Bruce came downstairs to have a fag. Looked above and nodded with an obvious annoyance on his face. "Again", he said and introduced himself. I knew him via his numerous articles about Central Asia that appear now and then in different sites. By "again" he meant the whirling snowflakes that were making their way down to the little smoking square right in the heart of the building. While for me it wasn't "again". It was "wow! It's snowing!" The first ever Prague snow for me and I took it as a good sign for a new beginning.
Tried the tolerance of the organisation by writing my first Prague piece about Bush's South Asian tour and recorded it for the first time using their odd recording system. It seems to me odd now, but I'm sure, as soon as I get used to it, will not be able to see its present oddity anymore. I hope in the same way my new colleagues will overcome the oddity of my accent. They are trying too hard to ignore it for now and I can see it vividly. Let's wait and see.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Farewell, my city!
01.03.06
London is diminishing into a patchwork of residential areas and fields; uneven cuts and patches spread around the landscape. And even the patchwork is disappearing behind an endless flock of silver stranded clouds... Now it seems like a cotton field back in my country waiting for students to pick them with no anticipation of reward.
No, it's true and it did happen. I don't even try to pinch myself to wake up, because I am awake indeed. I left it behind. I closed a chapter of my life and am trying to open a new one. It was bitter to do that. "Bitter" is not that word to make you understand what I feel right now. I left a world behind. A whole world full of joy and sorrow. A real world that made me fall in love with it...
I left a voice down there. A voice that made me feel a traitor while I'm not. "Please come back. Miss your flight. At least for one more day... come back". And I was heading towards the boarding gate with a hope that something would turn wrong in my papers and I would remain here again. But then the jealous axeman (Lord Life itself) wanted me away. The sooner the better. And my papers took me through check-in points smoothly, as if I was sailing on a buttery surface up to my plane seat. It happens only when you don't wish it at all. "Murphy's law" they call it. In my dictionary it's got a different entry: Life's jealousy...
And now I'm here, in my new apartment in Prague. Filling the deafeningly silent room with puffs of curling smoke and watching them go up to the ceiling, fading and losing themselves, just like the human race. I cannot fathom why we have to follow a smoky path and lose ourselves somewhere along the maze of an illusionary cycle of movements.
Reading messages from there. Some of them cutting my heart into pieces and cooking them on the heat of my blazing mind. And the voice is still here, breaking the silence at times... Miss your flight, please...
It's too late to call Dushanbe either. She knows I need her now.
A while ago I got a call from the world I just lost. It was Behzad asking about my well-being. Well, what to say? Richard Templar's book "The Rules of Life" doesn't advise us to complain, because, he says, the only thing people want to hear is that you are fine. And that was what I said. But after a while I spat on the rules of the jealous axeman and told him how I truly felt and how much I missed my lost world already. He said, he would strive to give me back my lost world and that was what I wanted to hear. To make me believe in something unbelievable. He's still determined about his plans to launch a new TV channel and possibly that would be a way to get my lost world back. It seems I haven't lost the inhabitants of my lost world yet.
London is diminishing into a patchwork of residential areas and fields; uneven cuts and patches spread around the landscape. And even the patchwork is disappearing behind an endless flock of silver stranded clouds... Now it seems like a cotton field back in my country waiting for students to pick them with no anticipation of reward.
No, it's true and it did happen. I don't even try to pinch myself to wake up, because I am awake indeed. I left it behind. I closed a chapter of my life and am trying to open a new one. It was bitter to do that. "Bitter" is not that word to make you understand what I feel right now. I left a world behind. A whole world full of joy and sorrow. A real world that made me fall in love with it...
I left a voice down there. A voice that made me feel a traitor while I'm not. "Please come back. Miss your flight. At least for one more day... come back". And I was heading towards the boarding gate with a hope that something would turn wrong in my papers and I would remain here again. But then the jealous axeman (Lord Life itself) wanted me away. The sooner the better. And my papers took me through check-in points smoothly, as if I was sailing on a buttery surface up to my plane seat. It happens only when you don't wish it at all. "Murphy's law" they call it. In my dictionary it's got a different entry: Life's jealousy...
And now I'm here, in my new apartment in Prague. Filling the deafeningly silent room with puffs of curling smoke and watching them go up to the ceiling, fading and losing themselves, just like the human race. I cannot fathom why we have to follow a smoky path and lose ourselves somewhere along the maze of an illusionary cycle of movements.
Reading messages from there. Some of them cutting my heart into pieces and cooking them on the heat of my blazing mind. And the voice is still here, breaking the silence at times... Miss your flight, please...
It's too late to call Dushanbe either. She knows I need her now.
