Good ol' days...

Ever happen to have a person from your past that you would both want to see after many years and at the same time rather not see? It’s confusing, right? Especially if those people meant something to you at one point in life, a good friend, a relative, someone you loved. Especially if you parted on good terms. In fact, you just stopped seeing each other because your lives took you on different paths and SOMEONE really doesn’t have a clue how to keep in touch with people. Or see the point in doing that until it is too late.
I had a few mates in high school and college that I actually liked to hang out with. (Sort of. I am a terrible hanging out material. ) Then high school ended, college too, and I just lost them on the road, never to see them again. I admit, I met a few of my high school classmates over the years, brief encounters that can be resumed in a few questions I get asked. What have you been doing? You work at school now? What do you teach? Have you heard anything about the others? To which I answer, sincerely, Fine, yes, English, no. And that is it. Because you will not catch me ask them anything about their lives. Not that I wouldn’t want to know. Or that I don’t know it is the polite thing to do. I know most of the social norms.  I just don’t ask people things like that. I don’t even know why.
Recently, I do not recall the circumstances, I befriended a former college mate on a social network. It should have been a happy occasion. I finally got in touch with her after a while but we have never talked, I mean actually talked, apart from occasionally commenting on pictures or wishing her Happy Birthday and her thanking me. Why is that? Why am I like that? The same happened with another college mate that found me on the same social network. It is like building a house you never live in. You have a chair and probably, but not necessarily, a table in it but you never, ever go to that place. Don’t let anyone live in it either. You just have it.  Or having that drawer full of stuff you just don’t want to throw out.

I admire people who manage to keep in touch with childhood friends. Who insist on keeping the connection alive even if distance comes in their way, even if the paths they are on rarely intertwine. I suppose it is not that difficult if you are wired that way. I keep in touch with my primary and grammar school desk mate and, back then, closest friend, but only because she happens to be my neighbor and I don’t exactly have a choice, nor an excuse not to. I can tell her things I wouldn’t tell many people but there is a limit. And if I or her moved from the neighborhood to a far away place we would never speak again. Not because of her, because of me. Because this is how I am wired.

I have recently experimented, however,  keeping in touch with people. I am terrible at it because of my tiny, itsy-bitsy social awkwardness problem. It is very possible that all this is just in my imagination but I doubt it. Has it ever happen to you to feel, even if just a little bit, uncomfortable with the people you know?  And, at the same time, feel perfectly fine in the company of strangers?

As far as classmates I haven't seen in years, I prefer to remember them as they were back then. Life has a funny way of changing people, not always in better versions of them.  I guess it is a good thing  I will not have children of my own because I could never stand the transformation from the relatively innocent life of a child to that of an adult. I find it difficult to imagine my students growing up, having a family of their own and all that. It is inevitable, I know that, but it doesn’t make it less weird for me.

That is why I do not want to meet people I left in the past even if I would love to know how they are doing. From afar. After all, what is in the past must remain there. We should focus on somehow keeping the present.  And put some effort into the future.

Christmas

Mom asked me to find one of her CDs earlier. She said it was in a white envelope , in a pile of other CDs in white envelopes.  Easy enough, I thought. But no. It was not. Because Mom kept asking every thirty seconds if I found it. Because  she failed to mention a very important detail, that the name of the artist was written on the envelope, I turned on the laptop and started checking each disk. “Do I have to come find it myself?” mom asked impatiently.  Could have taken me forever if she hadn’t told me about the name of the artist being written in pencil. By me. A few years ago. I don’t remember certain details from the day before, let alone a few years ago. Wasn’t important enough to remember, I guess.

Christmas day began much better than that, though. From the moment I woke up, two thoughts took turns in occupying my mind. One was the fact that I finally finished typing Book Two of my novel. Writing it on paper first is great but when it comes to copying the text onto the computer… all those ideas of improvements and little changes to slow me down. The second thought was of what a socially retarded person I am. I mean, I have next to no social skills to speak of and everything I do when I am around people that are not my immediate family feels strange and I am most likely making a fool of myself.  Again and again and again. Of the two thoughts I chose the first because it is happier and it also leads me to a third – starting work on Book Two.

Crappy weather, episode 4569 and a half, continues.  Ground a little frozen, fog, no snow. On December 25^th. It is absolutely fantastic.

