Ederlezi

I don't usually do this but I want to share. It's a beautiful melody and I can totally believe this is Nigel Kennedy.





EDIT: Actually, it is Nigel Kennedy and the Kroke Band' East meets east and that's what I want for Christmas.

Abracadabra

I got out of work a bit later than usually and when I reached the grocery store dusk presided over the night. By the time I stepped out of the store, the sun had already migrated west and the sky above me was the darkest of blue. Over the city, to the west, though it was pastel-gentle pale blue, and in between, oh, in between the diapason of colour brought tears to my eyes. Only once in my life have I seen eyes of that dense dark blue colour and they looked at me with such indescribable intensity I fell in love immediately and almost fatally.

King Rat

"On the books, China's [lead content] paint standards are stricter than those in the United States... But enforcement of the regulations in China is lax.
The article.

This is as indicative as it gets of how a communist economy, and state for that matter, works. They might have discovered the joys and perks of capitalism but have missed the part where laws are there to be enforced...

Capitalism and democracy the way they are known here and in Western Europe are both achieved, if ever, after centuries of jungle style wild competition and throat slashing. When mixed with the type of corruption typical for societes with concentration of wealth and political power in a tiny, tiny minority... well, you have your typical county in transition, such as China, Russia, etc.

"Democracy is the worst from of government , except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Compliance training

I want to complain and bitch and vent but there's no one here to listen. Many times have I mused on the barely thought-out decision to leave my country, my family and friends, to come here, more than four years ago. I came without a plan and still seem to stumble through life without a plan. I am so jealous of the people that know where they are going and plan - if for nothing else, at least for the ability to monitor their straying-away's from the plan...

Anyway, recently I realized (only recently! - not the sharpest knife, I am) that I am probably never going back, never reconnecting with the friends I used to have and that makes me very sad. In times of need I realize fully how profound the change in my life is, how much I miss them. I need them to share, I need them for advise, I need them just to be here with me, to listen. Two people that I would give anything to have by my side right now.

I want to complain and bitch and vent but they are not here to listen.

Eternal sunshine

It turns out that, to my utter frustration, a lot of people back home are religious or spiritual. And when I say religion when speaking of Bulgaria I mean Eastern Orthodox Christianity, as we do have a traditional religion and believe it or not it's written right there in our Constitution, right after the separation of Church and State part. Opposite to what I thought, many Bulgarian people actually do believe in God and respect the Church (although, as an institution the Bulgarian Orthodox church has been in hiatus), they only do not speak of it. I don't know whether it's considered a personal spiritual matter or it's a remnant of the communist times when speaking of religion and God was equal to dooming yourself and your family to prosecution and abuse. But history has taught us that Christianity has played a major and largely positive role in the development and survival of our nation and people do remember this.

Why I am frustrated then? It is NOT because people are religious and I am mostly a-religious and a bit condescending (I admit) about it. It is because I did not see it. It is because I saw what I wanted to see in my people. They say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder… Well, everything is in the eye of this one beholder here. Apparently, I have an amazingly tough time separating what I want reality to be from what it actually is… I mean, I have been partial to the paradigm that reality is a patchwork of perceptions, but taking it one step further, reality for me seems to be what I want to perceive it to be.

And while all this doesn't seem to bear any direct significance to my life, it makes me wonder if I am consciously or subconsciously deceiving myself like this about other, more important things. I have decided long time ago that if not to others, at least to myself I will always be 100% honest because self-deception gives bad advise. And while it makes reality more bearable, I don't want to wake up one morning in a bed of shattered fantasies.

Which is where another thing I've been thinking about lately comes in. For the largest portion of my life my decisions and actions have been underscored by attempts to live up to some perceived expectations. Only in the last year have I started to not only see that these expectations do not exist, but also to understand that in many cases I have been using them to justify my actions when my motivation has been unclear to me. Or when I did not dare admit what my motivation was. Or simply, when I was afraid to see that there's no one right answer, because apparently life is an equation with too many unknowns and assumptions to have a single ideal solution. Now that I think about it, it all boils down to fear of taking responsibility for my actions. And, oh, how easy it is to blame someone else if things turn out bad!

