharp noise and a slap over bare skin. We’re reaching out, feeling and thinking, fearing, running away and returning, hiding and then coming out again. A hide and seek game of sore muscles and sweaty foreheads. Old wounds start hurting again and I remember this is what a relationship does to you – it changes you, it takes you out of your comfort zone completely, it molds you, it torments you, it makes you face your worst pain and your deepest fears and your worst flaws. I’ve forgotten… It’s been so long! Oh, and the happiness, too. Happiness is a terrorist planting suicidal bombs in every new lifetime. Plants bomb. Bomb goes off. Terrorist dies. Terrorist goes to the afterlife. Terrorist is reborn. Terrorist plants bomb… (You know the drill by now.)

Uppsala is as beautiful as I remember her and I love visiting Carolina Rediviva library at the university. The reading rooms here are making me feel like I’m taking a walk through a story in an English book and remind me of lives spent in monasteries, studying and writing and dusting manuscripts and feeling like I’m in the middle of a treasure, surrounded by so much knowledge a lifetime feels too little to take it all in. My skin so thin and yellowish like an old book’s pages. My eyes always smiling and my fingertips having orgasm after orgasm touching those hand written and beautifully decorated pages, rare and precious like fine jewelry. Now I’m just a tourist, my heart dancing as we’re quietly walking along these wooden floors, careful not to disturb the students lined at the tables, studying in perfect silence.

The day we go on a bike ride around the lakes in the natural reservation in Sollentuna reminds me of the summer and the ride with my friend, who was in love and so scared his lover might leave him for not being good enough that he was stopping every two minutes to send text messages and make short calls and scream. Am I now experiencing the same fear? I am stronger than this. Or am I actually experiencing the same pain? That of not being loved… Or have I finally met my match? Someone with a strength that doesn’t feel threatened by mine? Is it a shock? I need to let go…

Later on the same day we’re studying each other’s skin under the microscope at the Nobel Museum and I find it fascinating. Looking at those miniature creases, at the huge thick hairs growing like branchless trees in a desert, at bruises and scratches. We’re so vulnerable and pink at such a close look, so temporary, changing all the time… It’s such an illusion to think you ever really know somebody. Not even under the microscope can you truly know. So it’s like you’re with someone new every second, really. Exciting!

His blue eyes are laughing, his dry lips revealing his white teeth, one missing on the right side. Grey hair, weather beaten face, a two day white beard and gnarled hands. In his mid sixties, tall and thin, wearing a red fleece jacket and water proof pants over mountain boots, he’s talking to his friend who’s sitting on his left on the bus taking us to Stockholm central station.

“You know”, I tell him when we get off, “I was looking at those two old men next to us. You know, the ones chattering on the seats by the door…”

“I didn’t notice them”, he answers abruptly and I know that’s not true because I’d felt he was a bit uneasy about the attention I was giving them.

“Really? They were right there, how could you not have noticed them? Anyway, I was wondering… What’s making these people so alive and yet so centered, so calm in their apparent autism? I was admiring the life in them, their joy and ease.” I continue as he gives me no answer. “Is it sport? Is it the cold? Is it this place? Or is it a combination of everything?” I keep going as we’re making our way to the train station through the frozen snow.

The occasional solar plexus explosions are markers of fear and fighting to gain an illusory control over things. When one of us takes out his phone to send another text message, a silent workout of fine muscles takes place and pain takes over and the tension in the jaw bone threatens to smash a couple of teeth before it loosens up again and saliva can hydrate and soothe for a short, blessed time.

Only I can see the lesbian couple walking hand in hand in Gamla Stan as we’re walking from Vasa Museum to the Medieval Museum. Tall and thin and tough, they look like aliens come from outer space – invisible to everyone who hasn’t visited their planet at least once. A feeling of admiration and pride awakens in my heart and I’m feeling happy for their freedom. I clasp the hand of my boy and squeeze it harder and I don’t mention the aliens.

“I dreamed we had a baby. A very small baby boy. I was holding him at my chest. He was so small, I’d just given birth to him…” I confess one morning before even opening my eyes and right away I am met with the best way to start your day. This is new, too. I am careful with the ‘us bubble’, careful to allow it to be permeable, careful to look trough it and not seal it closed. It’s been so many years since I’ve traveled with a partner. Someone who’s not a friend, not a mere room mate, not a relative, not a stranger. The lover of the lover of the road.

