Happiness Guide: The Devil is in the Details

Just read the guidelines carefully, girl. Just read the wise lines, just read the details.

What if, sir, what if I say I can’t even process your guidelines, what if I can’t swallow your plastic happiness, what if I just choke with laughter every time I even try to chew. What if your guide to happiness just makes me want to revolt.

Your wise words just make me want to retreat. When your readymade recipe is shoved into my face, sir, I just feel like I want to return to my mum’s womb. Fight or flight – I really can’t choose. What I won’t choose though is to follow that ‘path of courage’, the road that – according to you, sir – is less travelled by. Go on and tell me that the youth is wasted on the young, go on and tell me that I should seize the day, that I should live life to the fullest. And then I can happily tell you that your ‘path of courage’ just lacks the originality it advocates.

How can you tell me to head north or south, east or west, how can you tell if I should choose right or left, when I can only know right from wrong once I’ve felt the sting of failure in my own skin? Once I have felt enough to comfortably define victory and defeat?

The defeated will always warn with tales of epic crashes, conspiracies of that giant spider web ready to trap us all into a life of everlasting, torturously repetitive loss. The ‘victorious’, on the other hand, will rush to stick congratulatory badges on themselves, to quote and cite themselves as if they are already the proven heroes of a time that’s not over yet, of a time that is still ticking away, ticking, ticking, ticking away for a younger generation that submerges itself into the pursuit of certain dangerous type of nothingness. Of a type of nothingness that likes to disguise itself as happiness. The ‘victorious’ will pave the way for us, only because they have trained themselves to be too confident to admit that they get nightmares too, that they fear the day their time is drained like blood from body and soul.

The ‘victorious’ forget that we must all fight in different ways, that in the end we all find different ways to push through hurdles, before we return behind the white starting line to prepare for the end. Before we prepare to finally form our answers. Or simply before we sign out with a smile and no answers on our blank sheet at all.

I don’t know if I should search for answers anymore.

If I should make the effort to scroll.

To scroll down the pages, to switch between screens, fonts, faces, lips moving fast, moving faster, spouting out truths so spoken that they can’t scratch open those wounds that were stitched in manic efforts to save whatever sanity I had left from chasing those who sometimes glorify ‘adventure’ and sometimes glorify ‘inner peace’. I am tired of analysing the audiovisual information that I have surrounded myself with.

The devil is in the details, baby, and I just can’t analyse anymore. I just can’t zoom into the details anymore.

I just can’t scan the books, process rock solid words until they are fluid with meaning, until I can say I am ready to copy into my book. Paste, a messy representation of somebody else’s life, ready to be served. Ready to be posted.

By me. To me.

Post, screen shot, paste. Observe, adapt, paste. Clean page, blank words that are detached from a reality so smooth yet so rough on the margins, so eloquently spoken yet so colloquially misused. How can the real version of life be matched to my unreliable, pseudo-scientific, over-simplified version of happiness, to my – mostly originally – cloned version of it.

No battery left, quickly girl, search for a plug so you can clone the process of copying. Something in the details just doesn’t make sense.

I don’t think I can copy and paste what is sold as experience but is really unwritten future, memories so well presented in packages yet still in foetal form. I don’t think I can continue sticking to the habit of collecting cut-outs of wise words, cut-outs of images, trips, goals, the secret envy that I was unwillingly fed. I don’ think I will be sticking to the habit of gluing words that are not true to my heart on my yet unstained future wall. I don’t think I will build my future – or even assess my past- based – primarily- on foreign sets of eyes, foreign senses, foreign advice.

It’s all but foreign energy after all. And I got no battery left to hold onto the exhilarating anxiety of fearing what is yet to come. Of trying so passionately to prevent impending disaster that I cannot help but be distraught.

