Another one

Tonight I saw one more dead body in Tbilisi. I don't want to count any more. If I count now, I will remember all of them. It's at least five, the ones I've seen with my own eyes. People gathered aroung the tree which the car ran into and next to it someone lying. He was not covered. No body I've seen was covered. And people staring.

I think this is the strongest reason why I want to get out of this country.

Taking off

One of those take offs. The airplane speeded on the grumpy asphalt and I leaned back straight, as I do always. And the second it took off, I closed my eyes and leaned even stronger to the back of the chair, feeling almost lying on it and this physical feeling was so strong, probably because of my emotional state. Together with that awkward physical sensation I felt overwhelmingly happy. So happy that tears gathered inside my eyes. I felt so there, so alive. Happy, out of nothing.

It must have been the book. I had been reading it for more than four hours now starting from the airport in Prague. One line, which the book characters found in one of the bars saying ‘Combat alcoholism by drinking wine’ made me smile. I had been drinking wine each evening last week, and in fact I’ve been keen on wine past three years.

Little details that construct life is in fact life itself. Just small details. Or things, that can be expressed in small details. There is this large nonsense, immobility, routine and then, there are these small details that mean so much.

The sixth chapter. Anne goes to Chicago and meets Luwis. The characters in this book unfold in front of me like absolutely real people, whom I study, observe, change opinion about them, change the way I perceive them. I recognize myself in those simple words and I feel confident. No more loneliness.

‘But if I come, that would be to see you. Do you have any time?’
‘I have all my time’, he said laughing. ‘My time is all mine.’
From ‘The Mandarins’ by Simone de Beauvoir

How at that moment I wished I were brave enough for my time to be all mine. No, in fact that’s just a justification of wasting my time, or rather, taking it too seriously. I take my time too seriously. Happiness has no time frame. It exists in somewhere beyond time and space. And sometimes I grasp it. I just need a push. In this chapter she is happy. No, that is not the word.

‘Nothing was asked of me; I had to be exactly what I was and a man’s desire transformed me into a miracle of perfection. It was so restful that if the sun had stopped in the middle of the sky, eternity would have slipped by without my noticing it.’
From ‘The Mandarins’ by Simone de Beauvoir

Before these hours of reading on the plane and in the airports, we got into a car to drive from Kolin to Prague. There were three of us and we had to squeeze in the back seat as we were told the driver had a company. En elder woman, Marjike, grew nervous as the driver stood talking of the phone, not hurrying to start moving. He did not speak English. And it was funny conversation as Marjike was explaining to him that her plain was leaving at 3.00 and the driver giving a long monologue in Czech with a ridiculing face. So we waited. The one sitting between us in the back was Sofia, a beautiful Spanish energetic woman. She took everything so close, I wished I could be able to get involved in other people’s demands so easily. I thought her unshaved armpit suited her and it looked beautiful, as if that’s how it should have been anyhow. Then a blond girl walked out of pizzeria across the road holding a pizza box. She was wearing cheap jeans and a pink jumper. There it was, we had been waiting for her. She sat next to the driver and I imagined them together. As they ate pizza, they were looking at each other and exchanging words and I felt they both had in mind their previous night or an upcoming one. Their pizza eating interaction had something erotic to it. They resembled couple for some film I had seen once or several times.

Landing in Tbilisi made me close the book. I was restless. I wanted to continue. At least continue to be awake. It was over 3 o’clock in the morning when the plane landed. And now, I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow.

maps

In the inn where they had just dined, they were drinking a muderously stron white liquor. Dubreilh had already set up his paraphernalia at one end of an oilcloth-covered table.
'Yes', Henri said. His eyes obediently followed the pencil point along red, yellow, and white lines. 'How can you choose between those little roads?'
'That's the fun of it'.
The fun of it, Henri thought, was seeing how perfectly the future followed your plans: every turn, every upgrade and downgrade, every hamlet was in its foreseen place. What security! You felt as if your life was a cocoon spun from within your own body. And yet the metamorphosis of printed words and lines into real roads, real houses, gave you what no man-made creation can give: reality.

from The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir

from Prague to Brussels

I thought I would wait until the bus would get to Germany. I was enjoying the torment of keeping them in the head and promised myself would hold them on until Germany. But then it was the fear which has always come true. They just drip away…

At one point, some long time ago, I realized I was not unique at all. I remember it was a disappointing feeling. But then it was also that I found myself more open. Because I already know how others were. They were just like me.