There are probably a million other things to complain about. We all do it.

Mom is pleased now. Music is playing. By the time I found the CD she said she didn’t want it anymore. I gave it to her anyway.

Then I look outside and see only darkness. What kind of winter is this? It may seem like a blessing but it is not. The world is messed up. Just yesterday when I went to the vet, a woman asked for something against mites in the chicken coops. Mites were never a problem during winter. Too cold for them. Not now. It’s spring for them. After a relatively cold and wet autumn, now is heaven. I think I saw someone posting pictures of blooming spring flowers somewhere. In the garden.

Where are the old, normal winters? The shoveling of snow to make pathways, the loaded trees, the cats swimming in seas of white after sparrows they will never catch.

Years ago, the road would fill with snow and had to work hard to get somewhere outside our yard. Not long ago, one of my Muscovy ducks flew into a neighboring garden and I had to put on snow boots and spent half an hour trying to catch her. She was light and even though tired kept running, helped by her wings. I was tired as hell from swimming into knee deep snow for that long but loved every minute of it. Once, I built a huge imaginary castle in the hill in front of our house. The top is like a platform and  I trampled the thick coat of snow into hallways and rooms, drew flowery models of the edges, stuck reeds for mighty columns at the doors. Strangely enough, I remember with the same fondness the time when I slipped on ice and cracked my right collarbone in the first year of highschool. It was the last day of the winter vacation. Had to stay home two more weeks because of the cast. What did I do the second the cast was off? Went to walk on steeper  and more slippery ice. This is winter for me. Deeper back in time, in the middle of January, a spell of warm air must’ve blown in our direction because the deep snow melted on the road, just the surface , then when sub-zero temperatures returned it froze over and I disappeared for a day with most of the kids in the neighborhood  and our sleighs. A whole day of super speed, over and over again.

One of my fondest memories of college takes place in winter. At the end of it, to be precise. I was at college, it was my birthday and I really wanted to be home. The last bus was at 6.30 p.m.. I caught it. It was snowing heavily. Giant snowflakes you do not see often.  I simply love travelling by bus at night. I loved it even more when, half way through the distance, we had to stop because a man waved at us to stop on top of a hill. Two 18-wheelers had slipped in the snow in the valley and could not move. They also blocked the road with their cargo. We waited. And waited. And waited. Seems like something extremely boring for some I suppose. Not for me. It was an adventure. It didn’t matter I got home over an hour later than supposed to. Best birthday ever!!!

Recently, I was at school. All roads had been declared closed because of the blizzard. The school is five kilometers from my home. Some of the students had longer distances to get to their homes. The school bus tried to take some of us to safety but at one point it broke. So we boarded into a large bus and tried to fight Mother Nature. While waiting for my turn on a bus I went to buy cakes for home – a syrupy delicacy with walnut pieces on top. About half a kilometer from my house the bus ended up in a ditch and they called for machines from a neighboring village for help. I have no clue why I stayed in the bus for half an hour before I had the brilliant idea to get off, put on the hood of my winter coat and simply walk home. So what if the winds were blowing all the snow in my face?

That is why I wonder. Will we ever have winters like that? Yeah, it is hard. It is  also beautiful in a twisted kind of way.

My sister is preparing the grill now. I can smell it from outside. The cats are circling around her, full of hope in their little stomachs. They will get their share soon enough. They always do.

The fog is back and the world is finally quiet. I like this about my holidays. I get to choose who I meet and if I want to see anyone. Right now, I am happy where I am, home, alone. But no, I am not alone. I have a whole world inside my head. I know delving deeper into it will only distance me more from the real world and I will never have the social skills I should have but I don’t care. As long as I don't hurt anyone, it shouldn't matter.

Food for thought (some holiday cheer...)

I went to the dentist yesterday. I was scheduled at 3.40 pm. Had to take the bus to town at 1 pm to get in time and do some holiday shopping – or rather said stuff we actually need on any given day not just at Christmas.  The scenario was not new. Have done the same things several times in the past few weeks, even the part about meeting a former student in the bus station going in the same direction.

