Nothing

I have just made myself a martini. Alas, by now I make them much better than in most places this side of the Atlantic, so I have even fewer reasons to go out on a Friday night. I have sat down to write, although I am not sure exactly what. Maybe I wish to somehow celebrate that as of today the Place Under Renovation is no longer under renovation and is ready for us to partly move in (’partly’ as in ‘when not in the Outpost’). Maybe I wish to write about Yu, who cannot have her child baptised into the Outpost Apostolic faith, because it was born outside of wedlock, something that I am confident is against all principles even of the said faith. Perhaps I could wax lyrical about the taste of my extra dry martini in my mouth right now, and how this drink subtly sets the pace of that haunting and beautiful film, Revolutionary Road, scene after scene. It could also be the case that I would like to reminisce about Stuttgart and in anticipation of my going back to Germany on business later this summer. I even thought I would write about the strange angelic hierarchies adopted wholesale by the Christian faith, coming from God knows where, what with their six-winged Seraphim and their wheel-shaped Thrones (or Ophanim); I once thought I would write a piece of fiction involving them, but Philip Pullman came first, in a very interesting (and inchoate) way, too. I actually thought I could adopt an Ophan as my own personal symbol; if I were younger I could even tattoo it on my forearm. Perhaps I still can.

So, here is a post with nothing to say. Goodnight, my good folks.

L’oeuvre au noir

I finished 5 minutes ago Yourcenar’s L’oeuvre au noir, recommended by Amir-am-M years ago. The obvious quote follows:

Il est étrange que pour nous chrétiens les prétendus désordres de la chair constituent le mal par excellence, dit Zénon. Personne ne punit avec rage et dégout la brutalité, la sauvagerie, la barbarie, l’injustice. Nul demain ne s’avisera de trouver obscènes les bonnes gens qui viendront regarder mes tressautements dans les flammes. (p. 414-5)

Leaving

This is the last night in Stuttgart. I have an early start tomorrow. I just packed my suitcase, always unpleasant: on my way out, it is always neatly packed with ironed clothes tidily arranged. On the way back it is crammed with bags of dirty laundry, crumpled shirts and trousers, books that have been read or that will not be read during the return flight, leftover clean clothes carefully packaged to the one side so as not to be contaminated by the dirty ones. They will all smell of hotel, however.

Stuttgart is a place I would like to explore and return to soon. It is open and green and parts of it are vibrant with people enjoying themselves. Some women look breathtaking. Almost everyone on the street looked happy and relaxed, maybe because of the weather, unlike standard Europeans.

I am overcome by a feeling of tiredness, quite an inexplicable one, too. I also feel lonely, not because I am by myself here, but because — at this age — I realise that it is just Jod and me. It is not just Outpost isolation: I feel I can hardly connect with other people because of my towering awkwardness and shyness, both so well disguised, that they come forth as aloofness and even eccentricity.  I also am a loner deep down, it seems, because I feel I always impose myself on people. Maybe if I were a real loner, I wouldn’t mind being alone. I would go for a bar crawl, or whatever.

I also pity myself: the slightest insult or harrassment by even the most irrational and disturbed people can throw me off course. I partly spent my time here agonising over the email responses of a highly unpleasant person on a trivial matter. I would have hoped I would have become a slightly stronger person after all those years.

Quaver rest

I am in Stuttgart for work. The Professorin in charge of the meeting announced to us yesterday morning that we must produce results, along the lines of “you are not leaving this room until you give France a Constitution”. Ok, I’m exaggerating.

Today I managed to see some of the city, during lunchtime. Staatsgallerie is highly recommended. Stuttgart is beautiful, serene and green, with lots of open spaces, wooded and with its own vineyards, well within city limits. Stutt ist gut.

Last night, over dinner (in the meeting venue: the slowest and sloppiest service I’ve had in a restaurant; ever), this multilingual guy (he speaks Spanish, Catalan, English, Italian, German, Greek and Arabic) opened a discussion about tattoos. I told him that for decades I was trying to decide on a design for a tattoo myself: nothing too straightforward, nothing too pretentious, nothing too obscure, nothing too ornamental, nothing pictorial. Yes, you guessed right: I ended up without tattoos. Then the multilingual guy told me about a woman who got a tattoo on her ankle: a quaver rest. I was impressed and I got almost heart-broken I would never have an idea like this.

I’m reading Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. It is both amusing and smart. And Borges-esque. Which is good.

Tonight we are having dinner in an allegedly nice place near the Castle. Thankfully, it is Corpus Christi today, so most places are closed. Yes, it is a public holiday in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Alas, poor Martin Luther.

Introretrospective

Because my work intermeshes with my daily life, there is hardly ever a way to tell when one ends and where the other begins. I am not complaining. It’s just that, whenever I need to relax, work is never far away. And my work being what it is, even relaxing from it can be abstract, introspective and speculative — sometimes all three at the same time together.

