Karfreitag

Friday before Easter - and it is raining. in the TV, they asked people to explain the meaning of this bank holiday. 42% couldn't tell. the TV didn't tell, either.

instead, they moved on to the next question: how is the rabbit related to Easter? a spontaneous answer to that, from a guy on the street: "The rabbit? - it kicked the hen, and thus, the hen laid the egg."

finally, in the net, the explanation:

Good Friday: the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ; Holy Friday in Romance Languages, Karfreitag (Sorrowful Friday) in German

Easter: a Christian celebration of the Resurrection of Christ, celebrated the Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring equinox.

the question that remains - how come the rabbit delivers coloured eggs for the celebration?
.

"It's just a job"

Today I accepted a contract for a one-year position. I've been freelancing since January 1998 (and took most of that year off to travel and sleep), so even though it's interesting work, part of me is terrified. Like I'm losing part of my soul.

For 7 years, I've been lazy, but I've also become relaxed and informed and creative. In the first few years, the economy was booming, so it wasn't hard to find a contract for a few months and then take off to another country and come back and easily find something else. The past few have been a struggle. I ate tacos and used frequent flier miles.

I also made a film. I worked on political campaigns and published a lot of essays. I stayed out late and slept in. I felt like I'd become...someone else. On my way to doing something new with my life.

But we've all got to work, right? Two omens about work:

Last summer, I interviewed for an exciting position in a software company's consulting group. The interviews went well. I made lists of what I would buy (new shoes! dental appointment for the cat!). But on the way to an appointment there, I was running a little late and sat in a line of traffic to get off the freeway. I had to change lanes at the last minute, and this woman going the other way started to scream and scowl at me in her car and wave her hands. I hadn't really done anything, but I thought: I do not want to become this woman.

At the company I'll be working for, the doorman is an Indian man with a smile that could light up Manhattan. He knows everyone's names and presses the elevator buttons for their floors. Last week he wished me a happy Thursday. The receptionist is also warm and friendly; she asked how my interview went. Although the job itself seems promising, there is a part of me that said yes because of the man in the lobby.

Lifelines

some lines i came across in the last days.

(1)
a thought on a horoscope page
"Children experience life through play. They have to experiment with all sorts of things before their future paths, with all their possibilities, can become visible or even imaginable."

(2)
a docu in TV, about labyrinths
"In the classic labyrinth, the starting line leads straight towards the centre, but then turns away. Walking the way, you find yourself crossing through all different directions, until you finally reach the centre."

(3)
a quote, written on a cut piece of a painting
“If it’s true that we can only follow a small part of the lifelines we hold inside – what happens with the rest?”

Praia em Portugal 

Spring, then Summer

Last week, mooning over the end of one romance or other, I went for a walk in search of magnolias. It's been a warm winter and even the huge snowpack in the Sierras is apparently melting fast. Cherry blossoms are already bloomed and falling on the cars.

It took a while but I found the magnolias:

a few blocks from my house.

This week was a new moon and with a huge storm in the middle of the Pacific, the newspaper warned of dangerous waves, 30 feet high! Of course I ignored the warnings and headed straight for the beach to see them. The waves didn't seem that big, except when they broke and spread across 50 feet of sand. I tried to outrun one but it caught me anyway.

Here in San Francisco, we've been having a heatwave. This is strange because it's never hot so people get a little crazy. They honk their horns and run red lights and get into fights.

The temperatures are cyclical here, so after a few days of unseasonal heat, today we returned to a familiar sight for those who have visited in June: thick fog. Inland it was probably 80 degrees again (25 C?) but here, I turned up the heat and the tea kettle and cuddled with the cat.

I also rode by the street where the magnolias were, and the tree was green again. In only 10 days, they had all fallen.

vernal urge

A grey clouded dawn,
but the tender first-emerging leaves of spring
give a hint of colour,
almost a haze blurring the bare branches.
The morning is too warm,
as if this were the jungle,
as if an explosion of life were building,
its pressure forcing buds from the dead boughs,
squeezing the green leaflets out,
pushing sprouts up through the soil,
as if nature would erupt,
gushing violent colours,
transforming the textures and scents of the world,
holding the winds,
absorbing the sun,
and drinking the rain,
with an outpouring of insects and birds,
cowding the air with hectic wings and passionate songs.

Beat Week

it's not in the calendar, it's not in the news, but it is there, in the air. letting me pick William Bourrough's Naked Lunch in the library. making me read it aloud in the living room, tell two friends about it, write lines of it on the pinboard next to my desk.

“…Not a locked door in the City. Anyone comes into your room at any time…”

and in return, i receive the most unexpected replies. and learn, that one of the friends is reading the book, too. from all books in the world, and from all times to read them

the explanation, it followed just a day later: "..it is perfect that you are reading Naked Lunch," the other friend said. "A friend of mine started a tradition with us, one week of the year celebrating the Beats. And this is it, Beat Week..."

so this is it.

and here is some more. Ginsberg. Howl. for all those...

"...who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation..."

To Continue Down That Road

5:30 was the time I woke up today. The first light was gently peeping through the curtains. Streets still slept. Dogs dozed. And somehow it seemed that the world wasn't really such a harsh place at all. And since I didn't know what to do with that time on my hands, and staring at the wall wasn't helping either, I took the car out, turned towards Mysore Road, it's just a mile or so away from home, the Mysore highway and well, just continued down that road. (That sounds rather strange, writing it like that, 'to continuedown that road'. Maybe that's what life is...to continue down that road.) It was surreal beautiful really. To my left I could see the shy rays of a yellow sun shimmering through coconut trees and to my right, fields of sleeping green. And hardly any traffic, apart from the odd truck or bus rumbling down. So much so, that I could stop the car every now and then to breathe in a little bit of life again without worrying about being on the highway. I think I must have travelled half way towards Mysore, the speedometer showed 75kms before I stopped. And turned back. I left with nothing. Yet minutes and miles on the road and I came back with something: Peace.

the ones that stayed

This grey gloomy morning I could have worn my fleece jacket, it was cold enough. But I chose my light cotton jacket instead, in honour of spring, and to make the warmth come from my walk. And I noticed them as I walked today, the ones that stayed. A couple of weeks ago, boisterous flocks of robins were migrating through, crowds of them, covering the grass where they were feeding, flying in unison, filling the trees where they paused. And then they left to continue their journey. But a few stayed. One of them has taken up residence in our yard. I see them, single individuals, in a yard or vacant lot, on the ground feeding. Or in conflict with the mockingbird whose territory they have invaded. It seems odd to me that they stayed while the others went on. And those who stayed don't seem to group together at all. It is as if they not only left the journey, they also gave up on social life as well and turned to solitary days.

"Today: Thailand" -

that was the note in my diary yesterday morning. i didn’t need a plane to go there, didn’t need to pack my bag. the journey, it was there already, in the pictures i took, in the memories i carried back home.

yesterday, they unfolded again, in a culture centre, on a huge screen, in front of parents and friends, aunts and unknowns. those pictures taken back then, in the streets of Bangkok, in the train to Chiang Mai, at the reflection pool in Sukhothai, and in Cambodia, at the magic temples of Angkor Wat



that is the beautiful thing about journeys, i thought, as i drove home: that they go on. that they turn from reality to virtuality.

smile. and now, finally, all those moments are all online, too. you find them HERE.