Had my Loreena McKennit selection ready and I was listening, as I always do when I go on a longer than five minutes bus drive, on my headphones, thinking about new ways to put my characters from a book that happens after the one I am currently working on in danger; or fix their problems. My mind works well with music. It can go into a myriad of places given the right kind of music. I praise the guy (or guys) who invented music. Those primitive people who discovered pounding animal skins  and who knows what else they used actually make for  beautiful sounds are my heroes.

I was listening to Caravanserai when the bus had to stop. The first thing I noticed was the ambulance lights. Then the crowd, mostly kids, some adults. Then the police. A girl, most likely younger than me, was taking pictures of the numbered signs an older officer placed on the road for her.

Some of the passengers got out of the bus. . A few started smoking (‘cause they wanna die young.) Even the driver got off, talking on the phone. The next song started slow so I was able to hear him saying that there had been an accident and he will be late.

In all this time, the one thing I noticed in the distance was a spot on the side of the road that was shinier than others.  Something liquid had been spilled there recently, on the black ground. But the girl kept taking pictures of apparently nothing in the road then of a car parked on the other side from us.  From all angles. From everywhere. And two guys were holding something that looked like a giant measuring instrument.  She was moving very quick.

An elderly policeman signaled all the cars that came behind us, my bus was first in line, to pull over and wait. In front, the line was getting longer from the other direction.

I didn’t take my headphones on for one second the whole time. I even took a few pictures from my window. A very boring landscape. I should have gotten off the bus and taken pictures of what was going on in front. Of the police at work. Of the crowd. Of that shiny  wet spot the girl went to photograph from all angles and a guy measured it with a smaller ruler. But I didn’t. I knew what was going on, I knew what the wet spot was and, contrary to my instinct to take photos of everything out of the ordinary, I refrained myself.

After a while I was wondering if I will get in time for my dentist’s appointment. Almost decided to take off my headphones to hear what was going on when the driver sprinted towards the bus along with the other passengers that were out. And off we went.

The wet shiny spot was on my side of the bus and I looked. Not exactly as I imagined it would be but at least it was what I had guessed in my mind and decided to ignore. A large pool of coagulated blood. It looked like a mass of dark red jelly, I suppose, and, as I passed by it and looked, I was only reminded how fragile we really are. On the surface, humans seem invincible but we are just bags of bones, flesh and blood.

I think about these things sometimes. I don’t know how many people do. Could be many, could be a few.  Never been exposed to mortality like that before though. That sticky red gelatine was once part of a living body. And now it was out.  (the following day I learned an old lady had been hit and killed by that orange car. )

I believe I watch a fair amount of violent and bloody movies and television shows.  I hear people being terrified by horror movies, having nightmares and such.  I watched stuff like that from an early age and I think I am somewhat immunized  at this point. I simply am not impressed. I can see all the blood in the world, entrails and brains and have no reaction at all. (okay, maybe only The Walking Dead can stir fear in my stomach but that does not mean I am gonna stop watching. On the contrary.) When the situation requires, I even get to write disturbingly violent scenes with my characters.  My indifference is probably a result of the fact I know they are not true. None of it. And I know it.

That pool of blood on the side of the road was very real though. Too real.

Like most things, I don’t wanna think about it. Just imagine what would it be like if everyone stared thinking about their own mortality all of a sudden. No shrink in the world can fix that. The fear of our own ending, only topped by the fear of  a loved one’s end.

Such happy thoughts one day before Christmas Eve. Maybe I need a shrink. Though, I already have one. It is very cheap. You only need a few things: a notebook and a pen. Or anything you can write on.

Anyway, I arrived on time at the dentist but had to wait because a man went in before me for an emergency. Then I spent over an hour with the doctor drilling and cleaning in my mouth, waiting for a minor bleeding to stop before moving on to the next procedure. All this without a drop of anesthetic. Because I didn’t need any. The nerves had been previously removed.

The big suspense was if she will finish in time for me to catch the last bus home. I so hate it that I have to depend on busses.

Waiting for something to happen...