I ain’t got the energy, baby. I ain’t got the time to stop the clock, to rechannel my life so I can avoid your mistakes sir (not mine), your scratches sir (not mine), your self-triggered fears sir (not mine), your lost life sir (not mine). I ain’t foolish enough to give away my life while I consume the blogs, the magazines, the expert information, the common sense, the new scientific research, the old fables… While I consume unfounded evidence on how to live my life (not yours).

I don’t know the simple words to describe how it feels to be fooled but… They have been feeding us their conception of happiness, you know? They have been feeding us the reheated advice that they themselves have left in the fridge . And who cares really if in another life they would have eaten it.

Who cares if they are coming to our rescue, if they say that the intentions of the ‘experienced’ are always intentions of the good.

I say they are pulling the strings, both defeated and ‘victorious’ alike, I say they are mostly pulling on opposite ends, I say they are pulling us apart.

And the devil who deals with the details just can’t deal with their inconsistencies, just can’t deal with their insecurities anymore. Who is going to pick up the leftovers now for a life not lived as it should? The devil proudly declares ‘Not me’.

PS: Music to accompany the devil’s thoughts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrlNN-RsJUc

 

Telling Stories: Observant Bridge Crosser

This is the story of the bridge crosser, the conscious observer, discovering herself as she searches through faces for a life less mundane than hers, spicier, maybe darker, maybe just a little less black-and-white.

This is a hopeful story within a ‘story’ so real that no dictionary would ever dare classify as such.

It is a story with no beginning, no ending, no scenario. It is simply a bridge story, bridging my stories with yours, whatever is theirs with whatever is ours. There is this bridge I cross at least once a day, at least once a night – and that’s all there is to it. A bridge that takes me from ‘home’ to ‘home’ without ever taking me where I would rather be.

Tonight I proudly rename myself as the “Observant Bridge Crosser”. Even if observers are always narrators. Even if they are never – and will never even be close to being – the protagonists.

I am the girl who feeds on the spotlight simply by opening her heart and window until all gestures, all moves, all colours of characters more interesting than her just creep in to fill the void. Until all strangers suddenly become protagonists with the greatest of stories to tell. Isn’t it strange how everyone turns into a story teller once someone turns that hypothetical microphone towards them?

All I have to give is just pieces of stories I stuck together because I could never come up with the complete picture. You know, if you added up the pictures that tourists, parents, lovers, tired and lonesome past lovers -current loners- take of that artificial landmark, the London Eye, you would have a movie capturing the colours of the city at every time of the day. An eye and a camera click for every minute, for every stage that a city goes through. All the moods if you like. All the phases the city goes through to reflect, as if, the moods of all those unmemorable creatures crossing the – painfully and ironically – iconic bridge. Eyes born in different continents, capturing images of all corners of the earth, meet on the shoulders of a bridge that makes for a wonderful postcard.

I once saw a painter on the bridge. Painting life from above. From an angle that distorts reality, such that it all seems part of a child’s play set. Every brush adding a layer of simplicity. A touch of colour for an already sunnier reflection of ‘real’. I saw ‘reality’ through the eyes of tired men in suits, returning to work in the morning as if they were returning home. I saw young women in polished shoes, hair tied back, scruffy skirts, nervous girls always nervously fixing skirts, work clothes that never matched owners’ expressions, dogs that looked like their owners and kids that didn’t. Young souls looking tired on the outside, drained, dragging their feet together with a cloudy past, even on those unusually sunny days. The exact same young souls turned brighter at night – perhaps just more sentimental. Some drunk with love, others with misfortune. Tearful faces, careful not to show signs of tears.

Checking left, right, left, right, wondering whether the river flowing beneath them is a safer place to be than the life they live in.

