Women... Fiction... stockholm... More coffee..

" You know, a gentleman always allows a lady to maintain her own fiction” she said

It was an unusually pleasant sunny day in Sweden and we were drinking coffee in one of the street cafés when we saw a woman passing by with tears for obvious and only reasons and Ertyass commented on her, in her usual unique style.

“Come on! Give me a break” I said, “are you suggesting women live their lives artificially, knowing that they are living in fiction?” I asked.

“Well it’s a matter of perspective; fiction can be as real as reality depending on how much feeling or tangibility you can give to it. Who can say I am real and not a fictional character to you in your mind like all other real people interacting with you, and are you not a fiction to yourself, a character in a book you are writing and reading everyday with all these characters dancing around. Fiction is just another dimension or the state of matter or reality my dear, existing somewhere beyond the usual solid, liquid or gaseous states. Fiction is what our soul feels and wants to feel, rest is all felt more by what you call reality…. And you know sometimes we have to take the matter in our own hands no matter what state they are in” she ended her argument mixing both the fictional and real matters in one place.

I replied, “but since when you started to care about your fiction, I thought you were the carpe diem class , living your life in the moments”

“Well off course I am the carpe diem class and my fiction lives as much in present tense as well, but let me share a little womanly secret with you…call it our sense of insecurity or unacceptability of our current state of being but we women think of life, as ugly and unbearable, as we think of our aging body, face and existence…. and just like we try to hide our body behind make-up, fashion and corsets, we hide our life and soul behind fiction. We create realities around us in order to hide our real sense of self” she spread her words looking somewhere deep in the open air.

A long pause…. We both fell silent … the air became heavier . She looked sad, a sadness that comes when someone loses his virginity for the first time, opening him/herself to a new person expecting to be accepted the way he/she is… I saw the same tears in another woman passing by again… the time imprisoned itself in a garbage paper not trying to go anywhere being pushed by the heavy air… the leaf-art on the coffee’s frothy surface started loosing its momentary existence…the heaviness of the air being felt by both of us only, amid passing young crowds of boys and girls giggling and gossiping in an otherwise free Stockholm…..

I broke the silence after a long pause… “you know you look more beautiful when you perform yourself in sadness”

“And now you are trying to maintain my fiction , isn’t it? “ she taunted.

“ Don’t you want me to be a gentleman ? I smiled.

“ Yes! Perhaps my fiction wants you to be and not just for me but for all my types... ” she smiled too.

And we started sipping from our cappuccino-thoughts again, in the thought-café of hers… in the free-breathing mind-streets of mine… in the real world of fiction…. in the free city of Stockholm............

A jewish Coffee, with love

I drink coffee after a very long time and a very good one indeed. Was in Stockholm Sweden a night before and a colleague of mine took me to one of the small cafes in the gatans near stureplan (gatan is streets in swedish). The coffee was made by a very friendly jew who, with his long beard would have been mistaken by a taliban if he is not wearing his kippah cap and tzitzit robes and not to forget the naive smile....... He brewed the grounded coffee with as much love and care, as if he is creating a piece of art, slowly leveling and pressing the grounded coffee beans into the machine and making a perfect leaf on the frothing milk, and i thought to my self, like an expert diamond maker this guy is getting the best out of raw coffee, shining his diamond in every cup of coffee he makes everyday....

I remember a doctor said to me once to put all my love to the place hurting the most and the pain will go away and for no reason i thought of it today...... if for once we remove all the bias pushed in our minds with crazy stories bearing no facts, if for once we remove the Israel and Zionism and holocaust and world war 2 images from our minds, the cultural aspect of jewism, their cloths and food, their dedication to any craft they master, their subtle way of pursuing perfection, their sustained sense of harmony in waiting, is as much to be enjoyed and celebrate with as any other colors we see in our lives. If for once we remove the pain with love........... Sometimes one has to experience first hand to enjoy the bounties of life then to be fearful of the told stories keeping us away from unexplored happiness.

I thought if ever in the cosmic coincidence of events, i get a chance to crush a bottle with my shoes for a jew girl, how good will that be.......


PS additionals:
- Stureplan is the same place i wrote another blog three years ago, the coffee was having a hint of bitterness this time though, even after putting alot of sugar........ (here is the link)

- Coffee has something to do with my Swedish sense of writing, or shall i say sweden has something to do with my writing sense of coffee. I wrote a poem in my language few years back talking about coffee while sitting in Stockholm downtown central (here is the link with translation)

My country - A sad piece of art......