Only in the last year have I made small but decisive steps to growing out of that deception mode… Just to realize right now (thanks to religion, mind you) how deep that mode runs in my system.

What do I do? Should I start revisiting all my perceptions and values? Should I try to be as non-judgmental and fair as possible to the extent to become a machine? Should I just ignore?

I wonder, to be fair and square, how many times have I neglected the beam in my eye for the mote in my neighbour's?

Heh.

BOO-HOO

Looking at myself in the mirror I can appreciate what Mother Nature has given to me in terms of concoction of genes, a little bit of my mother's and a little bit of my father's side. I can see the shape of my mother's eyes, and the thickness of my father's nose, the graciousness of my mothers figure combined with the sturdiness of my grandmother… The melancholy of my aunt (father's sister) combined with the chipper dimples of… I don't know where those came from….

With all that, I want to say I was never proud with how I look. And while it could have taken a role in my development as a person (although it didn't because during the most important years of development I was a fatty and not found attractive by any of the sexes, therefore I was able to actually develop a personality), I consider myself lucky to have been given a sort of an advantage in terms of looks. But that's pretty much it – lucky. I really cannot take any credit for it, as much as I want to. All in all, I consider looks, IQ, talents, and so on, to be like Monopoly's start – certain assets you begin your game with, like luck from Russian roulette or gambling. After that, it is important what you do with that, it is important how you capitalize on them.

Ummm, that is not where I was going with this.

Something sad that I see when I look in the mirror is the tiredness. The aging of the skin, it's losing its colour, it's losing its freshness. I see my big brown eyes looking behind my (currently brown) bangs and that is the only part of me I remember from before. The rest - the tired skin, the sad pale lips, the tricky little fine lines - those are new and uninvited. I am not ready to let go of youth yet, I am not ready to let go of life as I know and enjoy it. But there's that mirror. And that calendar. And they are screaming at me, it's time! What for, they do not say. But I have to hurry.

CSI

I have noticed that when I spend considerable amounts of time with someone with very characteristic manners or way of speaking, I subconsciously pick it up. It actually hadn't happened in a while until recently. I was telling Josh and Chris about this girl I met, who honestly has the sexiest voice ever. It's sort of low and she has that very peculiar way of pronouncing words extremely distinctively and clearly. And I picked it up... I caught myself a couple of times speaking in the same manner.

You know how they say that if you are in a relationship with somebody, you start picking up stuff from them... opinions, expressions, whatever... It's nothing like that. It's more like putting another personality on, or certain characteristics of it. In a way, it's is like losing or putting away part of myself for a while. I feel like another person. Not that I look, sound like or resembe them in anyway. I feel like them.

The thing is, I hadn't done that in forever... I used to do it in my teen years and then I stopped. I don't know if I became more mature as a personality with lesser tendency to sway away from who I am or I just became less impressionate. Something. At any rate, when I actually realized what was happening, I dropped it. It's sort of fun but I'm too old for this shit.

What I got

So, I had an interview with a great company this week. A question they asked me, just in the course of the conversation, was why I came here, to the great U.S. of A. And... I had nothing. I did have some very personal reasons to wish to leave my home country forever, but in all honesty, it is a shitload of drama I don't really want to go into. Other than that, any sort of drive in terms of career development (by getting a degree from UMaine, hah!), or economic hardship, or political oppression... No, nothing of the kind. I just... took the GMAT, applied for uni's, got accepted, and chose the best (financial) terms. I would like to call it adventurous spirit but that would be an outright lie. I don't really know... I just left. In the end, what I really think my deal was is that I just didn't know what next. I had spent most of my life in school, trying to experience both learning and life at the same time. Whatever we can say about school, there's one good thing about it, globally: it gives structure. Here is what you have to do, you have an objective at the end of each semester (term), and you can see the FINISH line right there, on that four-year turn. You know what's expected from you, you know what the bets are, and it all depends on you.

