Theory of Relativity

No, I am not going to discuss any mathematical or physical paradoxes here, I will gladly leave that to my sister and her, eh, followers.

Almost two years ago a certain wise man (who happens to be a Shakespearean theatre workshop leader at our faculty) said to my "just expelled" classmate:
"Don't despair. In a five years time it won't matter anymore."
At that time, however, it was as helping a sentence as "time heals all wounds" from the mouth of your best friend right after your breaking up with the "love of your life".
Well, nowadays it is more than obvious that both the professional and family life of that classmate is a lot happier than it used to be when he was a working student like me. And I have learned my lesson, too, because since time the innocent Juliet was burried inside my heart, I have gradually come to the conclusion that time might be an extremely slow healer, yes, yet there are still things worth living for- even if you have (repeatedly) lost the person you loved.

Today, I was reminded of how relative the importance of certain events in the flow of time might be in an ironic way:

Two of our exams in "American studies" and most of the essay deadlines all take place on September 11th. The first reaction was panic and fear... of what? Not being able to pass them and thus being expelled? Silly me! There was a second immediate reaction to the information in my mind... A memory of different kind of fear...

Seven years ago. I would bet it was Tuesday. I can clearly remember my being allowed to leave the geography class, as I had a sudden urge to vomit. My feeling sick was, however, not the result of the teacher's disgusting testing methods, but because of some disease. I thus came home earlier than usually and found my mother speechless and shocked, in front of the TV, which she switched off instinctively as I entered the room. I wouldn't suspect my mum of watching something dirty so I knew that she was trying to protect me from something ... but there was no point, a few minutes later I knew. Fire, pain, tears, crashing planes, fall of WTC. At the moment I realized what was happening, my fever, failing the geography test, all seemed unimportant...
I was sure that the Third World War had just begun, crying over all those dead Americans, crying over myself, crying over the whole mankind.

Seven years have passed. The memory is still so vivid as if it was yesterday and yet we are already learning about "poets' reaction to 09/11" in our "American Cultural Studies" course.
I have become used to living in the world full of terrorists ad falling planes and yet I am feeling that I am at least a bit safer and happier than my parents were at my age...

Today, my fighting to the last breath for my not being expelled seems to be very important. After all those years of "blood, toil, tears and sweat" at the university, it would be really unpleasant to be labelled as an irresponsible high school graduate. But then, it is not a matter of life and death, as my father would say. I just hope that in a five years time it will be a laughing matter to read this.

Given that there is something like "next five years" of course.
Long live the optimists!

Such a tender ball ...

"Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd?
So obvious and so easie to be quench't,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd,
That she might look at will through every pore?"

John Milton; Samson Agonistes

Some Studies in Ink & Paper

On the way to one’s Master’s degree there are many minor obstacles. Some of them are supposedly easy to deal with (getting books from a closed library, doing research on the Internet when the connection has failed, overcoming one’s terrible headaches and pretending that one can actually read from the monitor for hours, knowing when and where to find your teachers when their consultation hours seem to be a TOP SECRET matter), but some of them seem just unsolvable - for example when your printer goes on strike.

During the academic year I usually use our “ingenious“ copy-print system at school, which includes an ISIC card, a reasonable amount of cash, a huge amount of patience and a bit of engineering skills for handling the giant machines. In really desperate cases (when there are endless queues or “temporarily” irreparable errors) I use (and pay for) the printer at work, or run to some copy centre. My (ex?) roommate got an old printer from her father last year, so I was looking forward to the comfort of having the chance to print in our dormitory room even during weekends or holidays. But soon after our buying a set of papers we discovered that the printer is only compatible with my roommate’s laptop, which she was naturally taking with her for holidays. Lonely weekends with my “beloved” computer were not crucial for my studies, after all.

But when I am spending part of my summer holidays/exam period at home, I am dependent on a “family” printer, which is quite old from my point of view and quite new from my parents’ point of view. In any case, cooperation with it is adventurous and time and patience-demanding: You put a sheet of paper in it, a lot of noise and earth-, sorry, tablequakes follows, and the result is as unpredictable as when making a tie-dye T-shirt. The final surprise is not always pleasant and MY finding out that MY SISTER someone else has used all the toner just happens way too often.