Ok i am going to say it................. I am not a religious person, least of all a nationalist, but something in my heart broke of what happened in my country this week. Call it my inflamed sense of nothingness or de-flamed sense of identity but I felt as if i was made naked with the tiny helicopters hovering around with spotlights and capturing my nakedness. I felt tangible sadness in the air for my land, my painting...

One needs to see my land as as a painting or a piece of art and not as work of science, if they really want to understand it. You cannot study it by measuring the amount of colors used or the geometry of shapes painted, you need to feel it as if you are studying a painting. Like monaliza you need to feel the subtle levels of hope and fear in the smile and not the dark hazy background in green.

People tend to mix logic with emotions in terms of explaining things, assuming as if all things can be explained by logic. There are countries like america and australia, which are made more on physical and natural boudries, there are countries which are made on the basis of natural resources or race or color, they have logical boundries and to some extent can be explained and understood logicially but My country! my country was purely created on emotions and had no logicial grounds for its creation. She was created based on emotions of fear and hope, fears of few, fearing they will not be able to live freely with the people of other religion and hopes of many on maintaining there unique culture and nothing to do with religion. (irony is now many are living in fear of their own religion). Lines of red were drawn by the artists to represent that fear and hope, and a painting was created out of big white sub-continental canvas in a majority-as-authority green, and a bit of whiteness kept intact.

Now imagine if a painter no matter how famous comes with his paint brush and paints a small dot in a painting you created, to tell you that it looks more better now, what will you feel?. will you love it ?or will you be angry like hell of someone ripping you off with your originality . I personally will go the second way . There were other painters in the past coloring my land's painting indirectly and remaining hidden but this time it was a direct visible bold attempt. The super painter felt joyous of putting dots on the painting drawn by the people of my land so ardently for years.

I am not questioning here the rightness or wrongness of the painter who did this, I think i for the first time felt the pain of american people on what they felt on 9/11. Somebody ripped off and challenged their authority and originality, dotting up the picture of the free nation they created for them. I can totally empathize with them. But my pain is much more then theirs, as they were able to spend billions of dollars to clean up their painting for years, they had the means and guts to do this and they were able to maintain their authority and sense of pride if not originality, but my country people cannot do anything for years. My land's painting is damaged , its a small damage, but as i said before, we cannot measure the amount of damage in numbers, we can only feel the tiny dots in the far surrounding corners damaging the whole painting.
I am still hopeful the painting will survive but a part of me is really beginning to question if it is worth to paint anymore and was it not a wrong attempt in the first place........

A fashionable idea

Every human being, every one of us, lives his/her life in an IDEA, or a set of ideas. These ideas that binds him/her in the social fabric around her as well as keeps him/her staying alive with some distant goals to live for. We are nothing but mere proponents and adherents of these ideas that we are in-love with in different phases of our lives, and all our lives, all we do is just refining these ideas.
No matter what rational or logical reasoning or explanations we give to ourselves, it is the love of these ideas blossoming in the deep infinity of our minds that drives our conscious awareness in life. It is this love which we need to examine and cherish , for it was this love perhaps which forced adam to cross boundaries ending up leaving the gardens of eden, it was this love which kept einstein of not accepting newtonian beliefs and think beyond..... it was and is this love that has lead all the great men to conquer infinity in their lives. Rationality, logic and reasoning just come as a distant second to help reaching our love of these ideas in life, and not as a priori first to find that love, as some of the rational thinkers thinks today.

So i sat today in my room of existence, removing one by one,all these clothes of ideas i had been wearing for long and for short and in that utter naked nothingness of mine, I looked at them wondering, how these ideas lying in-front of me like dead clothes now have so skillfully defined my whole life....becoming the real persona of me then the real me. It looked as if it all starts as a fashion which gradually transforms itself into habitualness just like regular clothes. We wear all these cloths in the beginning to be liked by others and then afterwards just to be identified by others of our consistent or should i say habitual tastes.

I know when i was young, i was wearing all sorts of ideas taught to me almost like fashion.... ideas relating to love of woman, to love of land, to love of humanity, appearing in different clothing and shades, this red jacket, that green hat..... the white humanity shirt followed by more swimming dress for some time believing in nothing, to believing of becoming a superman by just wearing my sanity underwear over my emotion trousers.......

And today as i stand in my room of existence , in utter naked nothingness, I look at the shirt and pant i was wearing a while back( asking me to wear them again) and the closets and cupboards full of old cloths of ideas (some of then i used to be very proud off but holding no meaning to me now, and some i do wish to wear someday again).... and i think what would be my last dress on the day my room of existence cease to exist......... I would certainly like a red polka instead of a dull white........i will like to die in fashion :)