And then, you're on your own. Not only to support yourself financially (and, if you've been... "adventurous", somebody else), but also to decide what the hell it is that you want to do with your life. And then see if you're good at that. But... how many are the people amongst us that actually know what they want to do? My father was telling me about a problem in our family: that people have always had to choose between what they wanted to do and ... ummm... making money, I guess. But in all fairness, isn't that the problem everyone has? Because we do not become established professionals before we hit 40 or so. I mean, yeah, we have investment bankers, and Google's, and Stephen King's... But we also have statistics, to see what share of the young, striving writers become successful... Or what share of the finance grads become investment bankers in NYC... Or how many young entrepreneurs become billionaires... You get my drift.

So, um, my point was, after I graduated back home, I had no frigging idea what I wanted to do. So, what next? Well, go to grad school of course. And not in Bulgaria, because that really didn't make much sense for various reasons, but here. Luckily, I spoke the language and had managed to graduate first in my class (although it is a bit different back there, namely the rest of the class were morons), so I could swiftly sail away to a nice, third-grade school in the beautiful and welcoming state of Maine (of which all I knew was: STEPHEN KING).

So, school was easy; lots of studying, but I have proven that, if nothing else, I could definitely excel at school... Then work was... a fairy tale in a way. Working at a start-up company in Maine, with a bunch of dreamers, like yourself... All I can say is that... I spend two and a half years in Maine. Working. Then it all finally fell apart, like it was pre-determined in a way, and I spent more than a half of a year in thinking, volunteering, and loving. Which brings me to the present of freedom*.

Not that I can do anything I want. I did have to accept a job I don't care much about - because it pays (hopefully the fumes have not gotten into my system). But, if I do not allow myself to succumb to the routine, if I don't allow myself to become more lazy than I am, or intellectually lazy, I can actually do something that I want to do, something that is interesting and challenging. And hey! I even know what that something is. And then at some point, when I feel that my knowledge and experience have reached a degree that allows me to say, hell, there's an ocean I can launch my boat and sail in, I might even build that boat and launch it. It could be a kayak, a yacht, a schooner, or a motor boat. I'll make that decision, when I can. With a free mind.

Maybe that's my answer, maybe that's why I came here… They say, that's what America is about, it's about options. I say, generalization only reflects what sort of a person you are and what decisions you're prone to make. It reflects your view of the world.

Why I came here… I don't know, I just needed time and that was the easiest thing to do. Probably that's my answer. No good for job interviews, but really, there's nothing else. I needed time to see the ocean and dream of my boat.

Oh well...

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black

Actually, me is not what I want to talk about. Religion, and ideology, is what I want to talk about. I never used to think about religion all that much before I came here. Maybe because back home religion is not so much in-your-face as it is here. Back there when religion shows up it's in a sort of an apologetic "excuse me, may I" sort of way. Not that there are no religious people or that the church has no policy or agenda (though it has more politics than policy right now from what I hear). It's just not... relevant, I think.

I have seen myself thinking of and discussing religion here a lot more than I am interested; though, mostly because it appears to be an issue and, yes, many people think, a policy maker, in this country. I have also been forced to define myself as an atheist although all I am is an a-religious person. The concept of a god was never an issue for me due to its complete absurdity.

But the concept of religion appears to be an issue. Mostly, I have had the following (oversimplified here) discussion with Josh:

Josh: "Religion is obsolete, we have outgrown it. It is not needed anymore as we know what lightnings and thunders are. So we should erase it."

Banana: "No, religion is not obsolete as there are so many people that need a support system, rules, and order in their lives."

Josh: "Alright (or awright), I do not mind spirituallity. It is organized faith or religion I object. Religion is the cause of so much evil, look at history."

