Saturday, March 25, 2006

To My Grandmother...

London. Waiting for a connecting flight.

People running around me with heavy pieces of luggage. A girl tripped on the cord of her heavy suitcase, an old lady is looking worried at the time on her boarding pass while she slowly pushes a pulley full of bags. So much weight. So many ties. Each bag, another worry, another responsability.

Life turns into an airport. Going through different terminals, changing gates, waiting for that flight that changes everything. Some travel through carrying heavy suitcases, while others chose to take the bare minimum. If you asked the customs workers they would say that for them the most challenging pieces of luggage are those filled with love. Sometimes their weight even turns negative and they end up making their possesors feel lighter. Other times they are so heavy that scared, the scales lock down before them, afraid they would to break under so much weight.

But the question is, what happends when one looses such a piece of luggage? And, above all, what happends if this pice was not a random gift bought in a duty free shop, but something one can not live without, like a piece of heart turned into love and wrapped carefully and hidden at a bottom of a bag. Well, no matter if it's heavy or light, such a loss never reduces the weight of the heart or the soul. Instead the loss itself becomes internal, organic, like a pocket of pain, bitter love and regret that becomes part of you. Hugs turn into memories and words never spoken turn into dreams and with time, like with any tumor, the body fights is and most times the loss becomes smaller and smaller sometimes only to make room for other lost or misplaced items that will grow into the soul.

As with every implant of something foreign, of something that is not supposed to be there, the soul rejects the loss at first. Just like with any foreign organ, the body will come up with ways to push it out. The stomach will hurt, the heart will bleed, the brain will obsess over other problems. Subjects are known to have immerged themselves blindly into their work, to obsess over a crush, watch endless movies or to spend hours and hours over the phone discussing problems that are not their own.


As for me.. still waiting for my plane, still in London. Traveling light, the bare minimim. No heavy bags, except one, the one slowly growing in my heart, slowly injecting weight into my blood. I want to stand up and start running back. Back to when things were light, when I could do something, when I could talk to her and say I love you. But I have to go. They're calling my flight and soon I will be home. I know everything will change but for now I'm still hiding behind polite smiles and conversations, still rejecting the foreign feeling of loss deep down, below my stomach.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Lightness and weight...

I danced like crazy... again. I had an amazing time... again.

Somehow life has been so light lately, almost unbearable. Almost like I lost that weight of getting deeply attached, the weight of deep responsibility, the weight of grief. I work, I go out, I read, I paint. I watch movies, I have stupid crushes, I cook, I sleep. That's it. Life has turned into a calm river which has gone passed the mountains. Or so it seems.

And then there is the weight of one phonecall, one conversation, and reality hits me like a steep waterfall in the path of my river. I keep on falling under the weight of so much water and don't know where to find balance. I fall back to my childhood, back to so many memories and regrets. Can I do things differently? Can I change who I am to connect like I used to? Useless, powerless, not knowing what to do. Everything else turns superfluous...

I watched "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" the other day, when life was still light. Again I went back in time, only much closer to the present. I was at Cornell, working in Upson CIT Lab, it was almost 2 am and I wouldn't close the lab because I was reading Kundera's amazing book. But this time I didn't find myself in the same character I did long ago. I looked at my past and I saw Tereza, so long ago, so innocent. And a few days ago, was I Sabina? I reinvented myself it seems, or was I always this way? Is there still a Tereza hidden somewhere deep under layers of indifference? And who is my Tomas? I could think of someone, maybe you, but then I would be Sabina again. Because if I ran away, you wouldn't follow. Because if I ran away I wouldn't want you to follow..Sabina again. Would Tereza have called you last night to alleviate the weight. She would have wanted to, and so did I. But I didn't because Sabina would have never needed you. I miss the time when I was a Tereza wanting to become Sabina.. now it's the other way around. The Tereza in me has been dieing slowly...

And now the lighness is gone... there's weight but it doesn't change me. I though if I could lose lighness and become heavy I would change into who I used to be. But I still paint, I still work, I still go out. Like nothing changed and I wonder whether a river can flow calmly down a waterfall.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Farmicia..delicious food

The Ben Frankling bridge...viewed from Old City

You would never guess these people just sang Karaoke..would you?

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Green Tea Leaf

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Movies

Just spent my evening watching movies. You could say I wasted my time, but I would respond I didn't. I watched two amazing movies, and I cried so much. If you were Stefan you would say it makes no sense watching sad movies that make me cry. And yet, somehow I feel less empty now. Somehow, i feel I gained something, even if it's just knowledge, even if it's just understanding, if it's just a line I'll remeber...

The movies were Hable con Ella and Hotel Rwanda. They were both so different, so amazing, touching such distant parts of my soul...

And here are the lines that made me analyse my life now... hate my ignorance, my heart turned into stone.

"I think if people see this footage, they'll say Oh, my God, that's horrible. And then they'll go on eating their dinners." :: Hotel Rwanda

"Love is the saddest thing when it goes away, as a song by Jobim goes." :: Hable con Ella

Monday, March 06, 2006

Lihua's amazing sushi

Mmm..there's nothing better than homemade sushi while watching the Oscars :)

I really really really need sleep.