At The Mercy of My Fingers

I know you are going to say this is just too much! We have better things to do than reading a blogger’s jabbering every other night! But I can’t help it, my fingers just won’t rest, they refuse to stay away from the keyboard. I have tried, I swear I did. I must have clicked on those stupid solitaire cards over twelve thousand times tonight, and yet my fingers don’t seem to have had their satiety. My pink little mouse that looks as if it is a hand-me-down from an 8 year old girly girl has been begging me to stop restlessly clicking on it for over 2 hours, and yet my fingers refuse to keep away from my broken laptop.

Something in me has woken up from its deep, long slumber this week. Something in me has shaken me up, and like a somnambulist, I found myself picking up on my reading where I had left off. The pleasure of those books must have ticked off the ink swelling in the tips of my fingers.

Something in me has realized that fantasies are just what they are, and reality must set in sometime. My feelings about this statement are ambivalent. I am not sure how much I prefer living my reality as opposed to dreaming my fancy.

I am trying to take serious steps towards fulfilling the promise I had made to myself, the one in which I swore to live more, to do more, to be more; but as the saying goes, one hand cannot clap on its own, and without a serious entourage and excellent company round the clock, I am afraid my hands not only won’t clap, they are also tied, tied to a bittersweet reality that keeps me going in vicious circles of fabulous far away friends, and omnipresent insignificant everyday companions who make me feel like a cat lady.

Tonight I can’t help but imagining myself some 30 years from now still sitting in this chair, sipping from this same hideous cup of coffee, only by then I would be ordering decaf instead; I foresee uncontrollably shaky hands in my future and a pile of heart medicine. I see glasses so thick they seriously could pass as the bottoms of coca cola bottles. I see a big house filled to its brim with books read once and only once, with rusty yellowish notebooks scattered all over the place, and with little, almost invisible insects crawling and making tiny nests inside the walls of an imagination that never knew where its door knob was.

I see neighborhood kids practicing their prank skills on me. I see myself tutoring students I wish I could spank to make a living.

I see nephews and nieces coming to check on me every once in a while. I hear them complaining about the stench of the house. I see myself cracking the windows once they have left. I see myself trying to look presentable and driving my 2005 Polo – 30 years from now – to Sassine Square. I see young waitresses puffing and rolling their eyes at my sight.

I sit here seriously wishing I knew how to change this inevitable prospect, and whilst my imagination aids me, my reality refuses to cope. Somehow I wish the world would rearrange itself to suit my lazy ass. And to end this with a somewhat less pessimistic thought, just wait and watch it do it!

The Summer of Dom Perignon

Or should I call it the summer of Moet Et Chandon? It is hard to tell which brand I indulged myself with more this summer. And I know you must be wondering why I am still talking about summer when it is almost Christmas. The answer is both simple and complicated. Simple because I started writing this at the end of the summer – yes, I know I only wrote two sentences then, and complicated because I was writing it when I thought it was the end of an era – and yes, it now is.

It is the end of the free champagne era for me, for now at least. Champagne was in fact the highlight of my 2012. I attended so many openings, met so many people, interviewed some, had a crush on others, and hated the rest. The job was worthless money wise, experience wise even, but it offered so many perks on the social front.

I am not sure anymore what I wanted to say when I started writing this, but I am pretty certain I wanted to vent on something or the other. I am an innate nagger, as you must have already noticed by now. I can’t really find it in me to pester tonight though, shocking I know!

Well anyway, long story short, I have started a new job, a more challenging one on all levels so far. It is time to get serious, time to get busy and time to try and leave behind my semi bohemian life. Somehow it feels good to have so much to do. It is startling how much I didn’t know and how big is the stack of things I have never experienced before. Bye bye champagne and aloha social misery. So long two hours work days and 4 days off a week, and hello 24/7 marathon. That makes it sound a bit frustrating, but what isn’t? I have always been an extremist in any case, why change now?

I am excited. I am anxious. I am worried. I am already tired. But I want to make a plan. I want to stick to it too for once. I am even considering trying out a diet again. Useless I know; hopeless maybe. But I have to confess it has crossed my mind. I want to benefit from the situation, turn it around to fit me in all ways, as much as I can. I want to buy a car. I want to travel. I want to be independent. I want to live.