On the other hand, my right eye insists on being swollen, itchy and ill every day and it’s frustrating because I don’t get it, no matter how hard I’m thinking. It’s been too long and I don’t get it. And on the last day, just as I wish I could disappear off the face of the earth rather than being betrayed again, my wallet goes missing. Lost or stolen. My ID, credit cards, driving licence, health insurance card, money and a couple of other things I cared about (such as a leaf from a Celtic church, a present from a dear friend) – all gone. The moment I open my purse and can’t find my wallet feels like someone has pulled the carpet from under my feet. I’m suspended, floating above the ground, nowhere. For a second, I believe I’m going to have a panic attack. But I don’t, so I have no idea how it really feels since I’ve never experienced one. I had my chance and I blew it. I’m crying as I make the call to the bank to block my cards and I feel the guy at the call center a little bit confused about how he should react. Professionalism wins in the end. Another first time.

Use me, lie to me, betray me! That’s what I should be saying instead of fearing so much and trying so hard to control what’s going on. On our flight back to Bucharest my travel companion shows me this story in his book about freedom. Someone was kidnapped and sold as slave and he didn’t fight back at all, but used his power in a much smarter way, dominating the others through going along with their plan and actually exercising a form of freedom people rarely know exists and rising on top of the situation. So now my sweet boy has actually managed to remind me that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to me that hasn’t already been done before. I am convinced fear is useless and I can always rise again, stronger than before.

Still, just as I’m writing these words, my heart reminds me not everything has already been done.

See the photos from this journey on Instagram.

Freedom and power. Fuel in my journey

Freedom has always been extremely important to me. I remember my childhood, full of restrictions and frustrations and my incapacity to understand why they were being placed on me, since most of them seemed improper, irrational and unfair. Not being allowed to stay outside after 9 pm, getting punished for coming home wet after playing in the snow, not being allowed to play with other children from the neighboring houses when I was visiting my father’s parents, being forced to eat food I resented, not being allowed to cross the one way street in front of our block of flats until a certain age, not being allowed to leave the house for a week when my father was upset with me.

“I can’t wait to come of age and leave home”, I remember telling my best friend in childhood. I must’ve been under the age of ten. We were taking a walk through the gardens surrounding some neighboring blocks of flats in our street. Independence street.

And so I did. I came of age and I left home. Packed my bags, put everything in my father’s old red Audi 80, took my boyfriend with me and had my father drive us to the capital city, where I was starting my university studies. We made a stop on the way to do some shopping for my new home – a rented studio not far from the city center, that belonged to my high school desk mate.

I can still feel that heaviness in my heart when I remember my mother’s eyes, trying to hold back her tears as she was kissing me goodbye before getting into the car and driving back to our home town. I was finally free.

A few days later, when my boyfriend had to return to our home town to his job and I was left totally alone for the very first time in my life, I was crying my heart out in my empty studio and made the decision to walk to university and back home every day so that I had less time on my hands to feel alone. A period of long walks and intense study started. Then friends and parties and beers and laughter. And freedom paid off.

“When I am not in a relationship, I am free to do whatever I want, with whoever I want”, my cancer boy tells me rolling on his belly and hiding his eyes, his cheeks red and a tremble in the tough muscles of his arms giving him away.

And all of a sudden I remember my long marriage and all my affairs and all the lies and all the loneliness and all the unhappiness and the desire for freedom. Had I given up on my freedom? Had I made my ex husband give up on his? Is this what I do? Am I so possessive and insecure that I take away people’s freedom?

And I also remember sitting on a park bench with a former lover and friend and giving a speech about how wonderful it is to feel so free as to have sex with anyone you find attractive and not form attachments, but keep free and affectionate at the same time. And I remember the violent storm that burst out in my lover’s chest and how the pulling of strings from my heart felt so painful. And my guilt. And the strong and clear feeling that I broke something precious and rare and ever so sensitive. Something that I can never put back together again, no matter how hard I might try.

“No”, I reply. “I am free and you are free. We are both free people. I am not willing to give up on my freedom. And I don’t want you to give up on yours. A relationship is not about losing your freedom. It is about being free to choose to be with one person. And this is a choice you don’t only make once, but every day for as long as you are in that relationship. In my freedom, I choose to be with you. And if you need to have sex with other people too, you don’t ignore your need and don’t give up on your freedom. You find a partner who can accept that. You are always free.”