Now listening to my small iPod that Christina brought me, carrying that bag and the jacket I wore today, myself reminds me of you. All the way we were driving I was feeling reshuffled as each composition was so different from the next. I felt alive.

It was also because of The Mandarins. I am being reaffirmed that I want more. The skin around me is so tight and also so fluid making you both rigid and slightly movable inside, confirming there is a possibility to move more. I’m not sure if I put this right. That energy which is maybe beyond my capacity is torturing me pleasantly. I want to do drugs. I want to transform together with any tiny detail of experience. She is so much like me but also so distant. The approaching, pushing away the distance is so desirable but also so dangerous. Like a pleasant hazardous play.
The love that I desire to bare in myself, which I might be bearing anyhow, is the life.

The other day I watched a film by a Polish director ‘Yodok Stories’. I’ve become extremely sensitive to the unhappiness of others. This film is about concentration camps in North Korea. Unbelievable, how unimaginative cruelty can exist in the modern world, which we call postmodernism, or info wave or computer era, or whatever. Everything is just nothing to what is happening in this country of over a dozen million inhabitants. In these concentration camps, as told by the witnesses now residing in South Korea, people are tortured inhumanly because their loyalty towards the leader has been doubted. Without trial, only because a member of their family either escaped from the country, or said there is not enough rice for everybody, was captivated. Some would die of hunger there; some would eat a child to survive. The guy was saying, someone had confessed he had killed a 5 year old child, thrown away the head and eaten his hands and legs. One woman was telling, in the camps, children had big bellies because of malnourishment. Mothers had to find pregnant rats and get the baby rats out of their stomach, because they had no fur yet, and to feed them to their children. She said these kinds of rats were rare and children who ate unborn rats did not have big bellies.

For those who had to be executed, there were special cabins. They are narrow cabins for one person to fit in. But they are not as tall as a human being. That means, whoever is sent inside, has to stand there slightly bent. This is the execution. They have to stand there like that until they die.

There was one boy who had escaped North Korea through crossing the river towards China. The first thing he said that surprised him was that someone smiled at him. He said at home I would never let myself express my feelings. I imagined, or at least I tried to imagine, how it is to live never, never expressing what you feel. With the camps, the stories were told in such a calm way. The way you tell something that is very common. And these stories are the most (I cannot even give it a name) I have ever heard or felt.

Another thing was that those who would manage to escape to China, would be captured by Chinese and sent back to North Korea, where they were naturally sent to the camps. Neglect has such a major part in all our minds. I regret once in a while, probably only when the humanity’s injustice opens my eyes, why I not an activist. Such a stupid thought. A thought of temporary convenience.

I was happy driving sitting in the bus, listening to music, looking ahead of me at the road and thinking of different things that had inspired me recently. I should have seen Prague in warmer weather. It had this spirit of waking and walking and sitting on a bench on the river side. I saw Andy Warhol’s motion picture.

“I cound never finally figure out if more things happened in the sixties because there was more awake time for them to happen in (since so many people were on amphetamine), or if people started taking amphetamine because there were so many things to do that they needed to have more awake time to do them in…” – Andy Warhol.

So one video depicted his partner, a man, sleeping for several hours. So that if the sleep would ever become extinct, this would be the evidence that this is how it was. Then there were portraits of other people, most beautiful women and most beautiful men, as he called those video installations. Then there were couples kissing. I liked the idea of the kissing sequence to be a revenge of the new movie industry rule not to show couples kissing for more than 3 seconds. Here they kiss for three minutes. And also there was a man’s face being given a blow job. The face and the title of video Blow Job create the coherency. Each of the two would have no meaning without the other. I admire the idea of context out of fragments.

The definitions make life simple to judge, but can be an easy mislead, or just an assumption, which stores so much more beyond.