I want to live. I do. I may not have much time for it with the crazy schedule, but I promise to try. I hereby promise that should the plan work, I am going to live. I am going to have champagne with my friends for a change. I want to enjoy it. I want to pop it and smear it all over the place. I want to get into pillow fights with my girls. I want to leave the crust behind and feel fresh and energetic. Most of all, I want to get away from the coffee shop, to step away from my routine, to shake myself to do more, to feel more,  to be more.

It felt like a cinematic moment when I left the old office for the last time. I felt pretty wearing that smile around and offering it to strangers. The wind blowing through my hair and my scarf gave me a shiver, not one of cold though, but one of pride. Been a while since I felt happy, or proud, let alone both together.

As always, I shall treasure the friends I made along the way and cherish the memories, the experience and the mistakes. All of it will just fill me with more of something I already hold plenty of: nostalgia. Days that will never repeat themselves no matter how hard we try, moments that we might never be able to grasp again no matter how badly we want to, and people who leave such a mark in us that it becomes impossible not to attempt to find it in the rest of the human race. So here is to a summer that despite its trouble will remain, like all the ones that preceded it, and all the ones that will hopefully follow it, a memorable one. Rain is washing it out tonight, trying to steal its stickiness from my mind, and the winter lover in me feels like leaving my chair and walking under it, feels like getting wet, like embracing the most beautiful season of all, the most powerful of all, the most empowering of all. May those heavenly clouds accompany me and protect me in my new endeavor; may they guide my path towards the new era, the latest opportunity and the divine blessing.

A Slave of Complaint

It has been an ultra redefining week on so many levels. Well I haven’t exactly discovered anything I wasn’t previously aware of, but everything that had been happening with me or around me has reconfirmed some old theories and feelings.

I am a slave of my routine. Anything that interferes with my daily habits one way or another automatically tends to go on a blacklist that ranges between dislike, discomfort and disassociation altogether.

For those of you who don’t know me in person, here is a concise summary: I am your basic heavy smoker/insomniac with no car. That being said, it is quite understandable how a 24/7 coffee shop near home with an indoor smoking section can work perfectly well for me.

I have been almost living in the same spot for the past 10 years or so. The coffee shop itself changed, the people changed, the cab drivers even changed, but I am still the same. I come here religiously, every night, for the same experience, the same enjoyments, with the odd twist here and there of course.

So could somebody please tell me why am I having to undergo a relatively massive change in the space of less than a week? It simply isn’t conceivable in my mind; having to go from devotedly smoking indoors 24/7 to shamefully smoking outdoors 21/7 is just NOT fair!!!! Not to mention that I have lost the place as a depot as well! I know an explanation is due now and it goes – or used to go to be more precise – like this: The fact that I have no car and that I feel lost without my huge laptop makes me carry it with me wherever I go, and since on some rare occasions I actually have plans elsewhere, but must – and I mean MUST! – come to the coffee shop before AND after the night out, I would usually keep the laptop with the staff for the duration of my plans, and then come back, retrieve it, use it and go home with it. Now what do you suggest I do with my humongous laptop when I need to go out?? And how am I to use it before leaving and dispose of it then? And why oh why don’t I get the chance to use after all my boring plans anymore??

Rant, rant, ranting I do best! I know. But in this case, I have earned the right to do it, haven’t I? I mean come on, after all those years, you chose this week of all weeks to start closing at 3:00 a.m.? What does it even denote to close for 3 meager hours when you need an hour to close down and another to open up? Isn’t it enough that I now have to sweat in the heat and shiver in the cold just because I have been dubbed as an uncivilized smoker? I ask you, isn’t that a sufficiently undeserved and uncalled for punishment?

On another note, I may have become slightly superstitious this week as well. It all started when I caught the bouquet my friend threw on her first wedding anniversary. Does catching the bouquet really mean I am going to meet someone and be the next to walk the isle? And what exactly could it mean that I caught it one year too late?

On yet another note, there has been a lot of dreaming going on. Between the dreams of my relatives, those of my friends and my own, I have been stealing cars, secretly buying cars, and attending some very fishy gatherings. I have also been misplacing my clothes and walking on red sand.

Now link the dreams to the rotting flowers, deprive me of smoking altogether, send me to bed at midnight, and drive me off tomorrow to the nut house in a stolen green Renault. How about that?