The Tote Bag

The word "grandmother" in my mother tongue is different for mother's mother and father's mother. The two words are basically a combination or a repetition of the words "mother" and "father". For mother's mother, it can be translated as "mothermother" and for father's mother it is "fathermother". This simple-minded solution of expression comes with cultural nuances. It is agreed by so many people I know that their maternal grandmothers are closer to them. As if the relationship between the grandchild and "(mother)square" is supposed to be stronger, better, and "more of mother" according to simple rules of.... well, algebra, of course! :)

This has been the case for me as well, but when I think of or look at pictures from my chiildhood, I remember two very different but equally special relationships with my grandmothers. As I had working parents in my early years, I did spend a lot of time with both grandmothers. I loved them both as a kid but wasn't aware how different they were. When I look at my grandmothers now, what I see is a clear difference between the two. One married, the other a young widow. One tall, the other short. One chic, the other comfortable in the way she dresses. One likes to speak, the other likes to listen. One rational, the other intuitive. Both very loving in their own ways.

As an introverted teenager, my room was my whole world. It was somehow easier and more fun to create connections with my books, with my diary and with all the little stuff I called my own. I had friends, of course, but I was too picky to choose only a few to get really close to me, to know the real me. Each time my mother yelled my name from outside the shut door of my room, I remember that it was a feeling of "sigh", as if I was going out to a strange territory. How I loved my room. And everything in it. The room made me happy, gave me all I wanted. The room shaped me as much as I shaped the room. It was the most important aspect of my life that was also nourishing and comforting. Closer to me than any friends or family. The room understood me, it listened to me when I read a chapter in a book out loud over and over again, it soothed me whenever I was tired of the hustle and bustle of the outside world. But most of all, it knew what lay deep in my soul. It reflected my soul.

At the age of 18, I left my room to sail to the new world. Since then I have had one dorm room and 4 apartments that I shared, one dorm room and 3 apartments of my own. When you grow up without siblings, sharing rooms and apartments becomes such an exhilarating experience. The walls take on more meaning. Your side of the room versus her side of the room divided by an invisible line going through the room creates the notion of "the other". The things you like and don't like on the other side, all of sudden occupies your mind all the time. That intimacy can be both exciting and fun but to me it was also "new". I fortunately have had great roommates and now have a great husband to make me get used to living with "the other" and appreciate all the differences. Now I can say that "the other" is noone but "someone like me". And the stuff I've owned and the walls I've lived inside, they all lost their importance and place in my inner world and left their place to meaningful relationships.

I may have overcome my attachment to my immediate surroundings after living in 9 different places in 3 cities in 2 countries over the years, but I still have a special bond I feel towards cities. Some cities attract me more than the other pretty ones and I have been flirting with them. By flirting, I mean visiting them but imagining and trying to act as a local. When I close my eyes in those cities, I am back in my old room again. The feeling is the same. The city nourishes my soul and comforts me. It does understand me. It is me. Besides these cities I've been flirting with, there is only one city I truly fell in love with. It has had many lovers, I am sure, but it has enough love for everyone. My love for this city started as an attraction that later made me move around 4000 kilometers with an utmost determination. The 6 years I lived in this city, there wasn't a single day that I didn't appreciate I was part of it. There wasn't a single thing that I didn't like about it. I loved absolutely everything about it. And I showed my love...by walking. I walked and walked and walked. Up and down its hilly streets.

I stumbled upon a movie on tv last night. It grabbed me because of its two actresses playing the leading female roles: Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis. They were so young-looking and so real on the screen that I found myself easily catching up with the story. I didn't even need to refer to imdb to check what the story is all about and the rating it got...as I sometimes do.

I watched the movie without knowing its name or what year it was made. I just watched the story. It was a story that had found me at that very night. It reached me and touched me, for sure, at the right time. Maybe if I watched it at another time with another mindset, I wouldn't feel this moved by the characters and the story.

For a long time now, I am free of my old habit of wanting to watch every movie coming out, going to every exhibition, and having a good mixture of several cultural events on my plate at a given time. I now let these times of exposures find me instead! It may sound strange but I let them come and touch me in the most unexpected time and place. I have experienced that this way is more rewarding somehow. Here is how:

This movie I caught on tv last night made me think about the topics of "losing someone you love", "to feel unwanted" and "to see things with a clear mind (without the feelings/fears obscuring your vision)".  I must have identified myself with couple of the characters at certain points that I even got teary eyes. Now, that is good. That is great. Those scenes are like windows to my subconscious. Those scenes are not made to influence all the viewers, all at the same time. They just exist to hit the spot on certain minds. They find their way into those minds.