Banana: "But it is men that start the evil, they come up with the ideas. Obviously, religion is created by men, and it is a tool. Men say: fight in the name of (insert a deity here), not some obscure voice from above."

With which he agrees because, obviously, it is a stone in my garden - no religion, no reason to fight. But then, I grew up in a non-religious country and there was a reason to fight. Milions of reasons at that: the mighty proletariat.

I can see what Josh's beef with all this is, though, it's the fighting Christian, the fundie. It is religion as a policy-maker, religion that wants to influence the legislature. It is the fact that they are trying to impose their beliefs and morals on everyone else by turning them into laws. But my point still stands, it is men, using religious influence, that are trying to promote their own beliefs. It's like with guns, it is not guns that kill people but people using guns to kill other people.

So, where are we at? What happens if we decide to eradicate religion? When communists did it, sort of, their thinking was that religion as a tool for control was merely competing with ideology, another tool. Well, they managed in a half-assed sort of way, to neutalize it. I am a-religious, as is my family. But then I have friends that are somewhat religious (nothing like folks here, mind you), and then others that believe in a vague sort of way that "there is some power". I've never known what that means so I chalk it off to superstition (there's no god, but I won't say it out loud because what if there is?!). All in all, not a very religous bunch. The result: when one system fell apart and there was nothing there to replace it (and we are not talking only economic systems here because communism was ubiquitous in people's lives), entropy ensues. Go figure!

I guess the point I am trying to make, albeit in a clumsy and rambling fashion, is that people do need a structure. For everything. Think about it. People need to follow diets and stricts exercise regiments to lose weight (whatever happened to balanced eating and not sitting on your fat ass in front of the TV/computer/whatever all day long). People need systems to study and achieve certain levels in their education or professional qualifications. People need rules and order and that's why we live in an organized society. Why is it so hard to understand that in regard to their spritual lives, people need a structure and guidelines?

What I am saying is that, granted people need some sort of structure, eradicating religion would leave them clueless and they'd be looking for something else. The reason religion is such a perfect strusture is because it appeals to everyone, unlike ideologies that appeal to certain classes. For instance communism was appealing to the empty stomachs of the workers and the sense of justice of the itellectuals. Once your stomach is full or you get older and understand your skills would be forever unrecognised in an "everyone's the same" society, you quickly become disenfranchised with communism. Religion though appeals to the spiritual needs of everyone, basically it appeals to the fear of the unknown, the fear of death. And that's where it starts building up. It's perfect.

I don't know what else to say. It's more or less: we cannot eradicate it because people need it. It is not evil but it is used for evil purposes (good as well, actually). It is men that are evil (or good). Things are not black and white because if they are white for me, they most certainly will be black for someone else. There are underlying factors for everything and pointing a finger at religion as a cause for anything is just refusing to take off our blinds. While writing this, I read another blog (edit: I eventually linked to the article; it might not be good to link to a personal blog without asking for permission, huh?) and that largely seemed to be the point of the article pasted there. Look at the cause not at the effect. Now, look deeper. Now think. Now take responsibility.

Melancholy Blues

3 hrs/9 miles...*

This gives an approximate idea of the walk my charming companion and I took today. Around the Back Bay, over to the Eastern Prom trail, down Commercial and Danford St to the Western Prom, behind MMC to the baseball field and then onto Deering Ave...

Today was totally one of the days that gives everyone a reason to love early spring. While I lack the vocabulary to describe it, it was one of those days with spotless blue skies, water of the deepest blue, warm breeze, and people, people, people everywhere, with kids and dogs, smiling and nodding at each other. Needless to say my buddy made a bunch of new friends and on the Eastern Prom Beach even managed to scare a specimen three times his size. Proudly, he walked away to stumble upon a husky, which I am afraid might have brought some not so happy memories in his little head because he carefully avoided any confrontation. We walked on to the rocks and picked up a couple of stones I intend to use for buttons on my Wookiee bag. We saw the Narrow Gauge train with its three passengers which was sort of lame.