'I don't think it matters much what kind of tag you put on things that happened in the past,' I said. 'What matters is the future'.

'That's just it,' he said spiritedly. 'To make something good of the future, you have to look the present in the face. And I get the distinct impression that these people here aren't doing that at all. Dubreuilh talks to me of a literary review, Parron of a pleasure trip. They all seem to feel they'll be able to go on living just like before the war'.

The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir

A restart. The suitcase story

This is a hastily written story about the suitcase which carried years of the past.

It was the end of my two weeks in Berlin. My flight was scheduled for 16.50. I was supposed leave the bike at Janina’s. It was snowing slightly. And I was riding this old rusty bike which used to belong to Janina’s grandfather. I met a man the night before. He suggested I don’t ride that night because of slippery road so we took metro together. In that last carriage he said he owned exactly the same kind of bike, with the same white lines and shape and that it said at the back wheel that it was released in 1936.

Before going to Janina’s I met Urte on the bridge at Kotbusse Tor. She introduced me to her father and his girlfriend and then they went to see a Dali exhibition. I wanted to drink coffee. So we sat in this nice café. I had a double espresso, Urte had something with milk and I also got a sandwich. I felt comfortable in there and had no wish to control time. I have been seeing Urte probably every day since Berlinale started. It was an exhausting and extremely pleasant two weeks that seemed like a rubber vacuum, which stretches but has no exit.

We parted and I went on to leave the bike. It was probably a 10 minute ride to Janina’s place at Gneisenaustrasse. I knew she would not be home. So I just rang somebody’s bell and as the door opened I headed towards the inner yard to lock the bicycle. Then wrote a small note, tied it up with the bike key and threw it in the postbox. I felt happy.

Coming back to Schleissesche Tor I was in a hurry. I still had to pack a bit. And I wanted to see Giorgi before he would go to work. I had been living with him the past three days in an area which I honestly liked. Giorgi gave me some things to take with me to Tbilisi. I zipped it all up, gathered trash and ate the remaining banana and kiwi salad.

The suitcase was full.

After locking the door from outside and throwing the key in the post box hole, I had to elaborating a special technique to bring this heavy thing down from the fifth floor. It’s easy, even if I’m holding a trash box in my hand. You just drop the soft side of the suitcase from stair to stair. It does not make much noise and the weight it unnoticeable. Well ok, this probably wouldn’t work on plastic Samsonite suitcases. Mine was not a Samsonite. It was blue. I had bought it in London, in a small shop at Charring Cross road three years ago. It was not a special one.

It must have been over 2.30. I was ok with time. I came out, put the suitcase right next to the door and went to the corner to dump the trash. I also looked around the corner looking for a larger bin and there I suddenly saw Leandro. So strange. He was holding an 8mm camera. He said he was filming some staff in Berlin. He had told me about it earlier. He had this fascinating idea at the Talent Campus for his documentary, for which he had already found full funding. The project was called Dead Youth and it was about frequent suicide cases among teenagers in one of the Argentinean towns, which had a huge oil mine. What he wanted to show in his film was the absence. I also loved the idea about different sounds of the wind… Anyway, Leadro was still in Berlin and he said he wanted to stay for several more days. I said I was leaving just now, hugged him and came back to the corner to pick up my suitcase.

The wall and the door looked different now. There was no suitcase there. Just the empty merging of the street with the building. The first feeling was that of emptiness. Now, I had nothing to carry. I missed this weight so much, that I started to feel the panic. What do I do now. I stood there and saw someone’s head sticking out from somewhere. I ran there, had a look. It was an old man. Buh! Then a shop across the road. The guy said he had not seen anyone. Then a bar. We could not find a common language to speak. Then a guy who was smoking a cigarette outside. He felt very sorry. Nothing. The first thing was my passport and the ticket. I made sure I had it with me. And money and the cards were with me. But this sudden loss of things which I would remember one by one in the coming half hour made me sob as I was passing a doner place in the snow.

The blue suitcase started to unwrap in my mind. My earrings. One a very precious present, with purple shiny stones, and the other my favorite, yellow stone with silver. My necklaces. One that I had bought in Riga years ago. I wore it all the time. Almost every day. And the other with turquoise stones and a silver textured piece in the center. Also an old present. Another necklace, from my mother.