I saw secret love in all its forms. Black man, white woman, wild dreams, motorbikes, only uniforms in common. Companions defying norms, playing with fire, with the speed of passion that makes souls crash into each other until there is nothing but ruins, roses and miracles amongst the ashes. Man touching man, lips painting flowers on foreign lips, hands sculpturing wonders on foreign bodies in the spirit of perfection. In the spirit of the passing moment that is never too close to one’s hands to fully grasp. I often wondered how many lovers have their first kisses on bridges every day. Counting numbers to forget about moments that I would rather have counted with blood pressure. Making up numbers to let go of the thought that I had – most often than not – chosen to rationalise chances rather than soaking – not just grabbing – them all with my senses. It’s all about senses on the bridge.

A tireless effort to make memories out of everyday life.

A mother dressing her child in bright pink dress on a gloomy Sunday. Taking pictures. That dress will be in an album one day. A tear for a mum that lost a child, a child that lost a mum, a smile for the two of them remembering how Sundays were different in decades recorded in nostalgic black-and-white. The bright pink dress will be the trademark of an album one day. A reference point for someone somewhere to reminiscence, to claim in moments of pain that past decades always trap in their graves the best of our days. I wonder if I’ve wasted my best days wandering in streets, wondering where the road takes all those magnetic creatures I like to follow. Wondering where the road takes all those faces that unexpectedly pump up my pulse. I wonder if I’ve wasted my best days imagining stories for those who, if given the option, would gladly replace pages and pages of complicated patterns with the white pages of comforting lies.

I wonder if I often imagine stories that never existed in the first place – even in their most primitive form. I smile. I internally whistle the song that happens to be stuck in my head. I check inside my plastic bags as if I am searching to find a heart.

I sometimes see people with plastic bags as I drag myself, aimlessly, across a bridge marked as a tourist attraction on the maps of those who seem to appreciate the view much more than I do.

I think of the food I am carrying at nights, all the chocolate I would have to swallow to stop thinking of the darkest parts of my day. I think of all the chocolate we must all swallow to forget. I think that consumption of all sorts of drugs must be high at this time of day. Another day. Just one more day. One more.

Hey, it’s just another day, Observant Bridge Crosser. Keep your chin up and make up some stories to recover the loss, to make up for the stories you could have chosen to (re)live.

Hey, it’s still a beautiful night, Observant Bridge Crosser. Keep your chin up. Maybe tomorrow you’ll find the courage to offer some chocolate to the stranger that you so badly want to stalk.

Maybe tomorrow you will make a real story for yourself. A real fable or two.

Phases (Deceive to Believe)

Tonight let’s pretend we have the answers. That we have figured it all out and that tomorrow we won’t run back to the beginning of that long circle where it all began. That we will know why we cry when separation strikes like an unexpected comet, when goodbyes strike us twelve times just as midnight creeps into our thoughts. Maybe we will know why our thoughts turn darker at nights, why platonic love only feels good once real, why we always wish we could rewind time until everything real reverts back to its platonic form. Maybe we will know why we can so effortlessly deceive ourselves into believing we were deceived.

Let’s pretend that we know why our mouths blow out fire at each other when we are thirsty for love.

Tonight let’s pretend we have the answers. Maybe we will know why we prefer to believe that Chance or Fate kicked us down those stairs. Why we prefer to believe that someone else opened the doors to our addictions, that our addictions dragged us into those rooms of hell. Let’s pretend that our hell is never self-constructed, that we have never engaged in mapping out our misery so that we can fix those leakages, so that we can finally make that long-awaited new start. Let’s pretend we have never convinced ourselves that our enemies are our friends, that our friends are our enemies, that we need neither enemies nor friends. That we know how to pinpoint danger or what smells rotten or who deserves to lie in our arms.

That certainty is a region of probability we often find ourselves in.

Maybe tonight I will realise that I am experiencing the side effects of entering the Mistrust Phase. Do you know the Mistrust Phase? The “trust-crushed” phase? All these strange headaches, the painful heartaches, this analysis-paralysis-analysis effect that makes me tremble, this tambourine echo in my ear, this paranoid tendency to misinterpret audio-visual facts.  All these are the side-effects. The naturally unnatural consequences of the hollow bottom that we all sometimes reach when we trust too much, when we feel too much, when we love too much. When we let our walls down just to find that we have been invaded by conquerors who wanted to ransack our inside until we had no more ‘gold’ in our heart. By the conquerors who wanted to leave us wanting.

