The monsters of the dark were already creeping out of the shades. Chains were clinging, dogs - barking from behind the fences. The full moon enchanted the entire landscape with its smothered, dim luster. Night was enfolding the valley and of the sunlit, warm day just the memory reminisced. Cold, cold air penetrated the clothes and lungs of the unfortunate souls that were too late with finding the right path home.
In the deepest of the night, sometime around 6:15pm, a father and son were bravely walking through their mid-class, mid-range, mid-western, pedestrian-friendly, pet-friendly, sport-friendly, gay-friendly, race-friendly, senior-friendly, happy-smile-friendly, bamboo-fence-NON-friendly neighborhood.
The kid - a boy - appeared to be 14.5 months old and from the way he was hugging his daddy, he was either scared of his first official walk in the dark, or he really loved his "old man". Just in favor of the story we'll assume the second option. The kid had a huge hat on his head, obviously his dad's, which read "Poison the Well" (must be a punk-band name or something), which tells us that he probably couldn't stand tight hats, and preferred something loose, that could fit over the hood, so he wouldn't notice it so much.
And through the dark park they walked, in their economy-friendly community, until at once the lights of the city gave a whole new meaning to the picture! One could just tell the enormous weight that was lifted off the shoulders of the kid as they reached the street with all its traffic lights, and the cars passing by! From the tiny little mouth an endless flow of word-like, sentence-like compositions of excitement poured with no rest!
The grocery store was but 4 more minutes away and the loving little boy wanted to walk by himself now. He started struggling with the dad (who must have known that once let on the ground, there's no picking up, which would have meant hours till they reach the dark again!) and the dad fought back, trying to buy himself some time. Alas, the dad gave up and thus started the ten-minute attempts to walk the last 10 meters [ 30 feet ;) ] to the store. There was shuffling, changing in directions, refusals of hand-holding and tantrums, following every attempt of the dad to guide the kid into the store. Only through the means of brute force did the father manage to do his movie-renting and rapidly left the store, to make sure they reached the dark soon enough, before he would have lost his hearing.
And there they were - a father and a son - walking through the darkness, hugging like there's no tomorrow in the pure silence of the night, quickly approaching home…
My life is awesome and i sucks at the same time!
I have an amazing family and no chance to appreciate it, because I concentrate on the problems instead.
I have all the music and no time to listen to it!
I make tons of money and it's not even enough to cover my bills!
I only work a little bit and I still hate it!
I have a dog that skateboards and I have to clean every day because of her.
I have tons of friends and no one to have a beer with!
I have all the skateboards I've ever dreamt of, but I have to leave them behind...in the past.
I have a TV but nothing to watch!
I have inspiration, but I'm too tired to write.
I have a home but I can't afford it.
I have it all! And I am nowhere.
There's one thing and one thing only that I have and wish to keep forever, even if you want to take all else from me: my family, my love! With this alone...I'm satisfied. All else is vanity!
So, you probably know that Sami's walking now. Heard the news? Well, not only s he walking, but he's all over the place! I mean he gets mad if you pick him up these days.and finds it perfectly normal to go and pull strangers' cell-phones, wave at girls and window-shop by slamming on the window with both hands. But if you stop him - he shows you his disapproval of your action by a three second pause (while he takes a deeeeep, deeeeeep breath) and then: "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgh".
A late bloomer, some would say. It took him a while to start walking. I mean, he was almost 14 months. Well, first of all, I feel like it still was a bit early. I could have used a couple more months of the "serenity" of just carrying him around or using the stroller. Gone are the days.
And second of all, give him a break. He's a boy after all, you and I both know that us, boys are slower than girls. Not only do we grow up later, (like at thirty-or-so) but we live shorter too. Gosh darn it! (I felt like I might be swearing a bit too much, so how about a "Gosh darn it" here and there) Did WE get the short end of the deal!