A while ago I got a call from the world I just lost. It was Behzad asking about my well-being. Well, what to say? Richard Templar's book "The Rules of Life" doesn't advise us to complain, because, he says, the only thing people want to hear is that you are fine. And that was what I said. But after a while I spat on the rules of the jealous axeman and told him how I truly felt and how much I missed my lost world already. He said, he would strive to give me back my lost world and that was what I wanted to hear. To make me believe in something unbelievable. He's still determined about his plans to launch a new TV channel and possibly that would be a way to get my lost world back. It seems I haven't lost the inhabitants of my lost world yet.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Before It Becomes Yesterday…
I never could really believe that this day will finally reach me and catch me in despair and torn me apart, but it did. And I do believe in it now, since the ugly mouth of my bag is wide open waiting for the last items to be dropped in. Just some more ticking of the clock, some more drops on my keyboard, some more melancholic songs playing on my laptop put on reverse and… that’s it. Meanwhile, James Blunt’s guitar is painfully weeping:
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me…
…followed by a Devdas song that inevitably brings up Aishwaria Rai’s image in front of my eyes: Hamesha tumko chaha or chaha or chaha… and the sound of her bangles that matches the sound of my hasty clock.
And Googoosh is hurrying me up by her brave acceptance: “Vaqteshe, vaqteshe, raftan vaqteshe. Vaqteshe, az to gozashtan vaqteshe…”
“Nepara” is painting a Russian reverie: «Они знакомы давно, Но только не суждено быть им вместе... Утром ничего не случится, Утром будет все как вчера. Грезы – перелетные птицы, Тают, улетают с утра...» Blood-oozing medley of my faves.
And how can I resist my strengthened crave for one more pain-and-time-killer Marlboro?
And how can I not love and hate February at the same time? The very month that gave me a refreshing breather and by leaving me behind (or by being left behind) is throwing me into March’s strange, uncomfortable embrace in a strange uncomfortable place. And throwing out me only, by cutting off my strong 5-year old London-grown branch adorned by plentiful dazzling leaves including the one I’ve admired most.
I would have never left this terribly lovely and lovingly terrible city of the world. I got too much to leave behind in here. But as usual, life is not my Mother. Life is an ugly Bush-like unfair blindfolded blind-hearted thing with a sharp axe in its hand to cut off the branches with ripe fruits of happiness; the ones that make it feel jealous. A little jealous bogey it is.
Seconds are whirling in my absent mind, falling down into my restless heart and sneaking out through my feeble fingers so expeditiously… Where have I heard that clumsy word before: ‘expeditiously’? Well, from an ally of the axeman who was waiting for my ‘expeditious’ decision; the very decision that is sending torrents of torment to me now and again.
Now I can hear Robby singing: “No regrets. They don’t work. No regrets. They only hurt…” Don’t worry Robby. I’m still far beyond regretting and I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. I just don’t feel it. That’s it. But this “no regret” habit of mine doesn’t shield me against pains & hurts at all, if that's what you mean.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me…
…followed by a Devdas song that inevitably brings up Aishwaria Rai’s image in front of my eyes: Hamesha tumko chaha or chaha or chaha… and the sound of her bangles that matches the sound of my hasty clock.
And Googoosh is hurrying me up by her brave acceptance: “Vaqteshe, vaqteshe, raftan vaqteshe. Vaqteshe, az to gozashtan vaqteshe…”
“Nepara” is painting a Russian reverie: «Они знакомы давно, Но только не суждено быть им вместе... Утром ничего не случится, Утром будет все как вчера. Грезы – перелетные птицы, Тают, улетают с утра...» Blood-oozing medley of my faves.
And how can I resist my strengthened crave for one more pain-and-time-killer Marlboro?
And how can I not love and hate February at the same time? The very month that gave me a refreshing breather and by leaving me behind (or by being left behind) is throwing me into March’s strange, uncomfortable embrace in a strange uncomfortable place. And throwing out me only, by cutting off my strong 5-year old London-grown branch adorned by plentiful dazzling leaves including the one I’ve admired most.
I would have never left this terribly lovely and lovingly terrible city of the world. I got too much to leave behind in here. But as usual, life is not my Mother. Life is an ugly Bush-like unfair blindfolded blind-hearted thing with a sharp axe in its hand to cut off the branches with ripe fruits of happiness; the ones that make it feel jealous. A little jealous bogey it is.
Seconds are whirling in my absent mind, falling down into my restless heart and sneaking out through my feeble fingers so expeditiously… Where have I heard that clumsy word before: ‘expeditiously’? Well, from an ally of the axeman who was waiting for my ‘expeditious’ decision; the very decision that is sending torrents of torment to me now and again.
Now I can hear Robby singing: “No regrets. They don’t work. No regrets. They only hurt…” Don’t worry Robby. I’m still far beyond regretting and I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. I just don’t feel it. That’s it. But this “no regret” habit of mine doesn’t shield me against pains & hurts at all, if that's what you mean.
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