Cheers to those who left us so that we could learn to love ourselves.

Sometimes we all enter the Mistrust Phase. It is a land of wreckage and disease. Of dead cells on our skin, of skeletons by our bedside, of torn pictures and an unstoppable urge to break free. To enter the Neutral Phase. You know the Neutral Phase? The “let-me-take-that-deep-breath” phase? It’s full of those good old things that make us love ourselves. Songs, movies, books, words someone wrote for us once, memories that make us smile. We are there, inside our little cocoon. With no need to communicate with the other side of the world, because all we need to hold on to is a little self-respect. A little pat on the back by the part of us that cannot be blown away by the hurricanes. Those (malicious) blank stares by those who were once our comfort zone. Our pillow to rest our head upon.
So our Self – and our Self only – shelters us until we are ready to dance in the rain again. To walk out and into the gardens of the Trust Phase. To open our arms to all those who were peaking outside our windows when we were locked inside ourselves. To let those who admired us from the outside mould us into a New Self. To help us turn into a New Self. Made of past bruises and new stories beautifully told as tattooed memories inside our head. The Trust Phase is all about telling stories, absorbing stories, creating a new storybook with some well-spoken lies and some awkwardly beautiful, unshakeable facts. A mixture of raw emotion, fairy tales and the body language of truth.

Who we are depends on the Phase we are in. We pretend we have a stable form, just because we have the power to deceive ourselves. Just because we are vulnerable enough to be easily deceived. And that is the one thing I know to be true.

Sometimes I am all curled up, a dark ball of fears weaved into darkness, weaved into unfulfilled expectations, fulfilled, dreaded, postponed nightmares coming to life. Covered in dirty blankets. An incurable heart fever, the inflammatory tears running down my cheeks, my chin, the parasitic version of those fleeting ‘what ifs’.

Dead youth inside my nearly adult body.

And sometimes I am all clean skin, no makeup on, no lipstick to hide the cracks in my smile. I am all flesh and bones exposed to sunlight, all blood blending in with the rain. All happy freckles and proud birth marks at the tips of happy, round cheeks. Stretched chest, deep breaths, open arms, crazy hair flying free at the back of an open car. A wildly soothing scream of ‘Here. Here, I am. I am always here.’

An honest clown. The idealist drama queen.

An unintentional collage of trademarks, the patched up version of the trails left on my body and soul by friends and strangers alike.

A mirage of stability. A mirage of originality.

Nothingness.  Everythingness. Just a tear and a smile.

The fool fooling herself.

 “I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.”

(Plain) Plane Relationships

“I wouldn’t want you to want to be wanted by me

I wouldn’t want you to worry you’d be drowned within my sea

I only wanted to be wonderful

And wonderful is true,

In truth I only really wanted to be wanted by you.”

I always loved plane conversations. Plane conversations are really, truly, most definitely an unforgettable experience. Unless you happen to be sitting next to someone lucky enough to be able to fall into deep sleep and then not wake up until the artificial bird carrying you both on its wings just falls flat on the earth. Boom, wake up you little polar bear, you are not dead yet. Wake up.

So yes, plane conversations are such a special species of Conversations that it is worth exhausting all your limited energy to participate fully in them. You’ll play the talker, you’ll play the listener, you’ll alternate, I promise it will all feel like a wonderfully simple and brief (love) relationship with the person keeping you company during your – possibly last – journey of life. It doesn’t matter whether you are sitting next to your worrying mum or a worrying stranger praying to Holy Mary, Holy Jesus, to every Holy Angel of Earth and Sky for a safe landing on that sometimes dull place called earth. Just as if going to heaven is actually a scenario from hell.  Or whether you are sitting next to an old lady – a complete stranger to you – telling you all these creepy stories about every time her now dead (although hopefully not in a plane crash) husband got her flowers, about all the crazy things her unbearably naughty grandchildren do on Christmas day or Valentine’s day or on days when she just wants to go to bed. It doesn’t matter whether you are sitting next to someone who very rarely opens up to anyone but himself or whether you are unfortunate enough to be chained to your chair next to the biggest gossiper in town, earth, universe, you name it.

