I've been breaking hearts

Hearts of glass have lately turned into pieces from the touch of my careless hands.
The first one of glass broke simultaneously with mine (of flesh), as I broke somebody elses.
The glue I tried to fix the glass with, held the pieces together
as badly as it would have fixed a heart of flesh and blood.
Yesterday I broke yet another one.
Again by sheer carelessness.

Falling in love with the city

I noticed something yesterday: I live in a beautiful city.
I usually notice that in summer, when you can see the water surround the whole city, when you can stroll along the waterline, no matter where you are going.

But yesterday, as I took a walk through some areas where I haven't been for a while, I fell in love with the city, all over again.

Maybe it was the magic game played by reflections of the snow and man made lights - maybe it was the winter sky that made me feel on my knees. I don't know. I was amazed by the rhythm of the buildings - old and new - of lights and shadows. It was like being let in on a secret, like peeping through a keyhole, seeing things that nobody else knows. But me and the magic forces of night.

It is not every day one gets to be romantic when it comes to a city that has been one's home for a lifetime.

Let me seduce you with this tango

Music of today:

Gotan Project's Lunático.

It was hidden between other Latin American rhythms.

I let it seduce me all over again.
It surely was a long time since the last time.
Not even trying to resist,
letting the tunes of the always so sensual accordian
climb me.
Taking a steady grip of my body.
Teasing me until I am begging for it
not to let go.
Letting all of its passion flow into me.
Until I feel my blood boil
from the same heat.

That's Lunático.

The Bastard of Istanbul

I am always reading several books at a time. One of those I'm reading at the moment is Elif Shafak's "The Bastard of Istanbul". Since I got it on my trip to Rome, I'm reading it in Italian. Didn't know it first was published in English. I always think you should read books in their original language - when possible. Translations change texts - no matter how good they are. Take it from the translator.

This book, though, would be excellent in any language. I didn't know that Elif Shafak - just like Orhan Pamuk and several other authors - was charged for "insulting Turkishness" in 2006 for remarks made by a fictional character in The Bastard of Istanbul. Shafak was acquitted three months later.

"It is perhaps the first Turkish novel to deal directly with the massacres, atrocities and deportations that decimated the country's Armenian population in the last years of Ottoman rule." [guardian.co.uk, 24 July 2006]

The book is beautifully written, and I enjoy more than anything the poetic nuance. (Anyone who has read my entries would know I would.)

There is one passage I read over and over. Because the beauty to it is stunning. I tried to find it in English, but failed, so anyone who has the book in its original language can read the first lines of chapter eleven. These lines are in Italian, and if you can comprehend them, I hope you enjoy them as much as I have and am.

"[...]
È quasi l'alba a Istanbul. La città è appena da un passo da quella
soglia misteriosa che separa la notte dal giorno. È l'unico momento in cui è
ancora possibile trovare conforto nei sogni ma troppo tardi per costruirne di
nuovi. Se ci fosse un occhio nel settimo cielo, uno Sguardo Celeste che
dall'alto osserva ognuno di noi, allora dovrebbe sorvegliare Istanbul a lungo,
prima di risucire a comprendere chi fa cosa dietro le porte chiuse, e chi, se
c'è, ha detto cose profane. A Colui che sta nel cielo la città deve
apparire come uno schema sfavillante, cosparso di bagliori che luccicano come
fuochi d'artificio nel buio fitto. In questo istante lo scheletro urbano
risplende nei toni dell'arancio, del rossiccio e dell'ocra. È una costellazione
di scintille, e ogni punto luminoso è la luce di qualcuno che ha già lasciato il
reame del sonno. Dall'alto dei cieli, allo Sguardo Celeste, tutte quelle
minuscole luci devono sembrare in perfetta armonia, constantemente
ammiccanti come se inviassero messaggi in codice a Dio."

[La Bastarda di Istanbul/RCS Libri S.p.A. Milano/translation by Laura Prandino]

A beautiful, large, white swan

I had an interesting dream last night.

I was diving in a cave in the middle of the night. The water was turquoise, and seemed to be lighted from beneath. Refreshed I got up from the water and into a room that was connected to the cave. I guess there were plenty of rooms like the one I got into, and they were all connected to their private caves. The caves themselves were connected by water.

Suddenly I notice something is coming up from the water, into the room. I turn around to see what it is. It's a swan. A beautiful, large, white swan. We watch each other for a while. Then I drive it into the water and I guess it swims away.

Another dream followed and it was beautiful. I woke up very happy.

The beauty of life

It is interesting how life often surprises you. And now I don't mean the big things, but the small ones that occur every now and then, often in a way that we don't even think about them.

I was going by bike through a truely dark and slippery city just some minutes ago. It was really not the kind of surface you would like to be bicycling on - ice with water on top. But I did. In the darkness of the moist evening I noticed a figure going from the left to the right, from the right to the left. My luck, I thought, a drunk that probably will hit into me while trying to get forward.