But anyway...so, Vegas was dark and gloomy, like it moved to the UK or something, in the past week, and it rained like 200 inches of rain, and people drowned in the puddles and got into all kinds of car-accidents ('cause in Vegas if it rains, it means on every cross-light, there's gonna be some new accident, as people just don't know what this water is, coming from the sky and forget how to drive), so it was no good for walking. And us, Bulgarians, we love to walk. Could it be because most of us grew up without cars and it's just an old habit, or because you can actually go to the food-store downstairs instead of drive to it for ten minutes, just to buy an egg, I don't know. But our addiction to walking made us go to the mall, where we can pretend like we're in a normal city and there are people on the street.
Not only does Sami forget all about us and goes to hit on girls, when we let him go, but when it's time for food he still won't sit in the stroller!
So, what follows is a smart advice to all parents, who have pissed their kid off, by trying to make him sit down to eat: People, for god's sake, if you like your clothes, don't give the enraged kid beets!!! Bloody red spit was flying all over the mall, sticking like flies on a shit all over my favorite t-shirt! Arms were waving, spoonfuls of beet puree hitting the innocent passer-bys until all of the bloody healthy food was gone.
Oh, and one more advice - blackberry puree for dessert - same thing! At least he liked it, so I didn't have to eat it off of my clothes.
Now is the time to see if any detergent company might be interested in advertizing with me, because we went home and I used...guess what...floor-cleaning solution to get the stains out! And hell yeah, it worked! So, if anybody wants to make some money, let me know, I'll advertise your product with the "before" and "after" pictures of my shirt and you win! I'll do the washing. No stains remain! But still, I'll be damned if I feed him beets again when all he wants is a cell-phone!
I'll never forget how miserable I felt, when during a philosophy lecture, the professor told us:
"The tragedy of the human life is that from the many possible ways, we are only able to choose one!"
And then I knew it. I was young then, but in the end I'd turn around and wonder what would have been hiding behind the corners I never turned? How could I ever escape getting trapped into mundaneness and losing the chance to encounter even my crossroads. So, leaving for the US seemed like a good opportunity...and all the joy and tears of blood that we cried here were all justified, in part, because we had taken the exciting part of the crossroad - we didn't stay behind.
But why did it have to take us six years, to finally wake up and see that we've taken the dead end street? Or in this labyrinth of life, are they all dead end streets? This would make the human drama even more devastating - Of all the ways one could walk in his life, he always chooses the dead-end street!
As Alex texted me today, while I was carrying somebody else's dirty dishes to the back of the restaurant - "I'm sick of the fact that All of my nights are the same! They never used to be the same before!"
And then it hit me: We've never really had the choice, have we? We were preconditioned since the day we were born! The path, with some rare exceptions is already drawn. Just the players change - the game is the same. As kids, we follow whatever path our parents tell us to. As teenagers we live the very few years of relative freedom, and then it's over. We go to work and provide. Provide the basics. The shit we can't live without. The food, the roof, the air...
So, the new drama of the human life really should be defined as: You have many choices where you will sell your life, but once you do, all you MAY get in return are a few years of weakness, aches and thoughts of death.
So, this is the really good deal we've got ourselves as a society. Makes perfect sense, huh!
The realizations about one's self may as well be the toughest judgment a person ever has to endure. For it's always our friends that want to protect us from detrimental thoughts, forming a comfy cushion of self-value around us. But when you come face to face with the mirror and take off the mask, the face you see is relentlessly real and honest. It's your SELF - the side you may try to hide from others, the side you hide from yourself, the side you know is there.
So, as I face the mirror, trying to see who I've become, what I've become, I see a skeleton. A chewed up bone of what I used to be. The more I delve into the past, the more flesh and bone I find, long ago discarded and abolished, so I can be my light new self. I've stripped "living" into a mere "being" and my new aerodynamic form has defeated all resistance. Be it thinking, talking or making decisions, I have given up. And it's awfully hard to move those rudimentary limbs again.
My brain has become rudimentary. Do you know how beautiful and eloquent my speech about the restaurant's menu is? I have polished and shaped it up to perfection, so I'll fucking sell you the most expensive stuff that I've never even tasted! (remember, I am vegetarian, selling meat to carnivores) I'll tell you how it's my favorite and I'll make you spend the extra $5, so I can hope for an extra $1 of tip in my pocket.