It’s strange what a little bit of atmosphere can do to the human mind – without any candlelight, without any decorative glasses of wine at all. So as soon as oxygen levels drop down and sense of time is suspended, everyone seems to get into this absurdly confessional mood. Even those who despise the benefits of psychoanalysis seem to voluntarily surrender to your hypnotic power of understanding, to your ethereal presence as the last human being they may ever see.

During my last trip, I sat next to a very distinguished figure. My sister. With whom I had spent most of my Christmas holiday, perhaps to the damage of both of our nervous systems. But although we had a lot of time to dig deep in our wounds during our lazy, sunny Christmas days on an island where everyone revolves so slowly around themselves and a couple of other people, we just preferred to watch TV instead. And compete on who would eat most chocolate. Ferrero Rocher is hardly the type of chocolate you only get in airports these days, so there was an abundance of it to munch on in place of breakfast. More chocolate means less talking.

But once we were in the air – or should I say ON air considering the large number of familiar faces who happened to be travelling with us – we began to turn years of anger into a therapeutic conversation. As the pitch of our voices rose from excitement, I was reminded that two seemingly opposite in character people may actually share the same values. Sometimes even – although not in our case – people strangely share the same values without necessarily sharing the same upbringing. So somewhere in the middle of nowhere, above the barely-recognisable blue of an ocean or sea or lake that I couldn’t even bother locating on a map, we got passionate about all the discontenting things people do when they want to make an impression on others. All the sources of insecurity that drive all those self-centred creatures to reducing others to tears. Of course, she let go of her anger through swearing in the most hilarious manner, while I spurt out all that cynicism I usually restrain within my facial muscles, my raised eyebrow, my half-smile.

And I began to remember that we people may be different in terms of interests and preferences, but most often than not we carry similarly well-hidden wounds, we feel threatened in similarly unfriendly environments, we share the same parts of the brain that trigger negative feelings when others put us down. Various faces of strangers I once encountered on planes, on trains, in streets, in lifts began to come back to me. You know, I always thought we all have parts of our hearts with friends we will never meet again, with strangers who happened to become our friends for an hour or two. I always tried to imagine people walking in the street parallel to my home address, hoping they were also thinking, for no more than a brief second, of all the deep confessions I once deposited in their bank-hearts. Isn’t it true after all that confessing secrets only requires a brief moment of trust, the right atmosphere and the right timing? I don’t know why, but it seems that I was always prone to falling in love with beautiful minds even if I never had the intention of creating any type of physical bond with them. I was always prone to feeling disappointed with all those who grab a piece of me with them without ever returning to confirm “yes, you are occasionally one of my thoughts when my mind drifts away in planes”. I forgive. But I still feel like a fool sometimes for getting drunk on the right atmosphere and getting carried away into believing I have found one more soul to hold my soul so that I can hold theirs too. Does it really matter that they ran away? Didn’t I run away with their thoughts too? Didn’t I?

In so many ways the theft was mutual.

It seems to me that sometimes we just want to be wanted. You can call it nature, evolution or even devolution in this modern world of isolation. The truth is we will never know why we want what we want. It’s just what we want.

And so it is… The shortest story, no love no glory. In truth I only really wanted to be wanted by you. 

Cheers to those who enjoy pretending they can see through other’s eyes. And to the thousands of stories taking place in their minds.

 

 

Telling Stories: On the fable of Time (Part 1)

“And I’m beyond your peripheral vision

So you might want to turn your head

Cause someday you might find you’re starving

And eating all of the words that you said.”