I hit the brakes to slow down my pace, not to startle the obscure figure while passing by. And as I am overtaking him in the darkness, with one eye fixed on the slippery street and the other one on the drunk, I notice the man stopping. He turns around to look at me. Great, I think. Let's hear you say something.

And he does. The voice gives away the same thing as did the posture and the way of wiggling. The man is totally drunk. And the voice turns into some words that bring a broad smile to my face:

"Be careful now! Don't fall!"

I smile and yell back: "I'll try not to!".
And that is what I call a piece of the beauty of life.

What kind of drugs are you giving me?

When every note, every tune
Takes a grip of my heart
And twists and turns
So hard that it burns

Burns and burns
Makes it bleed
Gives me exactly what I need
Lifts me up, pulls me down

Is this how it's supposed to be?
What kind of drugs are you giving me?

I feel I see life magnyfied
A thousand times and more
And the pain makes my heart ache
more than before
And my soul warms up from the smile on my face
It makes me think
- Maybe it's just the throbbing base?

Jack Johnson awaited me when I got home.
I prepared a nice meal to enjoy Sleep through the static.

Even though - every note, every tune - dig their way into the deeper chambers of my soul, I have found my two favourites: Go on and They do they don't.

There are a couple of lines of Adrift that makes it special, though:

This moment keeps on moving
We were never meant to hold on.

About love

Love is a strange thing.

I watched the movie. I feel like being in a trance at the moment. Like every cell in my body is living its own life. I have found a movie that is bigger than life.

It didn't feel like a movie. At first it felt like walking the streets of Paris together with these two people. I felt a bit like spying on them. Like being the third person that they forgot about a long time ago. Following their footsteps.

At some point it shifted. I started living the movie. I was there. It all came to the surface.

This is a movie I will have to encourage you to see. Before Sunset is an extraordinary work of art. It does not try to be anything else than what it is. I does not serve the viewer anything fancy. It is what it is.

And it will give way for memories.

It makes you think, remember and feel. It makes you laugh and it makes you cry.

It makes me think: "Come on, you've only got an afternoon to get the answers you want! Get to the important stuff, don't babble about all those things that will not give you any answers!" I am hit by the feeling of knowing that time passes, and you are not sure whether you will get the courage to talk about what's on your mind, or if the other one will have the insight to raise the important questions. The feeling of watching the minutes go by, and hoping that time - at any point - would stop. For a while. Right there at the door while saying goodbye. Right there, when waving in a cab. Right there when the plane is about to leave.

It makes me think about love.

What a strange thing love is. It is supposed to hit us hard, We are supposed to feel. And the amount of feeling and the amount of ourselves we invest in it, will all be in direct connection to how high the fall will be.

We think "It doesn't make sense". We build up high hopes, we wait for that magical moment in our lives, when we will know. When we will see it was all worth while. Worth the struggle, worth the pain, worth the disappointment. And when we see it coming, we rise up to some higher level, to be able to watch it happen, to enjoy the magic that will sweep us off our feet. But still there is no guarantee - nothing that will give that magic a final push. It will or it won't and it has nothing to do with us.

Such a big investment to be made with such a high risk. We wouldn't invest our money in something like that.

Why do we invest our souls? Our hearts?
I guess we are programmed to do that. We are supposed to belive in miracles and magic when it comes to love. We all somehow believe that we have our own share to get.

And that is what's so strange about love.

This morning was beautiful.

Closer

I just watched the movie "Closer" with Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. It wasn't the first time - I had forgot I already saw it once.

But as it started with Damien Rice's "Blower's daughter" I was captured. I couldn't escape. And there is something magical about that movie. In all its sadness. In the greyness of London.
It gives no hope. Yet it's beautiful.

I want to get back to Anna Ternheim for a bit. I am still listening to her album Separation Road. And I must say, after first having Lovers Dream as my favourite, it is now Calling Love. Because that is how it is.

All the same, whomever's to blame for this
I call love by your name
I take it's no use, but I miss you still
Calling love by your name

Love is a strange thing.

And I rented a love movie. Before Sunset. Not like me at all. I'm saving it for Sunday morning. I'll tell you what I thought.

The idea is intreaging: What if? The question we never want to ask but always do.

What if we had done things differently?
What if we decided to take a turn and later on find ourselves thinking: Was it right? Should we have done differently?
The good thing with life is that we'll never know. That will make it easier to say - of course we made the right decision.
But then again.
We see things that remind us.
We feel the scent of a perfume,
we see someone that reminds us,
we hear a song that takes us back.
What if.

And then there's always Paris.

As in Before Sunset.

I must leave you. I am meeting up with someone in 20 minutes. I feel a good Saturday evening is ahead.