no luck day
Archives for the month of: September, 2010
We’re going to the Genocide Museum with O., a Turkish guy .The closed border between Armenia an Turkey makes them separate worlds, where Turkish people wonder if is it safe to travel around Armenia and enables a moment of suspense each time we say ‘This is O., he’s from Turkey’. N. says he saw someone being beaten up in the street the other day. I didn’t witness such kind of thing since I’m here and feel quite safe walking around. I could say that in general people are high tempered and quick to raise their voices. Someone told me that Portugal was Pisces. I would say that Armenia is Scorpio, emotions flow on big waves and never forgets. Actually I saw a scorpion in the living room the other day. It said welcome to the motherland. Today we’re going there to remember.
waves
“There are three ways of trying to win the young. There is persuasion.
There is compulsion. There is attraction. You can preach at them; that is a hook without a worm. You can say “You must volunteer; that is the devil. And you can tell them, ‘You are needed.’ That appeal hardly ever fails.”
(Kurt Hahn)
Long time, no news. I’m working in a school now, every morning, my role is to enroll the children in different kind of activities. The first ones were yoga classes, very funny and clumsy ones. They’re groups of five year old children, so it is not so easy to come with activities as I don’t speak Armenian and well, they are 5, so everything has to be very physical and practical.
This week I had my first homesickness episode, I just entered in a melancholic mood as I woke up with a very sad and beautiful piano song that someone was playing in some classroom next door. Homesickness in a sense of ‘what am I doing here?, not necessarily missing Portugal. Right now I define myself as a researcher and my search is focused on finding my place in the world. I have friends there, family and I feel privileged to have so. This enriches me and makes me able to conquer the world! (in a modest way, let’s say.. =) ) But I’m still looking for my place, where I can work on something meaningful, explore and have a nest.
Time flows with a different rhythm, I’m here for a month and a half but it certainly feels longer, life develops in unexpected ways when you’re away and I’m fatally attracted by the unknown. Life looks stimulant and curvy, you never know what will come next and I’m up for it. I imagine it could end tomorrow or I could end up being a 90 granny telling stories and pushing the small birds to fly. Actually I believe I’ll live at least until my fifties and again experience big pain. And if I survive, I’ll be more free. These are just personal superstitions, so there’s no point in explaining it.
Yesterday we were in Sevan, Armenia’s big lake, winter there when we arrived. The sun came up in the afternoon so I was able to put my feet on the water and listen to the water for a while. There’s no more beautiful sound than this, it makes me go deep to the center of me and come back to surface. We stayed in a cottage near the water, ate barbecue and pretended it wasn’t freezing cold. I woke up after the strangest dream and had to stay still for a moment to convince myself that this cottage was the real, that the paper walls were blue, as this was more a trip that an actual dream. It was disturbing and powerful, a full dive into my unconscious it seems. In those first moments I decided not to keep much details of it, let the waters of the unconscious sail their way. I have a heart wounded and filled with water. And at the same time I feel I have the heart of a lion. So I roar.
Recently we moved to another house, FYCA moved to another office. We packed and cleaned, unpacked, cleaned, did to do lists, what is missing lists, what cannot happen lists. Like the flat manager getting in our room in the morning, me in shorts and crazy hair. Or having hot boiling water in the toilet but not in the shower. We have water from 7 to 12 and then from 7 to 9 pm. I made Armenian coffee this morning. We finally have a fridge, and Lilit, who was just now biting my fingers and suddenly fell asleep. Now the office is next door and we have Armenian classes in the kitchen. From the main street we can see Ararat mountain. Home can assume different shapes.
(some days ago)