I am sitting here, waiting for something to happen...
a fit angry one of my Christmas lights has a few broken bulbs and refuses to work. It is one of those long, 100 led, string.  The stupid music box works though and it only makes me angrier. I do not know where I put my spare bulbs. Cannot find them anywhere. I suppose I will have to buy a new whole set and hope it has spares that I can use for the old one.
I am not excited about Christmas at all but that does not mean I will not decorate. I do this once a year and I refuse to let anything stop me. Especially the fact that there is no snow, the temperatures are above 0 and the sun shines like it's April. nothing wrong with that, I love April. In April, not in December.
I am more excited about going to the dentist tomorrow. I mean, it is a necessity and I do not see why people are so afraid to go.
I am a lot more excited for my Amaryllis papillio. It has two flower stems. Never had one like that before. I suppose it will bloom in January. Anytime is good. It will be a thing of beauty.
I am more excited about going to sleep in the next five minutes (not gonna happen, though) than about Christmas.
The good news is that I managed to write 8 pages of my third novel the other day. It is a lot considering I allowed reality to  rule my mind and neglected the best part of myself: my mind. Especially the part that holds an entire imaginary world. How did that happen? Why was I so careless with my own sanity?
It is one of the reasons I do not enjoy things the way other people do. because I am not whole most of the times and things just don't stick to me. Like water and oil. Never gonna see them blend into each other.
Why do we allow the bad things in our lives take over? It makes no sense.
I am very much aware of this and that is why, just before I started writing this, I went outside and gave some of my Muscovy ducks a big, big hug. Then looked at the sun with no thought in my head, then took a few pictures of the amaryllis stems for posterity. All I had in my brain was what I was looking at.  And it felt good. Then, as if by divine touch, I had an idea about my book and stored it in that special part of my brain.
The sun is still up. A chainsaw is being abused somewhere in the neighborhood. People cutting trees for fire. It is a good day for work.
I imagine that in more than one place in the village people are butchering pigs. For some reason, pigs are sacrificed for Christmas every year. the traditional date for doing that is on the 20th but they do it whenever they want. That is why I say December is a month of mourning for pigs. Just like Thanksgiving is for turkeys and Easter for lambs. Don't understand the connection between these animals and the holidays but I am in no position to judge. The important fact is that televisions have material for the traditional Christmas news. Or Easter. Or Thanksgiving. Or any other such holiday when everything happens according to a script that has been use over and over, and everyone is so amazed by everything even if they have seen the same thing every year.  I suppose it is just a human need, to do this things. They would suffer if anything in the script would change.
The children must be getting ready to go caroling. And by getting ready I mean they make plans about how to spend the money they may earn on meaningless things.
This is the world I live in. Do not get me wrong. I am sure there are some kids out there that co carolling because they like it, or because they believe it is the right thing to do, or because their parents told them so.  But the majority do it for the gain. If only they bothered to learn to carols properly.
Enough with negativity. We gain nothing from it.
More of these sunny, spring-like days and I will start thinking about how to plan my flower garden again. I am already waiting for  a firm to renew its bulb collection. I saw a few rare lilies I want to have. I know I have too many already for such a small space but I want more. They are too beautiful .
You see how easy I start thinking about garden planning? But no. I will not give in to it. Not yet. I must resist the urge because winter must pass first. There may not be any snow now but there will be, sooner or later. It always comes. I hope sooner rather than later because if the temperatures drop below 0 and there is no coating of snow my roses might freeze. (Oh my, I did it again. I can't finish a thought about weather without linking it to something about my plants.)
Enough with the break. Back to my book...

Nothing Merry anymore...

I see people around me excited because Christmas is coming. They are counting the days, they make preparations. Shops and supermarkets are fully decorated since the middle of November and sell thousands of decorations, presents, real and plastic trees, lights and snow shovels. I go in and it feels like Christmas already. Then I return into the real world and see no snow to be shoved, no sign we are in winter. That is not all I see... 

I know what Christmas means to people now. For many it is an obligation to cook a ton of food, buy a truck load of things and stuff themselves to the point of being shown on the news, under headlines like Comatose after Christmas party. For others it is a burden, because it is an obligation  to do all kinds of things and cannot because they do not have the money. And so appear, like mushrooms, the wonderful benefactors that visit some poor family with a few presents twice a year then forget all about it until the next Christmas. Because those poor do not need stuff during the rest of the year. Only now, so these “angels” are praised  and sometimes even appear on TV.  