First time when this had happened, my father wanted to be helpful and ecological. He secretly sent my grandma to buy a refill in the downtown and used one of the syringes, which my mother usually uses for his treatment, to refill the toner. The result of this noble experiment was my father being home alone, balancing on a chair, trying to cover up the black marks all over the ceiling with a white paint, hoping that my mother wouldn’t notice.
A series of painful “I-am-not-rich-enough-to-buy-cheap-things“ experiences followed and finally my father discovered a company, which was selling the compatible kind of toners. This company has been living in a fragile symbiosis with our printer until this June.
Just at the time when I (who else) found out that we have run out of toner again and indicated carefully that I would REALLY need to print out some of my drafts, essays, or at least the agreement for the accommodation office, the company found out that it was inconvenient to distribute this kind of toner anymore, as „nobody“ would buy it. (Proof that our printer might be getting old still not strong enough.)
Then I gave up and went to France. But my father never gives up. He looked up a company on the Internet, which was “compliant” to send him “our” kind of toner. When I came back, it was bought already and the ceremony of “changing of the toners” began. And continued by many hours of hopeless printer reinstalling and watching the blank pages coming out of it again and again in disbelief.

So, a few minutes ago my father started to write a very, eh, assertive reclamation letter to this “serviceable“ company. Then my mother entered the room: “Don’t you tell me that you are sending them a HANDWRITTEN complaint?“

"Of course I am,"my father replied. "So that they would see that I was given no choice!"

I wonder, whether this would work with my teachers...

Hooray for manuscripts!

Simply Sad

I was preparing a special post for this 25th.
It should have been optimistic and colourful.
Yet some days (and especially nights) are just more painful than the others.
And I just had to get this pseudo-emo-stream of consciousness out of my head instead.
Sorry.

Still haunted by the shadows of those years
By tricky promises and places never seen
By copper rings and childish dreams and tears
By their false hopes and my not being mean

I’m capable of forgiveness
(for all the bad things, whether they seemed good)
But forget I cannot
(at least the good things, whether they seemed bad)
And understanding – more or less-
(to all those lapses and quickly changing moods)
does not help a lot
(when more than alive my soul is feeling dead)

Not being able to be friends with past
How can I trust love on the present day?
Fear of the future falls will last
Until I for my sins have paid…

Hungry and Angry

Approximately three years ago there was one of these crazy days in my adventurous life, when most of my classmates had a common dinner in a pub, while I was ill and staying in bed with my headphones on. Later I learned (not for the last time unfortunatelly) that alcohol can make even very shy friends very talkative.
What happened was, that a very good friend of mine X told a group of my classmatess (including my ex-boyfriend who later brought the news to me) that a very good friend of mine Y was in love with me AND with another of his female friends at the same time. Well, it was kind of shock not only for my ex, but also for me, because if I was not completely sure concerning the first news, I was totally unaware of the second part about the second girl. I was convinced then that this good friend of mine Y would share such a thing with me first and later with friend X, if it was true. So I (How naive!) called my dear friend Y and asked him, if this was true. He got quite angry (and I didn't know just then that it was because the rumours actually WERE true, just then I thought we were just both angry that all the classmates had heard such things) and precisely in his style he wrote a very witty and poeticalinguistically interesting message to friend X, which I am unfortunatelly unable to quote word by word, but it was something like :

"There are only two words in English containing the "ngr" cluster of letters, and as I am not so hungry right now, you can guess what I am and why", just in much more sophisticated way.

I recalled this memory this morning when I woke up (for the first time since I have been eating "carefully") STARVING. I wanted to fool my stomach/brain/whatever by telling it that it can't be starving if my weight is still the same. The surprise was that it actually wasn't. After two weeks of less strict diet than I am on now I have already lost 6.6 pounds (3kg that is).
I can think of many people who may become jealous of my having this bacteria: my sister, my roommate, Katie, maybe even Le Soleil, all those who had the feeling that they should do something about their weight last year. But I can assure you, being hungry is actually very close to being angry not only from the linguistic point of view. If I were you I would keep "reshaping" the body instead of not eating. (Sorry, giving advice to someone who would never read this, and if they did, they wouldn't believe, silly me).