2016 has been the year of my freedom. And in this freedom my personal power could grow more than ever before. And from my increased personal power has come even more freedom. And love. Unconditional love. This is the fuel in my life journey and the purpose and the destination. Love is my motivation. It is unconditional love that I wish to stabilize and serve with my great personal strength. Inshallah.

Don’t forget your lover’s ex-lovers

When we’re holding our lover I think many of us want to be able to erase his/ her past entirely. We avoid asking too many questions about the past and don’t enjoy getting too much information about relationship history or sexual experience. But who would our lovers be without a past? Who do you think made him/ her who he/ she is today? It all started with the parents in this lifetime, sure. But it continued with lovers.

So if you’re having great sex, please remember to send your gratitude to all his/ her previous lovers for providing good training. They’ve done so much work so that you can now have a wonderful time and only have to make small adjustments instead of starting from scratch. The same work has been done on you. So be kind and cultivate gratitude. The past is over and done with. So that we can now fully enjoy the present.

Timpul măslinelor

Mă opresc la vitrina cu măsline și gândul îmi fuge pe nesimțite, lăsându-mă goală și nemișcată lângă coșul de cumpărături parcat cuminte lângă picioare.

– Ce vă uitați așa? mă-ntreabă zâmbind ușor încurcată o doamnă mai în vârstă din dreapta mea, mânuind cu dibăcie lingura cu coadă lungă pe care o tot umple cu măsline din toate recipientele și le golește apoi în caserola de plastic din mâna stângă.

– Aștept, îi răspund și-mi dau seama că zâmbetul meu o face să se fâstâcească. Zâmbetul și privirea pătrunzându-i până-n străfundurile ființei prin ochii albaștri, înconjurați de pliuri de piele uscată, în care machiajul de acum câteva zile s-a scurs ca o acuarelă.

– Mă scuzați, nu mai durează mult. Haideți că m-am pus aici și am ocupat tot locul… îmi răspunde și lingura prinde viteză în mâna ei noduroasă.

– Nu-i bai, nicio grabă, stați liniștită.

– De care vreți să vă luați? mă-ntreabă întinzându-mi lingura.

– Pastă iau.

– A, e foarte bună. Eu o amestec cu avocado, să nu fie așa sărată.

– Ce idee bună, îi răspund, nu m-aș fi gândit.

– Ia spuneți-mi, care sunt cele mai bune măsline? o a treia doamnă ni se alătură privindu-ne cu prietenie.

Cădem de acord că cele mai bune sunt cele maro și apoi gașca se sparge și fiecare își vede de cumpărăturile ei. Pășesc printre rafturile înalte, iar impul se dilată și se-ntinde, lungindu-se ca brațele unei caracatițe îmbrățișându-mă strâns și dându-mi apoi drumul ca să mă găsească din nou și tot așa, ca un iubit care mă simte noaptea lângă el și-mi amintește că sunt a lui. Și zâmbetul nu mă părăsește. Iar căldura din palme se dăruiește și mandarinelor și pâinii și ingredientelor pentru prăjitura de Crăciun.

Later on my chest is burning and I’m coughing it all out

“Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?” Nick Cave’s voice sings to me as I’m breathing the cold air around the lake in Herăstrău Park, this time with a running companion. It’s past 10 pm and we are running.

“Give me something I’m afraid to lose” Bruce Springsteen continues, sending sharp knives through my stomach. (Yeah, I often speak to myself in songs.)

While my body is happier and happier from the effort, I gradually start feeling this inner pull that’s creating a sort of distance as if to prevent a tragedy from occurring when you are at your most vulnerable time. Looking for flaws, for pretexts, for borders, conflicts and gaps. I try to ignore it and then to fight it and it still reaches out and scratches like sharp cat’s claws grabbing hold of your thigh as the hysterical animal is climbing your leg as if it were a tree. What do I do with this? I try to sweat it out of my system. I try to befriend it. I try to love it. I try to kill it. I try to work with it. I try to live with it.

“You gotta have patience with me”, I tell him as I’m running through the graveyard of my past relationships, trying desperately to find the exit. No matter where it’s taking me.

One more time with feeling. A journey through Brighton and my own heart

I must confess I wasn’t actually looking forward to watching the documentary about Nick Cave’s latest album. I hadn’t even listened to the album, to be perfectly honest. I knew it was much about the pain of losing his fifteen year old son last year. I knew he’d fallen off a cliff in Brighton. Didn’t know it was LSD. In November, right after I’d been in Brighton after my birthday.