All this is well, you might say. It's a craft, it's almost an art. And I agree. The art of legal stealing is a beautiful one. I've mastered it completely and now like a leech I suck out the rest of your budget, designated to satisfy your gluttony.
But the cost is this...I can't even remember the words I used to know when I studied in college, when I studied for SAT, the beautiful, meaningful, rare and sophisticated words that mean more than names to the physical world. Here I am, struggling to dig out my long lost vocabulary, buried in piles and piles of shit and every-day talk, so that what you read doesn't sound like the menu of a fine-dining machine for stealing cash and eating flesh. And, believe you me, it's hard to move those brain cells again, for while I’ve been selling flesh to strangers, I seem to have sold my own for a couple of extra dollars. Just because I thought money was more important than youth, development and wit. Let's see if I'll be able to buy them back now...with the last of my savings.
During the moments of awakening and enlightenment I feel so full of live! So ready to bite from the juicy apple of knowledge and let it soak through my body. I know at times like this that I am truly living and that there’s no going back to yesterday.
But sometimes I don’t bite right away and like to play with the fresh fruit. I toss it around or just set it aside, so I can admire its shiny surface…until I take too long. And I never seem to remember, that the moment I don’t take that bite, that very instant, the four worms set in. They start from the core and keep the fruit looking attractive on the outside, even though it’s already rotten inside. The worms have their names: Time; Doubt; Fear and Lazy. They clear my head of all ideas, inject the sweetness of the rotten syrup and put me to sleep until the next time something shakes me. I would like to say that the juice of all the nourishment has enriched my soil, to give birth to the next great apple tree, but the truth is that next time there may not be seeds left to flourish. And I may not know it for a while. And when I realize it, it may be too late.
So, I realized today that this pleasure delaying strategy won’t work for long, before I’m utterly shut within my own worm-trap.
There’s no more time to wait. The time has come…for a freezing cold shower!
Love comes to us in the most peculiar ways. It’s in the crevices of the hidden looks, shared thoughts or the mutual subconsciousness that stuns us with the singing the same song or saying the same words simultaneously, just out of the blue. Or did you think love necessarily means flowers, breakfasts in bed and romantic nights with a bottle of wine? I think if you do, you should think again, because there’s love in the washing the dishes, so your loved one doesn’t have to. There’s love in leaving her alone with her thoughts, there’s love in silence. With my over a decade-long experience in the art of “love”, I still struggle to find the right words to describe what I truly feel inside. And that’s probably what’s best about it. It’s indefinable.
Love, however, cannot live without its other half – hatred. For only when you truly hate, can you truly love. Remember, when I told you that the opposite of love is fear? I still firmly believe that. But PART of love is hate! Just as when there’s no dark there can be no light, without hate there can be no love! So, don’t fret, my dear! Any such “destructive” feelings you may have, are just the winds that shake the tree off it’s lifeless leaves and prepare it for the winter, so in the spring it can bloom in the most amazing colors.
At times you may think all love is lost, when it’s in its prime, for when there’s wind, there is movement and life! It’s when time stands still that death is upon us.
AND I MEAN DEATH!
Without love, there is no life! Without hate, there is no love!
Hiding your feelings from yourself and your close ones may make you a murderer…
Three years ago. New Year’s Eve. I pull my lucky charm from the “banica” (a traditional Bulgarian pastry) and it says: “Lots of Material goodies (they also matter)”.
You know what? They do too. We live in the Western hemisphere and all those wonderful teachings of the Buddhist monks sound inspirational and we try to apply them to our ugly, grey, and wretched materialistic lifestyle but sometimes they just don’t work.
What can I say, I know I’ve been preaching over and over about how essential it is to be spiritual however, sometimes the little deamon inside just wants its fare share. And there goes all that Krishnamurti teaches how all that is non-pertaining to the soul should be avoidd and condemned as wicked.
So, after a thorough philosophical discussion this morning, ignited by our mutual reading of the Great Master’s work, we went straight to the busiest Las Vegas shopping mall and proved him wrong.
Leaving Alex’s favorite store with full bags and “guilt-free joy”, we paused for a moment in the stillness of time, just to realize how happiness can be negotiated somewhere between a sin and a shopping bag.