On the plus side, my feeling hungry slightly exceeds my being angry at both my faculty and myself, as I found out just yesterday, that the September exam period is exceptionally short this year, which means that I have actually at least ten days less for my essays than I thought, which gave me almost completely sleepless night, but still no ideas for the thesis'. So I am fooling my being hungry by a painkiller right now, so that I will be able to write, and I am going to use the fear and anger to my advantage.

Essays, here I come!

Potentially Dangerous

The other day, when I was enjoying some happy moments watching the "Capricorns" at the ZOO, my eye was (actually both of my eyes were then) caught by an inscription which said:

"A male bouquetin is a potentially dangerous animal. Please, do not come any closer."

I couldn't help but laugh, as I was somehow identifying myself with these stubborn animals, not only because of my being born in the sign of Capricorn (well, I was NOT identifying myself with the MALE part so much, that's true, on the other hand some of my former unhappy loves were born in the sign of Capricorn as well and well, they had proved themselves dangerous when I got closer to them, so the inscription made sense to me anyway).
Today I was reminded of the poor bouquetins in a very bitter way.

It has been almost two weeks since I started suffering something in addition to my sore eye. Nauseas, diarrhoea, headaches and shaking fevers at night...
I have survived my mountain trip, got back to the capital city and as my situation was not getting any better in spite of some pills from a French pharmacy, I went to see my doctor and spent two more days being examined in all imaginable (and perhaps more) ways instead of spending time with people who would deserve it.

Then I was given a set of antibiotics, as they found out that I have a high level of infection in my body according to the blood test, but they didn't know what it was. The only comforting thing was that it was very probably NOT appendicitis. The additional information also said that the antibiotics should be a cure to malaria among others. This made Carrot and Katie laugh a lot, as there is said to be this new cure for malaria, which helps 70% people to get back to normal, but the 30% start thinking that they are Jesus Christ. Well I decided to take the risk as I was born on December 25^th anyway, so it can hardly get worse.
Then I was finally allowed to go to my hometown and see my (also ill) parents, the deal with the doctor being that I would call her on Thursday and she would tell me the results of the rest of the tests.
I started swallowing these antibiotics, the only result being my feeling even sicker (you are not allowed to stay in the sun when taking them and it's been a really nice and hot weather here this week, how typical).
Yesterday I had to call the doctor twice (already becoming suspicious that things might be getting even more complicated) and the results were not ready yet, so she finally asked me to call her again today.
I woke up this morning, felt a little bit better (except for the eye which was very red because of my watching the computer screen for much longer that I could have afforded yesterday), prepared a small breakfast for myself (two slices of this rice-soya simulation of bread), took a deep breath and called the doctor. It failed twice, as the line was busy. Poor doc, thought I. It's Friday, she must have got loads of patients there. When I tried for the third time, the nurse answered the phone:

"Oh, it's you, miss, you have to inform the regional hygienic station, number … as soon as possible, they will ask you to come for three more tests and tell you what to do, goodbye..."

Me: "WHAT? Wait, I want to know what’s going on, what’s wrong with me?"

Nurse: You have a very high level of this bacteria (name), very similar to salmonelosis, just more rare, so you are potentially dangerous and you have to call your regional…“

Me : "But this is an interurban call, your region is not my region, shall I stay in quarantine or what?"

Nurse: "Beep-beep-beep".

Very busy day indeed, I thought angrilly and called the number I was given. The moment I gave my surname (unlike the epidemiologist at the other end), I felt like a celebrity of some kind:

The lady: "Oh, it’s you, thanks for calling, let me just bring my notebook, here I am –so, have you been eating any raw meat, chicken meat, hamburgers, fast food meat?"

Me: "What? None that I know of, perhaps chicken, may I…"

The lady: "Have you been drinking any natural water? Do you work in a grocery or other food industry?"

Me: "No, no and no, but wait..."

The lady: "Not even part time? This is very imporant, miss… have some people around you been experiencing similar symptoms?"

Me: "Not yet, I would have to ask them, but listen, please, I am paying for this call, can I have one question too?"