Portland is truly an odd concoction of urban and... provincial, I guess. While the downtown district feels like a big city, with the shops and restaurants, coffee houses, business buildings, sirens, and tourists, it also has these quiet neighbourhoods (like the one we live in) that make you think of mid-class suburban hell and ALF. And then it has the gorgeous residences of the Western Prom, overlooking the crappiness of Saint John St. If you choose to go down from the Western Prom park, behind MMC, it is literally a plunge in that crappiness, you walk down a hundred meters and it's like you're in a different country. And in a way you are. This is not the old commie in me speaking, just an observation.

Most of the time I was listening to my iPod although sometimes it's better not to.

The White Stripes' Jolene breaks my heart. I don't feel like myself, haven't felt for a while now. All the forces factoring in my life right now, the fact that I have no power over those forces, that knocked me off my feet. And it's not the forces influencing everyone such as the economy, the gas prices, politics and so on. But forces that have direct influence over my life, my happiness and the future of my family. The fact that there's nothing I can do about it, that it's all in some faceless bureaucrat's hands, that kills me. I now that as long as it depends on me, I can focus and invest a sizable effort into achieving certain goals. But when it doesn't depend on me even the tiniest little bit, what do I do? Wait?

Wait.

It was a good day overall and while there are many things and people I miss right now, I would have been completely happy if one of them had spent today with me. Today's not over yet, though. So, I'll take a hot shower, wrap myself in a blanket to read for a bit a book of short stories written by our landlord, and wait.


* I also went to the store, so add at least one more mile to that.

Crash into me

I treated my right ear with a bunch of electroshocks for about a half hour. It appears dear kitty has caused irreversible damages to the cable of my earplugs which was why my ear feels a bit toasted. Like my Mac but ear still works.


Visiting the new and awesome Whole Foods store turned out to be a depressing experience. To begin with, one of the first things that caught my eye when I got there was a very pretty sweater (at a whole foods store, yes, go figure). The price quickly cooled me down - something in the $100 range. Was it organically grown cotton or antibiotic and hormone-clean sheep wool, I don't know.

Second, as adviced, I went to the food court section and what's offered is nothing but the mall food court experience with a "wholesome" label. The prices seem pretty reasonable and it's oh, so good for you!... but it's still a freaking food court, packed with Dave Matthews Band fans. Blah.

I walked around, actually bought some yummi herb salami and some other shit. And then I went to the bread section. I like my bread good and have located a couple of bakeries, one of them right down the street, that I like to shop from. Amazingly enough, they carried that bakery's bread at the hippie store, so I checked out the price and I am pretty sure I actually moaned out loud. It was $2 (two bucks) or 50% (fifty percent) more than at the bakery. For a $4 bread, I'd say that's just too much.

So, I left that section and moved quickly towards the check-in. Walking out I started thinking of how that store would hit the local businesses like Micuchi (the hippies have a good selection of salami's, cheeses, and wine, as well as an ethnic food section that covers Italian), that bakery I mentioned, and so on... and I realized there would be no hit. Because, wholesome or not, hip(pie) or not, that store still offers convenience shopping experience. Places like Micuchi, and One Fifty Ate, that bakery - Big Sky Bread, the coffee shops and diners do carry the community spirit, the cosiness and almost intimacy that seems to be so characteristic of Portland. I know it's the good old Ginormous Corp. against the local shop play again but Portland seems to be prooving there's a market for both (I don't know if there's market for Wild Oats anymore though).

I could have sweetened the experience with some gelato but I figured I'll do it at some other time and location because: 1. I hate Dave Matthews Band fans and that yuppie/hippie crowd with uncharacteristic passion. 2. I know where they make and deliver that gelato from and it happens to be pretty close to where I live, a nice local coffee shop. 3. I am hoping to drag Josh along because I bet it's gooooooood.


I don't like myspace anymore. There's too much featured shit on my home page, from artist, book, and filmmaker to Madonna-designed dress. It is sickening in a way.