We live in Sin City after all, and as Oscar Wilde says, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”Viva Las Vegas!
alkA, do you realize what a perfect gift you got for me Christmas?
You had the feeling that after the 30 gifts you got me for my birthday, there was nothing else you could possibly think of!
Well, you were wrong! I don’t know whether or not you did it intentionally, but your gift to me was “inspiration”!
I can almost hear the “awwww”, coming from the more romantic readers. And even though I agree that alkA DOES inspire me relentlessly not just to write, but also to act and live, in this case I’m talking about the gift, enveloping my personality thoroughly and multidimensionally.
The gift for my past self: A “Skateboarding Bible”, containing all of the old-school skateboard arts, ever released! I’ve been into skateboarding since I was a boy and only nowadays, during what I call my second puberty do I return to those old times to an extent of forgetfulness. This book is the ultimate gift as a keepsake of those times.
The gift for my present self: A cooking kit for sushi! My girl couldn’t help but notice how cooking is becoming an essential part of my present – a mind-cheating art of spending hours researching, shopping, cutting and baking that gets devoured within minutes. It gives me the feeling of a purpose, the satisfaction of an artist and the joy of a glutton!
The gift for my future self: A bookmark that says: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been. BELIEVE”. A gift I almost hardly noticed at first, but one that contains so much thought and love! Even as I look beyond the beautiful words, written on it, I see alkA’s words to me: Read, Learn, Write. EVOLVE! She was the one that helped me pinpoint one of my paths of evolution: writing. And she has been my muse and critic ever since! My biggest inspiration!
And you, my dear, thought all gifts have been given by now! I have never realized that with your love you gave me the gift of time!
You all know I’ve been crying and wining about my profession like a little girl for posts and posts on end. But you know what, I talk to people, sometimes even nice and polite ones (oh, and believe me, much nicer in the US, than they are in Bulgaria, where they treat waiters like the lowest of the low – the worst scum and useless leaches to ever walk the Earth). I even meet people, who tell me they had the most memorable meal in their lives! They thank me for giving them the best recommendations and selling them the best wine. Well, I’ll admit it – it feels nice, especially after I get to buy clothes, food, cars and houses with their money, with their tips, because of people’s generosity I can afford to have a decent amount of hope that someday we’ll have enough to get out of the status quo and step on the next level of being non-servants.
But how about the sign-people? The ones wearing the statue of liberty costume and holding a sign “Liberty taxes” along the road; the ones with the “Get pizza for $5 here” signs. And how about the STOP sign people, who proudly lift the STOP sign as people cross, even though the cars have already stopped, because the light is red. I wonder what kind of satisfaction those people get. Being a paid, moving scarecrow must be quite the job. To me this must be the job to get if you’re sick of being a bum and would like to put your life together by changing the “Help me, I’m a hungry veteran” with the “Lose weight here” sign, so they can get off the street.
I cannot comprehend the American way of living that all jobs can be cool, as long as you get paid well. I still remember how a guy from work told me that his dad will finally shut up about him being a waiter, when he sees that his son has a bigger house than him. Albeit liberating to an extent, this way of thinking is so typical of a society where dropping out of school is ok! No matter what you do or what you have in your head, as long as earn enough and spend even more, you’re good.
And then there’s the other thing that kills me: education is SO freaking expensive! No wonder many people prefer to stay at their high-school education level and be waiters for life. I mean, it costs a house to get a master’s degree! Considering most people live half of their lives just to pay off one house, I don’t even see why they’d wanna have to live their other half to pay off student loans.
It’s a fucked up world and that’s how it is all over the civilized countries. A catch 22. To study you need money. To get money you need a job. To get job, you need to have studied.
Yes, not all the world is like Bulgaria, where it’s next to free to go to college, but they don’t teach you nearly enough, so as when you leave the country you’re not stuck as a "waiter for life, esse".
I don’t know how we’ll get out of this mud and for how long, entangled in the vicious circles we’ll spend our
days daydreaming how we could be doing something else, somewhere else.