The lady (huffily): "Sure."

Me "What’ going on? Am I dangerous to other people in my surroundings or what? What does it mean having this bacteria, do I have to go to the hospital?"

The lady :“Haven’t they told you at your GP’s? You are not directly dangerous, only potentially dangerous.“

Me: "I was told that you would give me the details."

The lady: "Haven’t you been contacted by your birth region hygienic station yet? Your doctor gave them your phone number…"

I was getting angry at that point. So. My doc had time enough to give my name, phone number and who knows what else to two different hygienic stations as if I had cholera (which, according to wikipedia, might be actually also caused by this bacteria), but nobody has time to tell me what does that mean for me and my life. So I finally called the second hygienic station…

The voice: "Oh, well, it’s you miss, so you live here at …(she gave the name of student‘s dormitory house where I lived during the last academic year), so has anyone around you been feeling sick?"

Me: "I don’t live there anymore, can.."

The voice: "So has someone been sick or not?"

Me (almost crying): "So am I dangerous or not?"

After a few more desperate minutes I finally got my answer. This bacteria is really very unpleasant and very similar to salmonelosis. I shouldn’t be dangerous to people around me unless I prepare food for them or have sex with them (I wonder, can I pet the “Capricorn” at the ZOO when I don’t have any intention to feed him or sleep with him? ). Normally they would send me to hospital, but as I have been fighting it for fourteen days already (and as it is expensive to stay in the hospital), I may stay at home, but I have to be on a very strict diet, which means only dry rice, bananas, mineral water and tea (which is something I have been doing already in France), for three more weeks or unless the last of the tests is negative (and I will have to undergo three more tests in next three weeks). I can forget about my plans to go canoeing with my friends as these convulsions I have been experiencing will continue unless the bacteria is too hungry to fight back…

So. Now I feel as a caged animal with warning inscriptions all around. I am not aware of any mistake I have done to deserve this (both the sand grain and the bacteria), but I suppose "it’s just the way it is", as one of my friends would have said. I am a Capricorn.

Love's Gate

L´amour c´est la mort
qui ouvre la porte
je vois, que tu sors
avec le sourire

L´amour c´est une voile
pleine d´étoiles
il faut, que tu ailles
chercher les yeux gris
partout...

(lyrics by Radůza)

What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over?

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

Antoine de Saint Exupéry; Le Petit Prince

Mountain Tops They Are A-changin'

Counting Sheep in France...

The Dresden Dolls - The Sheep song

Red brush
Washing up
Look I made america
Hush hush
Don't don't rush
And don't try to care too much

Brown wine
Turpentine
Somethings musn't be combined
Sleep now
Never fear
All your animals are here

Counting sheep
I lay me down to sleep
But I see a sheep that will not leave
From the back they catch him in a trap
Hit his head and send him off to bed

Cutting by numbers is kinder
Invest in one with a silencer
All of the studies say if they're
Calm when they die then they taste better

Cutting by numbers is kinder
Invest in the one with the silencer
All of the studies say if they're
Calm when they die then they taste better

Goodbye
Olive sky
I am crying all the time
There there
Don't despair
We will find your sheep somewhere

Pink Floyd - Sheep

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
You better watch out,
There may be dogs about
Ive looked over jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seem.

What do you get for pretending the dangers not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.

The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green he leadeth me the silent waters by.
With bright knives he releaseth my soul.
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places.
He converteth me to lamb cutlets,
For lo, he hath great power, and great hunger.
When cometh the day we lowly ones,
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of karate,
Lo, we shall rise up,
And then well make the buggers eyes water.

Bleating and babbling I fell on his neck with a scream.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as youre told.
Get out of the road if you want to grow old.

L’etoilette et la toilette

The cheap hotel in which we decided to spend our first night was surprisingly comfortable and clean. The blankets were warm and beds were soft and after the whole day of traveling and a nice evening walk along the river we were quite tired, so I expected that we would spend the rest of the night sleeping really, really tight.

Naïf!

In the middle of the night I woke up, shaking uncontrollably all over my body, and with terrible convulsions in my intestines. I got up in the quietest possible way not to wake up my roommates and sneaked to the bathroom.