What else was there. Clothes were easy to remember. When I was comparing them with the earrings, I did not care any more. But then it was the red scarf from Cappadocia. Why did not I put it on? I kept another scarf from Iran in my backpack to keep my laptop safe. So the Iranian one had the fortune to survive. Oh, my worm socks. They have been so helpful both in Berlin and in Chokhatauri. And the shoes I had bought just about two months ago, which Janina liked.

...My old, very old Dr. Martens boots, which I had brought in Berlin just in case it would have been very cold. Oh, my Talent Campus bag and an accreditation which I wanted to keep. Ella’s accreditation was there as well. I had promised to send it back to her. I could not find mine, so she just left it to me three days before. My Georgian ID. My underwear. My crèmes for face and a comb. It was a plastic comb. Green. I had been using it for years. Catalogues and a book which I was supposed to read. My old black jacket with a pin. I felt slightly revealed that I did not have that jacket any more. I have worn it so much, that it was just like a piece of something, shapeless and I really needed to get a new one. But I just could not get rid of it. I kind of adored it somehow. I also felt relieved that my black velvet trousers were in that suitcase as well. I bought them when I started working in a restaurant in London. I worked for five days and was asked to wear something black. So I got it for very cheap specially for the restaurant but have been wearing it ever since. My yellow bag, a present from Lejava, and a blue one, which I had bought in Berlin were now sniffed by somebody. I was sitting in Metro, U7, and crying.

This feeling of loss was making be dizzy. My feet were now wet from snow when waiting for a bus and the realization that nobody knew of my current trauma made me feel good. I felt fresh.
I still had an hour when I entered the departures. I got the ticket and looked at the departure board. My flight was not listed there. Even from the bus I had this feeling that I was going somewhere wrong. And in deed it was a different airport on the other side of Berlin. Fuck. This U7 has airports on each end.

Someone was unpacking the taxi right outside and I asked him like crazy how much it would cost to take me to Tegel. He said 50. I only counted 45 in my purse. I said I only have 45. He did not mind. He could speak only words in English. I had to say I was having a bad day. I told him my suitcase had been stolen and now I’m in the wrong airport. He looked at me with a noticeable pity and straight away offered a cigarette. He even insisted on it I think. When the meter kicked 40 Euros, he turned it off. His gesture to let me keep the remaining 5 Euro note made me feel safe. I was in time. Sad and also refreshed. A restart. But Berlin had to have this kind of an end. Something like this. I find it logical and pleasant.

exploring mydeathspace.com

There is this website called http://www.mydeathspace.com/. It puts up notices of death of http://www.myspace.com/ members. I am also a member there. So, I've been exploring this page for several days already. I don't know how to name the feeling I get reading the death notes and then looking at their myspaces.

There is this girl - Amy, who was shot by her husband. Her space is open. Her myspace address is www.myspace.com/davidswifyamy . About herself she writes that she's 25, happy and loving his David. Her photos are also open. There is one photo of her 'baby holding a big gun'. Photos of their lovely house is also up there in a separate album. The contradiction between the death note and her myspace is so cynical.

There are others...

There is this girl, who killed her 2 year old son. The note said she had problems with her husband and since this very son was her husband's favorite, she pushed on him often. In her Myspace her mood is romantic and loving. She's now in jail, possibly for a lifetime.

Today I explored a third case. husband killed his ex wife. The wife's profile is closed. It just says 'Sarah in Heaven'. There is a little notice next to her picture saying 'you were born an original, don't die a copy'.

The husband writes about himself:
'What's there to say and where to begin. I live in Newark, have a 1 year old daughter who's the most beautiful thing in the entire world and every time I look in her eyes I see the second most beautiful thing in the world, her mother.' This was a year before he strangled her. And the photos are so intimate.

There are notices of suicide. These spaces are so private I feel I'm looking into somebody's death. Their virtual identity is still there and they either do not exist any more or are sentenced to years of jail because of murder.

I became attached to this strange space, which is disturbing and strange.