Before I tire you out, before I eat away both your time and mine, singing odd lyrics that don’t seem to provide much context, let me just quickly tell you that for the last year I have been humming this song for approximately 80% of my time (outside sleeping hours). So I wonder if I should officially announce Ani Difranco’s 32 Flavours as the theme song for the now dead-and-gone but never forgotten 2013. Or the theme song for 2014. As time ticks away, I write down 2013 and then 2014 and then scribble 32 next to each, wondering which two numbers look better on paper. I read and reread while time ticks away like an enemy, holding its knife against my chin, counting my pointless words, my drops of sweat, my minutes left till surrendering to Sleep.

 23:32.

I start thinking I need to share my thoughts with an audience. Maybe giving more people the key to my mind can help me come up with answers much faster. Then again… Maybe not. If I make copies of the key, will I paralyse in the sound of hundreds of voices telling me what to do? Or will the voices ever teach me to pull the trigger when the countdown is dangerously approaching zero?

Hmm. I think I might as well eat all of the words I just said. If you don’t wish to call me Chloe, I’d settle with you calling me the ‘Time-Waster’ instead. I really do feel that this devised term is more accurate a description of myself than the utterly pretentious three words I usually use when introducing myself to very important strangers.

To get back on track (back to the Serious Side now), there is something that the time-wasters of this life know very well. Time is just like the horizon. You think you can see the end of the ocean, but in reality your (limited) vision is playing games with you. If you squint and look closer, you will find that the sea just merges into the sky and there is nothing more but an endless blue. But don’t be fooled into thinking there is no end. There is an end to all that blue, but it is not always in sight. There is an end to all games in fact, even if a single round of Monopoly can sometimes convince you otherwise. You will play many pointless games with Time over time. Yes, seemingly endless games with what appears to be – or rather what feels like – an invisible opponent. And the story will repeat itself. There will come a time, when you will realise that there were no winners or losers to start with. Winning was never the point of the game anyway. And at exactly the same time, on the exact second, your stressful game will come to an end. Your only serious, face-to-face encounter with Time is the one before the final blackout. How you’ve used your time in the meantime will determine whether you fade into nature as a winner or as a loser.

As a teenager, it once occurred to me to write at the end of a music book the following words: “The end. But, who is able to know if we’ve reached the end?” Perhaps, this was my first realisation that Time is an elusive idea or, in other words, that thinking of time and endings as fixed concepts is mistaken. That clocks are manmade, that there is a little bit of fiction in our understanding of time and that there is a little bit of irony in our belief that we can call something ‘History’ when stories clearly repeat themselves.

I know that there is no known end, at least that there is no end in sight for my personal book. I write every day using all sorts of colours and different types of inks, but I have stopped trying to figure out when and why I will want to put my pen down. The fable of Time may reveal its truer side to me one day. There is an equal probability, however, that I will never get wiser as I grow older, that my vision will never clear up.  I can live with that and I appreciate uncertainty for all that it is worth.

I feel free to waste my time as I wish, but I never ever want to be in the unfortunate position of having to wish my time away. So here is my wish for 2014.

Time is valuable my friends. I hope you never have to wish your time away. I hope you never have to pray that 2014 comes to an end. I hope that this year none of us will waste opportunities to show love and feel loved. 

Remember that we all deserve time well spent. And enjoy this (new) year.

Cheers to all time-wasters.

Just a beautiful photo of a girl that I found while wasting my time on Humans of New York. Feel free to find her story if you have some time to spare.

Both Sides (Now)

I never liked taking sides. So when it came to choosing which side of the road I would be on, I decided that it would be most appropriate if I became a moving contradiction. The Rational Artist. The rebel who likes law and order in certain contexts.

A mad, independent, messy, civilised, loud, shy, daring, happy woman. 