Naïf deux fois!

After almost half an hour of my being there, Katie knocked gently on the door saying:”Girlie, are you all right? Can I assist you somehow?” Typical Katie, nice and caring, empathetic and always ready to help… She couldn’t sleep as well, but she swore that my being noisy was not the reason. I assured her that I would fight my intestines on my own and both of us tried to get some sleep after that.

The next morning we went to the nearest pharmacy and thanks to asking not for something “against diarrhoea” but “contre diarrhée” (makes a great difference!), I got some pills which enabled me to survive the morning walk to the city centre without further disasters.

The weather forecast for the town said that it would be 30°C, sunny, and in the morning the air was subtropical indeed. So we left the hotel without umbrellas, in short skirts (me and Katie) and a short-sleeved white shirt (Rob). Of course in half an hour a heavy rain came and we were all as cold as if we were in the mountains already.

I was surprised several years ago that most of the shops and offices in our capital city open at 9 am at soonest, which is more than a hour later than in my home town, but in this French town everything (except for Mc Donald’s and a small café) was closed until 10 or 10.30 am. The first part of our walk led therefore to this café and as the majority of the churches and sights were closed as well, we spent the rest of the morning in bookshops (me), jewelries (Katie), stationeries (both of us), narrow streets and all means of transport imaginable.

Back in the hotel, our first steps led to the bathrooms, so that we could change into warmer and drier clothes. After that, I decided to use the toilet for one more reason and Katie told me that they would wait for me in front of the hotel. “Take your time,” Katie said, remembering my midnight adventure. “Our train to the mountains is leaving in an hour, no need to hurry.”

Have I mentioned that I am a claustrophobic person? It took my parents some time to teach me to lock myself in such tiny spaces as toilets…but now that I am an adult I have learned to overcome my fears to a certain level, so I locked the door this time as well.

Faute d'écolier!

When I tried to get out, the door stayed locked and my nightmare came true. I got stuck, there was nobody outside, no way out, no window, no plastic barrier that I could have climbed over, just me, three solid walls and one wooden door.

Merde!

Luckily, the years spent at the university have learned me more than how not to write essays. They have also taught me the essential rule of surviving: “Don’t panic!“

I still had my cell phone with me –“I will call Katie, she will call the maintenance man and with a little bit of luck we will still catch our train” – these were my thoughts for several hopeful seconds.

Naïf trois fois!

Soon I realized that there was no signal, as the room was underground and three long corridors far from the reception. The strange thing is, that in really hopeless situations, such as car accidents or being stuck underground in a foreign country, I don’t get hysterical (unlike when writing essays or climbing mostly harmless rocks), so when I started kicking the door and shouting for help in three different languages, my voice was not very loud or high-pitched.

Fortunately, the French are “aimant la propreté“. Not because of my shouting, but because of his regular shift the cleaning man (!) came and told me something in French which I did not understand, but I gave my last energy to the sentences “Je ne comprends pas bien” (thanks, dear teacher, for that first and only French lesson in my life) and “Appelez-moi la camarade – en plein air” (thanks, dear cheap socialistic dictionary in my handbag).

In a few minutes, Katie came, laughing like mad (I don’t know whether it was relief that we would catch the train after all or despair that she have decided to invite ME for this holiday), and told me that the man would bring his screwdriver and free me soon. Well, the repair was really rapid, thanks, golden French hands, and then finally we took the tram to take the bus to take the train to see Katie’s father and siblings three hours later.

Then we kissed each other on both cheeks, put three pieces of luggage and six people in a car and continued with a fourty minutes drive on a very narrow, steep and twisting road “into the wild”.

As all of us girls were feeling sick, we started an “esperantish” (anglo-french-dutch-slavonic) conversation about how we were going to watch the Perseids and the Moon eclipse, as at such a lonely place the conditions should be perfect. Yet Simon, Katie’s brother, softened our enthusiasm: „many clouds-you see shit“, which reminded us that the weather forecast for the mountains was "rain all the week long". Yet for the second time, the weather forecast was not accurate, luckily this time.