I just know I don’t want to have many more of these days, where I wake up and realize I’ve been sleepwalking yet another day. I refuse to be a STOP sign! Leave it to the dreamers of the American dream. I just wanna wake up!
My list-making mania caught me off-guard on one of those ass-freezing, heart-warming walks that WE, the girls, take once in a blue moon. You know that part of “the being-a-mother gig” excludes all random friendships and leaves you stuck with the ones that are always there…namely my most precious girlfriend, Buddah. She always answers my calls, never leaves me waiting, and lavishes me with love, respect, and slobber…and all this ONLY when I need it. Don’t you just wish all friends were like this sometimes? Just there for you…patiently listening and offering you a warm drool! Enough with the canine sentiments. Let me enlighten you with a randomly selected maternity inspired and sanity saving tips on how I am dealing with this mental disorder, called parenthood.
image by Samina Jamshed "motherhood"
Motherhood did not just happen to me. I know you are all thinking isn’t that the most natural instinct-driven thing a woman can experience?!
Hm, well…NO! Not for me at least. And I know some of you have been there, others are in such a huge denial that they don’t even get it. Well, this blog is for the first ones. The other ones will live happily ever after and will go to heaven, and I will never get to meet them since I already have a well deserved spot in hell, right?
Back to motherhood. It was a hard hard HARD work. Beyond all my sources, beyond myself. Now…again, I have a theory that involves a super inflated Ego, huge amounts of selfishness, laziness, and status quo-loving, but I will not even go there.
Becoming a mother changed my core, along with so many other things, such as my relationships with my husband, my parents, my friends, and even my foes. It changed it all. And I am both happy and sad for this. I do mourn my carefree days every so often, especially when I catch myself jealously observing my kid-free mentally unimpaired friends. It is almost painful. However, I have become to realize that I should just accept these feelings. Oh, the relief! It is indescribable. For those of you out there, secretly envying freedom, DON’T. Not secretly. Envy is OK. All feelings are actually OK. They are given to you so that you can freely and fully experience them. They are only enriching. So go ahead, and hate a little. About the other side of motherhood, that is to say, all the mind-blowing love, I shall not speak…since it CAN only be lived, and not spoken about.
MY way of dealing with the volcano of sweltering new emotions includes the following self made strategies:
1.Take a walk, away from B a b y, preferably alone. Just look around and try to see everything in a new fresh way. Now you will probably feel guilty, resentful and a little ashamed that you are outside, not taking advantage of having the B a b y (or the one we won’t speak of) out with you. It is such a beautiful day, weather is awesome, you are thinking how B would have enjoyed and benefited from this walk too. Stop right there and be a little selfish, just as you used to be before the big B highjacked both your heart and your time. And remember that in order to raise a happy camper you need to give him/her that personal example. So look for resourses to make yourself happy, constantly!
2.Wear sexy underwear! Just try it once and you will not regret it. Especially after you had spent months turning into a huge whale during pregnancy (yep, I was one of the 50-pounder-haeavier- OMG-you-are-so-big-are-you-having-twins? Prego), beautifully followed by the breastfeeding bras, with the highly erotic hole in front and let’s not purposefully omit the granny panties several sizes bigger, that Stoyan and I were planning to save for our next camping trip, and literarily use as a shelter.
After the brave decision to stop using my body as the only source of nourishment for the little voracious beast, I got rid of ALL the pregnancy and post-pregnancy clothing, to the last piece. It was liberating. I was claiming my body back and I was celebrating it with a nice Victoria’s secret set!
3.Discard all those “how to mercilessly kill your husband without hiding all the blood” thoughts (leaving a few for the bedroom only and in its metaphorical sense, I guess). Husbands nowadays CAN actually be of help. Not the best help, but definitely the best you and your progeny will ever get. So, USE HUSBANDS! For the purpose you will need earplugs, not only for when they accidentally drop the baby on the floor, neither for when they make the baby listen to hardcore, while forgetting to feed the baby, ‘cos you know, it’s their favorite part of the song right now?! Earplugs will help block all the whining and bitching, particularly when You want to have a moment and go for a morning walk WITHOUT the B A B Y!? You can do it!