I used to love Christmas. I still love it, I guess, but on my own terms. I don’t like the materialistic part of the holiday. It has absolutely nothing to do with the actual holiday. I am not a religious person but I think people should be reminded of the true significance of the day. So many have forgotten.  When I was little I used to go carolling.  It was a duty. We were spreading the word that Baby Jesus was born and the people I sang for would give us treats – a small sum of money and/or homemade cakes and cookies. It was a tradition. We always enjoyed receiving cakes because every housewife had her own recipes and even if we would get the same type of cake from different houses, none was the same. It was fun. It was beautiful.

In our orthodox culture, the priest from each church visits all his parishioners in the few days before Christmas. He says a prayer and talks a little with everyone. His arrival is announced by a group of boys  that must shout  something that sounds like NEEE-HO-HO from the top of their lungs.  When they reach each house, the owner usually gives them all walnuts and asks how long until the priest arrives at that house. Sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it? Well, in recent years, the group of boys no longer shouts the NEEE-HO-HO calling because they prefer to swear and curse or play gipsy music on their phones. They enter our homes and, without a word, expect to receive the walnuts. They fight for them because walnuts are expensive. Sometimes, the priest comes and leaves and the boys are nowhere in sight, coming minutes or hours afterwards. Still expecting to be served.

In our country, we have three times when kids go carolling – on Christmas Eve, on New Year’s Eve and in the morning of the 1^st of January. That is the tradition, that is what we do.  It was a beautiful tradition a few many years ago. It meant something to people. Not just for the material gain, for the spirit too. For the memories of wandering the village from house to house, exploring parts of  it we did not go to during the year.  It was fun indeed, and if we would also be paid for it, all the better. The tradition did not die. It is true that fewer gates are open for carollers now but there will always be people who, for better for worse, will let you in. I was among those people. I would buy a large box of sweets, find some apples form the garden, some money for the favorite kids and wait for them to come. I was happy to receive them, to listen to various carols, to see the smiles on their faces when I gave them a treat. In theory, anyway. Because most of them look at you sideways when you do not give them money for the same carol you hear a million times in an afternoon, many of them not even bothering to learn the lyrics right or at least finish the song.  That is why I have decided not to open my gate this year. Not for ungrateful little materialistic kids. It is not worth it. I am truly sorry for the few kids that still hold the spirit of the holiday in them and that deserve better, but it is a cruel world out there and we must deal with it the best we can. I will decorate the tree and the house but I will not be part of this game anymore. It is simply not worth the trouble.

I want, for once, to have peaceful winter holidays. I don’t think I am asking for too much. I spend enough time as it is with those children at school. I need a break from it all. I know, being a teacher, and living in the same village as they sort of implies that I have to let them in. Well, not really. I do not mind being the mean lady who would not facilitate the perversion of a once beautiful holiday season.  It is bad enough there is no snow and we are very likely to have another muddy Christmas.

This is another issue I have. Winter ain’t what it used to be. Not by a longshot. There used to be snow from the end of November to the end of February and sometimes the beginning of March. A normal winter for temperate regions of the globe. Now, we have either rain  and mud for most of December, or plain cold all the way through the winter, freezing everything without the protection of the snow coat. One year, we had temperatures up to 20 degrees Celsius in January, the trees were about to bloom, then followed two weeks of blizzards and -20 degrees that killed almost everything in their way. It was a miracle that the trees survived at all, let alone have many flowers and produce fruit. Many of my favorite rose bushes died that year.

Everything is wrong these days and we must adapt accordingly. If the world is bad, you needn’t be mean back. You just have to find a way to live in it without hurting anyone or allowing anyone to hurt you.  I discovered the hard way that I do not have to be everyone’s friend. It is exhausting and totally unfulfilling. But if you can find a few people that are worth your time, now and then, then you are a happy person. If you can’t find people like that, do not lose hope, they may still show up one day, but in the meantime try to be happy anyway. There are many things in this life that can make one happy.

In any case, we may think we are evolving towards a better future but it is not true. All this evolution has turned the world into one big mess and us into materialistic slobs. I am sorry for anyone who believes otherwise. Though, the ignorant have much happier lives than the ones who see the world for what it really is.

On this happy note, all I can say is HAPPY HOLYDAYS EVERYONE!!!

(Because there should always be hope...)