In the evening, I was standing on a terrace of a wonderful wooden-stone mountain house, breathing the most wonderful cold air imaginable, watching the clouds above the mountain range… and suddenly, a small rift appeared between the clouds and against the perfect dark blue sky behind them I saw a small miracle. “Star…” whispered Simon, who appeared behind my back just as unexpectedly. “L’etoilette“, whispered I at the same moment and didn’t care how silly it sounded. I was happy.

In spite of it all...

The best result of the mentioned difficult December exams was not my feeling not so dull after all, but my meeting and gaining a new friend, Katie, with whom I shared not only the pre-exam stress and notes, but also quite a lot of other joys, worries and interests. She was expelled from our faculty because of her being ill (and hospitalized), working too much and caring about others too much. Luckily, after a tough fight with several offices she was allowed to continue her studies on condition that she passes those big exams successfully. We did, and thus became classmates, which helped me to survive otherwise very difficult and lonely year of lectures and seminars, as almost all of my former friends and classmates have been expelled /chosen a different specailization/gone to Erasmus.
When the academic year ended, we wanted to spend at least part of the summer together as well. I was quite sceptical that we would have the chance to meet at all, as Katie was planning moving to another apartement and changing jobs during the summer among others, and it is always difficult to plan something with me, as my plans usually have to be cancelled because of some last minute disaster.
But Katie came wit an ingenious and generous last moment idea. Her father and part of her family is living in France and they also have there a weekend house in a small village high in the mountains. Katie told me that she and her boyfriend were going to spend a week there and offered me to join them. Tears of gratefull happiness were filling my eyes when she invited me... it was so unexpected that something really nice could be waiting for me... and I had been longing for some fresh air for really long, not to mention seeing the Alps. I have always dreamed about hiking in the Alps during summer, as I am not really an experienced skier and I could hardly afford paying for a winter stay anywhere abroad, anyway. But there was no one I could have gone with, as there were two categories of my friends :
couch potatoes, who would never go somewhere without net conection and shopping centres, and experienced climbers, who would never go to the mountains for a "mere walk".
In spite of all doubts and guilty feelings towards other people, I therefore agreed enhusiastically.
Since the moment Katie told me that the flight and train tickets were booked and paid for, things started to go wrong.
After seeing my sore eye the doctor said that being healthy should be a priority for me and that she could only STRONGLY recommend my NOT going anywhere, as it might get worse and that I had better stayed in bed with those antibiotics.
The nurse, however, whispered to me that she went for her holiday in Egypt having barotitis, which is dangerous especially on a plane, because of the changing air pressure.
It was just a feeble solace, but I was decided already.
In spite of the doctors disapproval and my consciousness I refused to bury my dream so easily.
For all cases, I have established a reliable traveller's policy.
Au revoir!

Day 7A

Rincewind the Wizzard fears the number eight.
Le Petit Soleil loves it.

Although I really like the nuber's shape, I still think that Rincewind's approach to it is far better founded than Le Soleil's.

Today, there are three eights in the calendar.

The most controversial olympic games ever are beginning in Beijing.

Iron Maiden are performing live in Prague at EIGHT o'clock in the evening.

My sore eye is undergoing a minor surgery at EIGHT o'clock in the morning.

Mr. Romeo Montague is getting married.
Mr. Le Petit Soleil is driving me (mad).
Mr. Carrot Ironfoundersson is getting sleepy (and perhaps desperate).

The world is getting married and mad.

"One should really be at his first love's wedding."

Why, why, I must not cry. Not even with the healthy eye.
Everybody will be merry.
Why shouldnt I?

Punishment for Happiness

Momentary happiness and a peace of mind.

Such a rare feeling in the last years of my life I find it worth mentioning, saying aloud, writing down, or otherwise prolonging my being aware of it when I experience it.

Actually, one of the reasons for my keeping this virtual diary was to help myself survive the hard times by not forgetting about the happy ones. I know that there are people in much worse situation than I am, able to cope with their difficulties without even writing a diary. On the other hand, there are people who have much more objective reasons for being happy than I have, and still they are writing injured, accusatory and desperate journals, eventually complaining to colleagues at work about people who love them not being dedicated enough and/or some of their should-be-perfect holiday experiences not being quite perfect.
I don’t want to belong to the latter kind and get drowned in a pathetic self-pity. I am trying really hard to "always look on the bright side of life“.

