Dear Ola, i have nothing to say.
I will write down words to say that i do not know what to write
I tried last time when i was in thessaloniki, 2 months ago?
Sometimes words do not work
Sometimes my head does not work
I am out of focus
I am out of focus
I look out my window just now and i see the citadel
The ruins of times past
Several layers of time
And dry grass
And running cars
And laundry hanging on lines
And a pigeon
And flooding sunlight
And palm trees and cypress and pine and bouganvilla and mulberry and olive and a couple more
And satellites. Water tanks. Antenas. A horizon invaded with buildings. And a dirty sky.
I am thirsty.
My back hurts a little.
I am warm.
I maybe bored.
I am worried.
Unsure of myself.
I had a cheese sandwich with a basil mix i made. The basil from my mother’s garden.
It is night now and the horizon has turned into sparkles of lights across and patches of dark. A general shallow blackness.
i can hear the terribly loud pump of the bar next door working every few minutes. We invited the owner to have coffee at the balcony to hear how loud it was. We gave the plumber money to buy a new pump. It is impossible to sit at the balcony and sometimes i even close the windows.
Alongside the sound of the pump is now a party. Popular arabic songs. Now it is all a la jordanian nationalist style.
I am not going to smoke tonight.
I do not want to smoke.
What is one cigarette?
Come on, what difference does it make?
I should probably go to bed.
Chau
–
Dear Chau,
Maybe we are trying to push for words to come out, did this letter exchange (blog) turn into an obligation rather than a commitment? We decided to continue with this blog as a space for us to keep writing and to take moments of reflection. I remember our walk by the small marina in one of the San Juan islands, I forgot which one, at the end of our road trip, when I felt the fear of losing the urge to write if we stopped the road notes blog. Maybe it was the fear from losing our reflective space if we traveled away from each other, or the fear of not documenting our moments in a certain time, or the fear of ending the road trip at that time, and heading into the new – old chapter of our lives.
You are unable to focus, and you are worried and maybe bored, and I want to tell you to live this out of focus, live the confusion, live it all. You have moved from one world to another, it would be rather alarming if you are able to focus now. Why the hurry? Focus for what? We are too hard on our brains and bodies. We want to take them with us and move them from one place to another, with extremely different conditions and environments and still ask them to adapt and be wondrous and active in a second.
Maybe what you are hungry for now is a space to reflect. It is necessary, allow yourself to reflect. Here are some reminders that might help you (if you wish) to reflect:
1- things are out of your control
2- you are wonderful, be gentle towards yourself
3- we learn when we are in relationship with ourselves, with nature, with our mothers, with our friends, with our bodies, with life. you are learning. you are living.
4- you are free from ambition and from becoming something and that is a necessity to be free.
5- you are love.
Ola