Other useful aspects of husbands may include the following:
-Foot massage
-Dinner (and breakfast, and lunch if you lucked out)
-Silly jokes (if you really lucked out)
-Minor home fixes and renovations. I said MINOR. Because if you decide to go for the big stuff, such as drywall building, or bathroom remodeling, you might as well consult with the divorce lawyer ahead of time and save yourselves a bunch of money. Why remodel a house that you will have to sell after the divorce?! If you do survive a major home remodeling together though, with no major relationship clashes, kudos to you! You are up for that already mentioned spot in heaven…must be nice!
-A grown-up conversation. Do not underestimate the powerful effect of Not using baby language once in a while!
-A wine-drinking buddy. This is a reason itself to keep a husband!
4.Have sex! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Don’t even know why I wrote this. All I know is that I hear it helps! I hear weird and interesting stuff about that sex thing. They say it is so good for you, it adds extra years to your life, it sheds extra pounds, it makes your heart stronger, as well as your relationships. They also say it is a great indicator for mental health. You got me there! So THAT is the reason!
OK, now here is where I will have to use all of your tips and advices on the topic. I am not saying that Sami is a product of the innocent conception…not even close…Sexually active MOMS hit the jackpot…A deep bow, followed by a standing ovation (not too prolonged though, cos you know, I have a toddler running around). All I can say is that I am happy if I get to the active part…the sexually active one will have to hold off. Respect, biotches!
5.Hire help and go on a date! You can’t even begin to imagine the enormous gigantic difference there is in the way things happen, when you are actually able to leave the house for a few hours. So far, for the 14 glorious months that we have been parents, we have left the house to a babysitter, only after Sami is asleep. My freaky controlling mind does not allow me to leave him with anyone other than me or Stoyan, that is in his non-sleeping state (which is 10 hours daily…we lucked out majorly on the fact that Sami sleeps form 7pm till 9 am). And I know this is wrong, but I promise to reconsider it in the coming year, or two. Yet, going out never meant so much for us. We did take for granted so many things in our pre-baby life, including this one. Now, every quiet dinner in a nice restaurant is like a gift from god! Long gone are the tears and the anxiety that I used to experience every time we left the nothing-suspecting sleeping baby. These precious specks of time we devote to us, I believe, are not only marriage savors, but also sanity keepers.
6.You must have heard the famous aphorism “Who needs Freud when you have shopping therapy”. I have a LOT to say here, but I will try to be as succinct as possible. I will try to bite my knuckles and will gently and quietly explain, with all the poise I have, that it is simply not true. Not only because I am one of those who earn their money from mentally challenged and suffering individuals. I have been there, girls. Shopping is overrated – this is my hard reached and long anticipated answer. It not only leaves your budged ravaged, but it leaves you satisfied for a mere tiny bit of time. After that you begin to wonder: when exactly will you be able to wear those stilettos (not advisable for the playground, tried and failed shamefully) and let’s not even begin the endless discussion of the tons and tons of drool (gotta wait for them 20 teeth), baby food and occasional blood stains (yes, walking costs children blood loss, as well as mommy’s hair turning white)…then it’s the pet hair and the unexpected piece of biscuits, peas and dirt all over your brand new outfit. A beautiful amalgam beautifully spread on your latest beautiful dress! After so much beauty, you are just better off with your old comfortable jammies. And do refer to Freud. This arrogant Jew rules my world! I am not saying you should dig into the grueling and copious volumes he gave life to. A simple “Psychopathology of everyday life” works miracles. Don’t be intimidated by the title, it’s just there to impress you. After getting familiarized with this theory, all you can do is BLAME it ALL on your parents! Oh, it is so good! You have been fucked up, conditioned, smacked hard, built up, modified, brainwashed, love pumped, toned up, toughened up, shaped into who you are only by THEM. You are a byproduct of their fears, talents, desires, dreams, complexes, but most of all their LOVE. Leave the responsibility to others, just for a second. Let go off all judgments and forgive them, accept the fact that they did the best they could, call them and tell them how much you love them! Right this moment, because tomorrow might be late. It’s a simple act which brings an astronomic relief and satisfaction to both them and you. Now you are a parent too. Now you know.