But even "hitchhikereddwarforderofthestickinuyashaluckyjimontypythonish" sense of humour is not almighty and “42” does not always represent a satisfactory answer to the ultimate question "WHY ME?"
I am in fact surprised that my friends and relatives (those who still have the infinite patience to believe that they will one day have the chance to see me safe and sound) have not yet changed my nickname to “Catastrophe” or “Disaster-magnet”, as whenever I have the cheek to claim that I feel fine, something terrible or painful (one way or another very improbable) follows.

In December of the last year I have passed quite difficult exams at the university, and was sincerely looking forward to what joyful events the next “stressless” year would bring.
Well, I have mentioned some of the things that have been happening to me since January here before, let’s just say that the rest of them were mainly far from pleasant. But I fought my battle and in June I again passed some of my exams successfully.

Then I started hoping for things getting better during summer – my favourite season.
Summer began by my destroying the front part of our car and continued by heavy rains (just slightly spoiling otherwise nice trips with nice people), my being more or less ill (which ended in cancellation of some of the other trips and meetings planned), and my being stressed by the unfinished school essays.

And soon after finishing my previous half-summer blog entry about things getting better and me being in a good mood, I had a phone call from my roommate and told her proudly that I am finally feeling healthy, looking forward to meeting her, going to the capital city (where we both study) to experience something nice with people I really missed…

What happened was that I really left for the capital city. That meant one crucial night of my not being online. And during that crucial night a lot of unpleasant things with far reaching consequences happened.

First of all, me and my roommate have lost the chance of being roommates during the next year, because of our missing the unbelievably short period when it was possible to book our former room and dormitory house online and because of our (mine?) not being able to fight back the unbelievable arrogance from some of the other students trying to get the rooms as well (I might dedicate an extra post to this later, but not yet, dum spiro, spero).

The second event of that night was even less positive. I woke up at maybe four o’clock in the morning with a burning pain in my right eye. My first thought was that I had perhaps an eyelash fallen into it and that a bit of blinking or a handful of cold water would surely help. But after spending almost an hour in the bathroom, trying to get rid of the pain by the combination of water, an almost sterile handkerchief and rolling my eyelid up over a pen (none of the red-cross courses methods seemed to be working) I was not so sure anymore. Touching the eyelid hurt like hell and streams of tears continued to come out of both my eyes and I was unable to stop them for another half an hour. So at approximately half past five my poor host got up and looked up the nearest ocularist’s office for me and three hours later even kindly led me there as I was literally blinded by tears (and the bright sunlight I had been soo longing for in July).

After all my bad luck was not complete, as the doctor was very kind and took me in preference so I did not suffer long, at least not in the waiting room. But then, the news she gave me was not good indeed. She told me that the thing in my eye was no eyelash but rather a solid object, perhaps a particle of dust or a sand grain and that my sclerocornea was seriously damaged. The doctor kept asking me whether I wasn’t riding a bicycle or driving a car with windows wide open, and she didn’t seem to believe my assuring her that I didn’t have a car anymore and that I was just sleeping in a normal bed, not on the beach. Anyway, the solution she suggested was to take this damned object out of my eye (which hurt like hell again), give me some painkillers (which did not help much), antibiotics (which should help in a two weeks time), special eyedrops and a special soft lens (which was expensive and demanding a special treatment, i.e. visiting the doctor the next day as well).

I spent the afternoon crying. Half because the sunlight and pain was killing me (for the first time in my claustrophobic life I really WANTED to go to some cold, dark and wet cave and stay there for as long as possible), half because my plans – to go canoeing with Carrot, to go to Romeo’s wedding, to go to France with Katie seemed to be sentenced to a nasty death just because of something so tiny as a sand grain. I would have tried to look on the bright side of life at least with my left eye, but unfortunately, my being half blind did not lend me half the Milton’s or Homer’s writing skills, so there seemed to be no way of comforting me just then.

Artificial Intelligence, or, My Future Plans

I spent this afternoon working and actually enjoyed it.