Well, you can summarize written above as "all movies are subjective", or you can rather conclude: "Let yourself be open to exposure that hits a spot in your subconscious (and your subconscious alone)". Then, "try to analyze why it hits that spot in you".

Last note: After the movie was over, I did check it on imdb to at least know its name. Imdb says: "Hysterical Blindness (2002) Rating: 6.4 Two friends lament their unhappy single lives while searching for Mr. Right in 1980s New Jersey."

....Hair. That's what my shampoo says on its packaging. Each morning I see it in the shower, I chuckle. I take it not only as a reminder that my hair is indeed "unruly and rebellious", but also, due to the vocabulary choice, as a statement with deeper meaning. I can almost hear a baritone voiceover in that shower scene singing those exact words and then stopping abruptly. The cue takes me to my childhood.

Since childhood, I've always wanted straight hair. My hair is neither curly nor straight. It's that in-between wavy and thick hair. I think what has bothered me most all this time is that "in-betweenness". That desire to take something to either end of the spectrum while you are stuck somewhere "in-between". Vagueness. Complexity. Imbalance.

I feel like I used it all, all my energy to utter words, to make sense, to be understood. This used energy brought a great exhaustion. An exhaustion I most feel in my lungs. As if there is no air left in there. As if every word uses up the air in there without letting the fresh air in again. 

To be speechless is my resolution. To be speechless in almost every meaning of the word, but mostly "to refrain from speech; silent". Silence and letting go. Not having to explain, agree on, disagree with every single thing. Just nodding maybe or blinking. A small gesture. A tiny smile. And breath in and breath out. A natural rhythm rather than a forced bombardment of many words.

I do sometimes imagine a "musical" world. A world we sing to communicate with each other and not necessarily speak at all. Each time we start to sing, it takes an effort and utmost care in rhythm and selection of words, there is no way to really be perceived as angry as you can't sing in an angry tone. A serious tone maybe, but not an outrageous one. Even when you are sad, you are sad with dignity and not bawling. As if the sad song is just as acceptable as a joyful song. Both valid in life.

Pharmacy Mannequin

Sometimes life gives us the clues we need in strangest ways. The clues to a better self. A happier self. A wiser self. A much more mature self.

I got one of my clues, a sign in other words, yesterday morning in a hotel room. The room was small but with a very high ceiling, making everything in it small and simple, including me. This simplicity and too much air enhanced the sounds within the room and its surroundings. That's what I had to realize during my sleep. I did wake up to several sounds from neighboring rooms during the night, but one of these sounds was indeed a real wake-up call. I heard my phone's alarm. It was my alarm melody. The one I had picked among several different melodies. It was my alarm alright but the sound was lower than usual. For a second, I thought it would get louder gradually. But it didn't. I had just waken up to someone else's alarm close by.

It happens to me quite often, mostly with a jacket: A zipper zipped on the wrong track. Each time it happens, there is first a reaction of "oh, no!" . Then comes the stage when I know I have to be patient and slow whereas my hand movements are impatient and rapid. The key is the zipper slider bringing the two sides together. This small piece of metal goes up and down, up and down until one day it gets stuck. The two sides don't come together as they are supposed to be.

As often as this malicious act of the zipper catches me off guard, I think about relationships on wrong track. The zipper slide reminds me of the perfect balance between two people living together. The balance keeps the two sides on track. The balance can be a combination of several things, different for each couple. When one of these things change in nature, it affects the whole, and the off-balance starts. You feel it in your guts, it can show itself in the form of cramps in your stomach or a suffocating feeling on your chest. Something is not right. You are not yourself. You are the zipper on the wrong track. And you have no idea how you ended up in that mess. The two sides move haphazardly stuck in that position although the core, the zipper slider, knows that smooth and tranquil movements are needed to set free. Ironically, once you are free from that trap, the two sides come together and join to become one again. Alas, that oneness can still feel harmonious as long as the two sides are themselves and not on the wrong track.

Two hurting knees

Aching and alive

Feeling them all the time

As I sit and walk and lie down

They were merely there before

The way I felt about them

Now they ache to tell me