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| At the Mamco, Geneva |
Life lately has been the odd bundle of mixed feelings and emotions that
come with the pervasive sentiment of having completed your university degree,
at which point questions that you had put off for a while start resurfacing in
your mind -what do I want out of life? what do I want to do? am I doing the
right thing? why don't I feel ready? what is the point of anything, really?? I
have been trying to get accustomed to this feeling of uncertainty, but I must
admit it feels hard at times and I guess that old man on the street wasn't
lying when he said that really, no one ever knows and everyone simply pretends.
Which is a vicious circle because the more you pretend, the less you seek for
genuineness, a rare quality these days. I find it incredibly refreshing to
meet individuals who are so unabashedly honest it makes you shiver with shame
at the mask you wear. What would happen if one day we collectively take off our
masks, even reluctantly, and realise that indeed we share the same fears, and
oh how comforting to the soul it is when you find out that feelings are
universal! I tend to forget it, at times, and think that objects of desire
shine differently to different people, that fragrances of happiness smell
differently to different people... But really, we look up at the same moon and
wonder why we are who we are -humans who get wet when it rains, and forget
about it when our skin dries up, soaked and doused in hard sunshine... How come
happiness leaves no scar?
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| Geneva |
I have been neglecting my
writing and painting (and anything creative for that matter) for a while, and
although I have been telling myself it is due to my research for my
dissertation, it is otherwise... Mainly, there is this nagging feeling of
dissatisfaction when it comes to my work -dissatisfaction which I'm sure
everyone encounters at this stage of their life... The desire to produce good
work suddenly meets the inevitable realisation that what you had envisioned for
yourself isn't quite what you have and/or making. Everything is beautiful -even
the ugly, especially the ugly, and bad work holds its place and importance just
as much as good work does, but at times it feels like biting into cold metal
knowing your teeth can melt it into a warm, bright liquid that will slowly
slide along your ankles... only your teeth aren't strong enough, or
incandescent enough, or sharp enough. I know the best teacher is practice, so I
have been drinking a lot of tea, and I have been reading inspiring works of
fiction, prose and poetry in my bed, hoping to get the pen going. I plunge head
first into universes of wonder, and emerge fascinated, lusting for a kind of
life I'm not quite certain exists. Constantly wanting more will wear me out one day, I
wonder what defines me as a person, and perhaps this is it. I remember reading
Antigone, and one of the many sentences that hit me went along the lines of
'You want me to love this life, it's repulsing, like dogs licking anything they
find... I want everything, right now, and in its entirety -or I refuse!'. I
liked that about her. I always want to say no, and I don't really understand
why. I remember one late night of drunkenness, when a man told me 'You want
nothing yet you want to devour life'; I swear I could have kissed him then but I
walked away, ashamed that he had seen and sensed so much. Like that scene in Girls,
when poor, miserable, fat, jealous Hannah secretly whispers that she wants to
be happy, too -with an unavoidable sense of guilt and shame on her face. Some things
in human nature will always fascinate me, like this notion of worth -happiness
is undeserving.
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| Late nights in Geneva |
Isn't it
uncanny how we can simply say goodbye and leave? It's fascinating how we can,
at any point, say goodbye to everything: friends, family, lovers, home, career,
civilisation, cities and countries... Yet we all choose not to on a daily
basis. Leaving is easy, staying is much more difficult and requires double the work. It's strange that an entity like our existence can exist independently
from other ones. I never think about saying goodbye, but one some days like
this one, it hits me that goodbyes could be as easy as closing the door
-or leaving it open. Is it human to turn back when we walk away and leave
through the door? Do animals look back one last time?
The last few days have been ghosted by fragments
of useless worries as I see things slowly falling into place, which frightens
me to the extent that I start doubting why we would ever want things at all. As
privileged as this may sound, getting things I wish for is extremely scary, and
reminds me of the feeling you get when you finally accomplish a puzzle only to
say 'so...what?'. Or the ending scene in the Graduate. I'm not really sure
that's a good comparison, and I'm not even sure any of this makes a lot of
sense -I'm pretty sure I sound entitled and undeservingly privileged, but I promised myself I would write honestly, even the bad thoughts, the
jealous thoughts, the weird thoughts and the unnecessary ones. So, here we are..
