Notes from Saturdays

I've started suspecting that living miserably is considerably easier that living happily or fulfilled. Because aren't most of us just mainstream whiny cowards? But then I get out of bed & make the same black tea & the same grainy toast and sit at my desk for an hour & stare at the emails & folders & jobs I don't really care about, like deep down, if it was my last day on earth I would drop all these jobs in a blink & run the opposite direction, not sure where, because I don't know what I really care about yet but I'm sure I would drop & run.  I write, I take photos, this is me trying to live these days. Maybe it's cowardly to be this unmotivated. Maybe it's not. I can't tell anymore, can't remember the last time I was delighted to know if I'm not, so this is pretty normal right now. Except... if it was my last day on earth, I'd be soooo pissed. Wouldn't you?

Labour weekend. Spring clean in progress. An occasion pregnant with emotional parcels of various sizes and familiarity. I found my old digital camera in a decaying bag; my first: A silver PowerShot Canon I received as a birthday present from my ex. Half the size of my current iPhone. I loaded new batteries and flicked through the photos bracing myself for projectile emotional trauma: A few shots from December 2016 when I was selling all my cheap second hand furniture to move up north; a lamp & bedside table, a single bed & its broken mattress, and my beloved clunky black mountain bike. The one I rode everywhere because I didn't have a car or a license. The one I pedaled through southerly headwind, cursing my life. The oldest photos were from back home 9 or 10 years ago, just some test shots from a damaged shutter and the very last, a blurry badly lit portrait of dad in the living room. There were more memories, more life, more of a person in that tiny forgotten camera than ...

 I think about taking up volunteer teaching sometimes. For completely selfish reasons of course: to feel better about myself. To feel the amazing sense of power and greatness when you demystify and disillusion, when you know and they don’t and when they ask and you generously give! But then I think, like all the best laid out plans that turn into big disasters I will probably end up with a bunch of asshole teenagers that have no interest in learning and drive me to suicide. Or worse, adults with their colorful array of complexes and insecurities. That’s the end of the philanthropic dream there. 

Internet broke at about 7 pm today, after my last call during which I tried so hard to prove I know stuff. It broke and failed at sending my last sketch to the group chat. I pressed keys and checked my phone like a confused granny and rebooted. When I was absolutely sure it was broken I picked up a new book and went hiding in the bedroom. For the next 1.5 hours I was the happiest I’ve been in months, feeling inaccessible, endless possibilities, that the TEAM will go on without me, that I won’t have to prepare or attend that meeting, that I could read for a week, that it had snowed and exams where postponed. Until the assholes in the the most responsible internet company hooked us back on and my dream was over. Doesn’t that say so much about one’s life?  If I die tomorrow, what have I missed? Not the market update, god forbid.

 Last night I dreamt the most beautiful dream. I woke up with a warm softness in my heart, sad but content. My dreams are normally exhausting, lost luggages, lost passports, missing flights, murders, hostages, being chased, being naked in public or the least & most common, filthy dark toilets. From these dreams I wake up beaten up, my heart bruised and heavy, my brain foggy, my shoulders slumped & tired to the bones. I often think I must deserve it. It must be the consequence of a troubled soul and a guilty mind. But last night, I was in heaven. I had travelled back in time, we were all together, my parents, my sisters, we were as young as we were back when we lived in my childhood house, the house where I was last purely childishly happy. We went from room to room, I was swallowing all the details with my eyes, thrilled beyond my heart's capacity that I was able to see & remember every room, every piece of furniture, every window and corner. The house was as big and gl...