Got on the train from London and I’m feeling so excited taking in the damp landscape as the train is cutting through fields and small towns in a more quiet and rural England. I can’t wait to get to the sea. A Romanian couple are talking loudly a few seats away and I’m feeling so self-sufficient in my quiet bubble, reading, writing and taking pictures.

In Brighton a friend is waiting for me. I met him in Bucharest in a pub one night a few years ago. We had a friend in common and later found out we were born in the same area – the Jiu Valley, Hunedoara, each from his small mining town. I met him once there, on a winter holiday. We went up on some hills together and licked a sweet, clear liquid off some naked tree branches.

He meets me at the Brighton station and then takes me on a walk along narrow streets lined with pubs and shops and I get my green leather bound diary from an antique book shop and my Rumi poetry book from this big fancy book shop. I can still remember the moment I found it and my fingertips touching it for the first time. Such great desire for this book. A lover seeking a lover. A few months later my friend writes telling me he’s found a nice, old, copy of Rumi’s and wants me to have it. I tell him I’ll wait for it till we meet again, so he can give it to me in person.

We make confessions and have a pleasant time as he’s taking me to the sea. Even before I step on the pebble beach and feel her smell, like a woman’s smell when she hasn’t showered for a day, my eyes are flooded and I look away for fear I might look stupid. But the sight of the sea does that to me every time. I suppose I should live next to her for a while to find my cure. Or just let her make me cry like this every time. As if I were meeting an old lover I could never fall out of love with.

“I have a surprise for you”, he tells me and walks me to what I recognize to be the Royal Pavilion, where a friend of his from the gay community lets us in before the huge crowd queuing at the entrance. You know, everybody knows everybody in the gay community. (Or rather everybody has known everybody. At least once.) Therefore, it’s like a big family, people help each other. So we have this wonderful, quiet and private tour and I am impressed and grateful. Her majesty feels she’s getting what she deserves.

visiting the royal pavilion in brighton

“Do you know Nick Cave lives here?” I ask my friend, but I can’t remember his answer a year later. I’m thinking about Nick Cave as we’re having lunch in this Thai restaurant and then a beer in a queer pub and can’t help admiring the view. I wonder if I could actually recognize him if I saw him in the street. I’m thinking probably not.

Having left my friend in Brighton, after one more pint in a pub on the corner opposite the station, I am smiling alone in my blue seat on the last train back to London. “I love you”, I text my gay friend, but the text won’t go through and I’m left looking at the reflection of the luminous phone screen in the black wagon window. My body would like to lie down in the arms of someone loving and just let go. Still, I must be alert and awake and make my way back to my kindergarten friend’s house in London.

As I’m walking on my own to the cinema in Bucharest tonight, I pass by this loud tipsy couple speaking English. She’s way younger than him and Romanian, while he seems to be an American. Both are tall and lean and their movements seem a little bit disorganized and careless, zigzagging across the sidewalk and dodging various obstacles.

“Yeah, you know, because nobody’s perfect. Not even me”, she says and speeds up a few steps in front of him.

“Really? You’re not perfect?” he asks sounding genuinely surprised.

And I smile and walk on, checking out the Christmas lights on their first night. I was supposed to meet someone tonight and it got postponed. A long awaited encounter. So my stomach is still not very tense and I still don’t feel like I have anything to lose. It’s just a projection at this point. I’m a silent passenger walking among these people, under these lights, along these streets, in this cold. Nobody’s partner. Perhaps somebody’s dream. Still not met. I am anonymous. I can very well disappear. Only I feel so balanced and confident. There’s nothing that can shake me right now, as I am walking to the cinema.

“Most of us don’t wanna change, really. I mean why should we? What we do want is sort of modifications of the original model. We keep being ourselves, just hopefully better versions of ourselves. But what happens when an event occurs that is so catastrophic that we just change? We change from the known person to the unknown person. So that when you look at yourself in the mirror you recognize the person that you were, but the person inside the skin is a different person.” Kick Cave begins in his serious voice, perhaps a bit coarser and fainter than I used to know it. He’s sitting at the piano and the camera is moving around him and the strong contrast, black and white image infused with high pitched violin sounds quickly hypnotizes me and I lose track of who I was when I came to this place.