Dead horse

Don't explain to me why it wouldn't work…

Ugh, I used to hear something of the sort from my father all the time. Every time he would give me an advice and I would try to tell him of all thousand and one reasons I thought it couldn't work for. That was his response after which I'd usually storm out of the room and… do exactly what he told me.

I am very much a worry-er. I cannot sleep when thinking of the problems in my life. I have panic attacks. I mumble to myself (in an odd concoction of Bulgarian and English). I sigh and walk around in circles.

But, I am very much my father's daughter, and I am very much a warrior. After panicking and all that jazz, I sit down and find out how to deal with the problem. And move on.


Story time (Problems vs. Solutions)

Problem
When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface).

Solution A
In order to solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees

Solution B
And what did Russians do?? The Russians used a Pencil!!! *


I've heard the story before from my dear husband but reading it like this (with the nice little conclusion on that site, namely: think simple, focus on the solution, not the problem) struck me with its clarity. I am a firm believer in acting and bringing in good in our lives instead of sitting around and waiting for the bad to happen. And then happen again. And again… it piles up like bad credit.

I have stumbled upon the basic concept that "life sucks" or better put by some '90s poet "I hate myself and I want to die" (heh)... the concept that bad comes naturally in life. But that somehow doesn't ring true in my ears. Only randomness is natural. Things happen, good and bad. But we're also given the opportunity, by birth, to influence our lives, more or less. Not that we're all that powerful, not that we could fight randomness (navigate it… just a thought)… Just most of the problems we're dealing with are not that bad. We focus so much on them, we sort of succumb into them and forget to look for the solution.

I am also not saying that solutions are always simple or easy, no… But I don't recall being promised a simple and easy life at any point. It's just life. It is a battle. It could be sweet, it could be bitter. But way better then nothing.

I am done.


* On a side note: yes, Americans won the Cold War, and yes, that happened because communism is crippling to any country, even one rich with resources of all kinds as Russia. Americans had more money, Americans won. But, maybe the deficiency of money helped the Russians come up with such a simple solution; they had nothing to invest in the research of the kind Americans conducted).

Seven Seas of Rhye

It'll be 2 months soon since we got married. It's still a novelty, it's still exciting, it's still surprising. I never used to think of marriage. I mean, not that I have ever been actively against marriage as an institution, I just never used to think of it. In any sort of relationship, I never cast my thought beyond what was happening at the moment. I never as a little girl dreamt of a wedding day with all the… fuss… I don't really know what's going down on a normal wedding day as I have been present at only one wedding and I only remember it was a pretty good party.

So back in the day, when things were good, we joked with the idea from time to time (of me being finally made an honest woman), but the fact of the matter was, we were together, we loved each other, if I dared look forward and dream, we'd have been together forever. But marriage, it's too much of a bother to just have the very day of wedding. And we were lazy. And it was too soon. So… that was that.

Some broken dreams, tears, thinking, more tears (all me, whiny and weepy), built-again dreams, and a six-pack of Black Fly Stout (we didn't drink it ourselves, mind you) later I became... I was made an honest woman. And… and it's like nothing I have ever imagined before.

People say you don't need to validate love by signing a piece of paper, it's just a legal procedure… Yeah… But boy, do I feel different! It's really hard to explain but it seems like there's been a tiny little romantic buried deep in me that lifted her head and started speaking at that "I do" moment. Started feeling, too. My love for my husband has not grown less intense, less passionate, or more mature, at least not yet. But the feeling that I am not alone anymore, that I belong to an entity different than my own person, bigger and better than it, that's new. The feeling that there's someone that's more dear to my heart than I myself am, that's new. The desire and will to take care of someone else and their comfort and peace of mind, and be taken care of back, that's new.

Yes, I have a family back home, and I love and respect them immensely. But that family is my roots, it's where I start. My new family, my husband and I, that's the future.

So, yeah, things change after marriage. Or at least they changed for me. But I love it. Also, we have the best wedding story ever.