Well, there wouldn't (and shouldn't) be anything so unusual about that if it wasn't working manually, in our garden, in a very hot weather, and in spite of my still feeling a little bit dizzy.

The main reason why it was "absolutely necessary" (in my mother's words) to go to our garden (which, most surprisingly, is NOT situated anywhere near our house), was the high-grown grass, which needed cutting and a part of our wooden cottage that needed painting.

Walt Whitman would probably take advantage of such a beautiful scenery, get inspired and spend an afternoon writing poems in the middle of it, but not my mother. She has as little understanding for a poetic soul as she has for the weed. Fortunatelly, she still has a little bit of understanding for my allergy to freshly mowed grass; she had seen the consequences many times after all: a terrible headache, runny nose, burning upper lip (well, still better than stiff upper lip, I suppose:)) and watering eyes. So when we approached the jungle, she bravely kept the task of cutting grass for herself and gave me a jar of paint and a set of brushes instead.

Talking of grass... the other man's grass is always greener, or, as the Shaltanacs would say, "The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauve-y shade of pinky russet," and I can remember that when I was a little girl I wanted to be a brunette (which I am not) and envied one of my Barbie dolls her chocolate skin.

Well, lucky day today, because my childish dream finally came true. After several minutes of painting the wall, my skin started to look as a quail's egg and my hair rapidly turned from fair to chesnut brown, not mentioning my perfect chocolate nail polish. But before I noticed that, I had realized something much more important. I really loved the activity itself!
I have realized before that I generally like such manual activities that do not demand too much thinking and can thus be accompanied by another activity, namely singing or listening to something. But painting would be fun even if it wasn't accompanied by anything else, thought I and started to contemplate, whether I really wanted to continue my painful studies at the Faculty of Arts... After I got a glimpse of my reflection in the cottage window, I came to a sad conclusion that I had perhaps gained much more (artificial) intelligence by my blonde-to-brunette transformation than I could ever have gained by writing school essays (which had been my original plan for this afternoon).
At, say, four o'clock p.m. I was firmly determined to become a painter, or, at least a decorater. But the momentary exploring of the difference between those two jobs made me remebmer my roommate, who is an actual painter, artist I mean. The picture of her shouting VERY angrily at the whistling workers who had been disturbing us during the last two exam periods at our dormitories, as well as her secret subversive expeditions with a single goal : to take their radio out of service once and forever, attacked my mind. The poor workers! How gratefully would I trade their brushes for my piles of books now... But it is too late to start crying over the spilled...paint ! Watch out!! Mum!!! Oh, shit, never mind.
Have I mentioned that there is no running water in our cottage anymore? No? Well, maybe I'll tell the story some other time, you know, I am fed up with writing right now, my hair and fingers glued up with dark brown paint, burning upper lip, watering eyes...

All right then, I desire being a brunette no more.
And let the real painters' walls be always greener, I don't care.
I took the road less travelled by and that has made all the difference.
But one day, If I will be given the miraculous chance of having children, I will paint everything within the reach of their tiny hands with them!

Heute Schluss, Ich gehe baden.

On love

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.

Kahlil Gibran

Rain' s Bow

Some kind of skyparade seems to be taking place here this week...

Pity that these rare moments are always so difficult to preserve...
But I think that given the conditions (and the not-very-high-quality camera I was able to borrow within seconds), I was quite lucky to have the chance to take at least a few pictures and keep the joy for just a little longer:

Happily ever after?

…and after all these lonely years

the lovers shed some happy tears:

To such a love the Rain did bow

Night and Despair brought were low

and colours freed walked up the bridge

and for a while made all souls rich

cause they could see the golden spot

never mind that there’s no pot…

Emancipated Eclipse

Oh, brave and mighty Shiny knight
who guards the gleaming gates of sky!
To good he lends his warmth and light,
punishes those who fly too high.

And behind the gate in greyness dim
dwells pretty Lady Shadow
who sends amorous looks to him

across the starry meadow...

Once when the day was nearing noon
she, desperate, began creeping
past knight Sun's silver sister, Moon
who off duty was sleeping.

And as her Shadow aproached his Light
he, too suprised to try to fight,

finally let her kiss his lips...

That's what you call a Sun eclipse!