Tonight at elevenish, having half-finished a major piece of work and having half-begun a minor one, I discovered by accident (some random Turkish guy, who somehow ended up in my friend list, posted a video on facebook) a song released in 1971 and therefore having served as part of the soundtrack of my very early years. It is a beautiful song, only now have I noticed the words or the fact that it is sung by Baez (a voice who haunted my childhood singing the then inexplicably sad Donna Donna). After more than thirty years. Discovering (I will not say ‘rediscovering’) the song fits very smoothly into a mood of introspection and digging into my childhood and adolescence and partly reinventing them. Up until recently, I would perceive the first twenty years of my life as a happy and inconsequential mash, with only my late adolescence constantly feeling like a total and utter disaster. During the last year or so I have been going back to details, the people, the recurring themes, the moments, the nuances, the hidden disasters, tensions and problems.

Scenes from a city

The unseasonably but mercifully clement weather is probably over. Here begins the endless Scorch.

In the morning I went to the local bakery to get a coffee. Right after me in the queue there was a tall foreign woman (’foreign’ as in ‘from north of the Danube and east of the Oder-Neisse’). While the barista was making my coffee, the woman was approached by a short swarthy man working at the ovens (judging from his white uniform). He greeted the woman and leaned against the bar with the right hand, while putting the left one at his waist in a punter-like gesture. They chatted a bit, perhaps in incomprehensible English. Then he exclaimed that the woman’s coffee was on him. The woman protested in English “No, you cannot do that” and the barista protested in Outpostese that this cannot be done. The man told the barista that he would pay cash. The woman looked embarrassed. I could tell they had met before.

I took my coffee and walked to work. I realised I should have ordered an iced latte.

Memorable

Last night I had dinner with an idealist diplomat, also a man of principles. He was remarkable in his ardour and candour while expressing his views as well as in his complete lack of the customary among diplomats nonchalant attitude. When it comes to politics, I am all for vision and ethics, but I thought it was just me and my not having a professional outlook.

I just wanted to make note of the incidence.

Otherwise, I am tired.

Strangers on a train

Last weekend I was in Home City, trying to shake off the tedium, tiredness and paranoia accrued on me in this place. Once I set foot on the airport it was the good other me all over again.

I could breathe. Hypochondria, paranoia, mad worries, distilled bitterness, acidic frustration — all dissolved. Replaced by lightness. Inspiration and perspiration (by way of long walks). Hope. The works. It all came back. And stayed with me throughout the weekend. Then they were lost in the airport waiting room on the way back here. Along with my Compatridia mobile (I only mourn for the stored SMSs, a part of my personal history, and some pictures — there was nothing else in there).

On Sunday morning I woke up groggy after the Daylight Savings Time change and after setting off to the Place Under Renovation I remembered a discussion I had with a City worker on the train from London to Market Town. I was also going back home from work, so the inevitable chit-chat ensued (how have I missed that). The guy was archetypically English in both having a very expensive suit on (probably worth a couple of months’ earnings back then) and displaying signs of not having washed for a significant number of days. It was 2000 or 2001, I think.  When I asked him why he lived in Market Town, given that he worked in the City, some 80 km away, he told me:

I can’t afford to buy in London and I cannot afford the house in Market Town unless I work in the City.

So, last Saturday, in fairly good weather, in a lively and exciting city I was born in and have a small flat in and fond memories from, I thought that in 2009, I am by now like that guy: I can’t bear living uninterruptedly in the Outpost and I cannot afford to live in Home City (even 3 months a year) unless I work in the Outpost.

So, there.

Everything comes to me

Here in the claustrophobia of my island exile I have finally learned one thing, a thing that has quietly brought me to the threshold of moving one level up, in the process of leaving behind the usual dual me. Whatever happens, however painful, acrid and bitter, it can bring with it something new and welcome and fresh, a new edge for oneself and the world to reflect on. The old platitude seems to be at work here: we are created and reinvented by constraints and within the space they define. This is not stoicism, this is what I should have known better: I would have avoided unnecessary suffering.

As I wrote two years ago, without fully appreciating it: cunctando regitur mundus. You don’t have to wait in stillness and meditation, just to hold your ground.

I don’t know what more to ask for, I was given just one wish

I tried both a steam bath and sauna yesterday. The steam bath felt like Dixie meets Riyadh, my own personal definition of hell: 100% humidity and unbearable heat. I was cooking in steam, breathing it in as if I were veg. Maybe it was the wrong kind of steam bath. Maybe I was in “the wrong state of mind”, you know like when you smoke weed and nothing happens. Instead of relaxing (amazing how everyone seems to ask you to relax, from dentists to doctors, from parents to lovers, to colleagues: no I can’t relax; I am a worrier. That’s why I care. That’s why I look after you and myself and everyone. If I was the relaxing guy I wouldn’t care, I wouldn’t be here, would I?), I eventually rushed out of the steam bath to the shower gasping for air.

Then I tried the sauna. Much better. Smell of wood. Nice. Relaxing sounds and light patterns. Ooh. No steam. Relaxing. Good for meditation, too (yes, I know what most saunas are for this side of the Baltic). Much more bearable. So, once more, in my book at least, Ottomans 0 Scandinavians 1. I stayed in the sauna until I was breathing in fiery air (curiously there was no water to create some steam). To the shower and back to the sauna. Then I joined Jod in the pool.

Dinner was terrifyingly good. This being the Outpost, it was plentiful, too. If this is Chinese haute cuisine, I would rather stick with haute. Although I cannot afford it. And you must book two months in advance, or something.

Which is all a tangential way to say what a wonderful break we had yesterday, complete with walking on the beach in the rain — and with whatever else there is.