So I decided that I only cared to make sense to myself. That I would do whatever makes me “happy”. Whatever that word may mean, it doesn’t make much sense to try to define it. To be honest, I don’t think definitions and categories are always necessary either. I know now that “happiness” is just a complex function incorporating multiple variables. You can experiment with inputting different levels of different variables and you can gauge the level of happiness as an output, but you can never be 100% sure. Plus, “happiness” is an ever-changing function, so if you try to track how it changes with time, you will probably miss your bus, your appointment with your dentist and your chance to kiss that girl you liked.

All I ever wanted was to be a mad, independent, messy, civilised, loud, shy, daring, happy woman. 

And I never really understood why people can’t just see us in our entirety with all our thousands of faces, changing phases and mood swings. With all our thousands of wonderfully crafted flaws, our soft sides, our bruises, our darkest corners, all our pointlessly extraordinary talents.

You could say that just like all amateur and masochistic philosophers – or should I say grumpy teenagers – I had to find something to fight for. Some sort of tiresomely repetitive battle. That I just had to create an artificial pool of drama and then just jump in salty water with my lifejacket. That I just wanted to wiggle my little feet around so that others would notice and come to my rescue. You could say that it was all an attention-grabbing exercise. That I chose to struggle with finding an “identity”, just because I knew that it wouldn’t be a particularly taxing “struggle”. I could agree with you to an extent, and we could have a good laugh in recognition of our human need to have others combing our hair and gently touching our cheeks, telling us that we are everyday heroes. Even if we are just grumpy teenagers who refuse to grow up. Even if all we deserve – and, frankly, all we need- is a slap.

To an extent, you’d be right in saying that I live to exaggerate, that I have always been a caricature of a hero. After all, I have always loved stories of extreme passion, distorted human psyche and, really, anything with a life-or-death dimension to it. And if I were a colour, I guess that most of the time I’d be a deep, painful-to-stare-at red.

I say “most of the time”. Because as time drags me along its unpredictable ride, I am learning to appreciate a bit of that serene blue that colours anything where comfortable silence rules. I am learning to appreciate the colour of the earth as well. I know that most of the steps we take have already been taken by our ancestors. That our parents have already paved the way for us, that in all our unique attributes we still resemble each other. That we must all drink clean water and eat warm food to survive. That girls are in pain once a month and that all boys secretly wonder what these feminine –and slightly alien- bodily functions are all about. So we are all connected to each other. Despite the different life paths that we may take and the way the goddess of luck may treat us, we all feel hurt and we all know how to smile.

I am a passionate pragmatist. I know the rules of the game and I (sometimes) abide by those rules as well. I like winning, I am prepared to lose, though. I am prepared to lose if I believe I can meaningfully break the norms. As I grow older, as I break away from my “grumpy teenager” self, as life’s difficulties grind me and mould me into some sort of an adult, I realise more and more that at some point most of us are obliged to take sides. And that’s not just a political phenomenon. It’s a societal phenomenon with an increasingly personal dimension.

As I entered my twenties, I struggled more and more with the idea of “identity”. I spent three years at university attempting to define myself. I panicked, switched from self to self, rushed to change clothes, tried on all types of masks, added makeup, removed all makeup and stood naked in front of the mirror.

I still had no answers. I had questions though. I became more curious. I wanted to explore voices, faces, places, words, numbers, patterns, you name it.

For the last three years, I spent my time thinking rather than writing. So as 2013 comes to an end, I have decided that I am now ready to let you into my world. Into the world of this Rational Artist. This blog is my humble attempt to share my thoughts with you.

Welcome to my world, Everyone. If you ever feel that you are not on my side, feel free to jump on the other side. All (constructive) criticism is always welcome.

PS: To avoid discomfort, please be aware that I do enjoy regularly switching sides.

A beautiful portrait of Joni Mitchell. Her song, “Both Sides”, is even more beautiful so feel free to carefully (re)listen to the lyrics if you want.