“Ah, Brighton! I was there. Right there. Brighton peer. Last year in November, after my birthday.” I lean and whisper in my friend’s ear and she looks surprised when she turns smiling to me.

brighton peer at night

And that sensation of being torn and shred to pieces comes back. Or the memory of it, rather. You know, when you feel you’ve freed yourself to the point of becoming nothing more than a piece of rag being blown by the wind and drifting aimlessly, unable to grab hold of anything stable.

“Somebody’s gotta sing the pain.” Nick says and I finally get it. Somebody’s gotta be here to represent the pain, the darkness, the hardship. Someone’s gotta validate these experiences and honor this part of life so that the darker side can have a voice and therefore can make room for us to perceive the lighter side, too and make the difference between the two. In a world of duality, light cannot exist without darkness. Nor can pleasure without pain. Or happiness without unhappiness. So we need these special representatives that offer creative media for the dark side to come to the surface and feel justice is being done. The same way we need representatives for the bright side. And ways to express both. I just think the darker positions sometimes are harder to fill in. At the same time, I also feel there’s a great danger it might actually be quite on the contrary.

“I shall never love again.” my friend in Istanbul confesses to me after his girlfriend left him. Again.

“Yes, you will, habibi. This is what you told me the day I first met you. And that was when I knew I would love you. You will love again. And it will be wonderful.” I tell him without any shadow of a doubt. “Do you wanna know how I know that? It’s because I have been there. Broken to pieces. Trembling and suffocating, crying and shouting with pain and crawling like a worm. And I will never stop loving. No matter what happens to me. My heart will always stay open. Always. Because it’s wonderful.”

“We decided we would be happy as a form of protest. We decided to be happy and our happiness would be an act of revenge, of defiance. And we would be kind. To ourselves and to the other people.” Nick Cave explains towards the end of his documentary.

And I remember that so did I. So why am I so afraid then? I need to keep reminding myself of the simple things, things I’ve been certain about and that fear makes me forget. My stomach seems to insist on coming down with gastritis. Simply because it finds it so romantic. I am not afraid of travelling alone to remote and hostile places. What if I run? I’m so good at running! I can just disappear. Before things get out of hand. Before I lose myself, before I become too vulnerable. Having nothing leaves nothing to lose. And all the possible freedom. I don’t actually need anyone, do I? No one to complete me. I am whole. Shams confirmed. Yet, I remember my decision. And I’ve decided to be happy. And to be kind. To the others and to myself. Not as a form of protest. But as a way of living. Inshallah.

Rituals

Shuffling dead leaves and crushing cigarette butts with their high heels, all wrapped up in their thick black clothes, the hookers are pensive tonight. Clients are few and far between. Turning tricks is getting more and more demanding. Every other day someone offers to pay in meal vouchers instead of cash. Since winter is coming, men hardly ever shower anymore. Why stick around? Why not move to Barbados? It’s not like the country cannot do without them. No one is irreplaceable. If the situation becomes desperate, there’s always the option to import.

Checking up on the hookers every night I go running gives me comfort. Just like hearing the church bells ring every Sunday morning. Or the muezzin performing the adhan when I’m in Turkey. It gives me something I can rely on. No matter how crazy life gets, no matter what happens to me or to the world, the hookers are always there every night, opposite the church, the church bells ring every Sunday morning and the muezzin performs the adhan five times a day from the minaret. Rituals. It’s one of the first things I learnt when I started working in Waldorf education – children need rituals; they give them a feeling of safety, something they can relate to, structure.

And all this time, up there, the moon is quietly filling up again, just like it does every month. Life can get as crazy as it wants, heart can be broken, hopes crashed, dreams postponed, days filled with work, week after week can pass with light speed, wrinkles can deepen, hair can whiten, earthquakes can shake, lies can be told, illusions can be created and destroyed, love can be fallen into and out of and so on.

So, as I’m heading back home, sweaty and tired, I’m counting my rituals: the hookers opposite the church every night I go jogging, the church bells on Sunday morning, he muezzin’s call to prayer five times a day (no matter how far I am from it), the moon filling up and becoming new again. Oh, and jogging itself. But that’s more personal, it depends on me, so it doesn’t feel safe enough. More about that another time. So go on, life, bring it on. I’m good. Ready for anything.

PS Photos taken last night, as I was riding my bike on my way home.