Chosen

Yesterday I went on a trip with colleagues from work
and we spent the day on a horse ranch
mingling and playing and socializing.

Since I see that much of the business relationship is sadly based on interpersonal relationships
and that those who are unwilling to share personal are subsequently left out of the business
I felt I should be there and demonstrate my compliance with established practice.
It sounds worse than it is;
I do not actually mind the practice. It just it is how it is and the way it is is completely normal part of behavior of social species. Me being part of the less social spectrum and
being aware of it
leaves me the posibility to use this situation as well as to avoid it -
So yesterday I was using it.

It was not unpleasant and I had a good time.
There were lot of educational opportunities and I hardly took out my phone or had to entertain myself with solitary activities.
I even played voleyball (which speaks volumes considering my deeply ingrained need not to do team sports)
and I rode a horse, even though I was not really planning for it
(lol this progressive relaxation really is paying off)

Something interesting happened.

I did not ride a horse ever before.
I am of the opinion that such a big and smart animal requires time to build relationship with
so since horses, or should I say "spending time with horses" is expensive
and I have no money to spare
I do not usually waste their time or mine by dabbling.
But yesterday we have already paid for our time so I felt I should add new experience to my experience archive
so
I went and joined the line we were standing in to try to ride.
Two by two people rode at the time, on two very calm horses, by being walked by hosts in the corral pictured above.
It seemed like undemanding, well trained and pretty boring task for the horses
to connect this to stuff mentioned above
it seemed like a relationship-less task.

Yet I stand surprised, humbled and more than a little perplexed now.

As the line was moving and I got to top of the line
people were still riding
but as I entered the corral
the horse approached me and fully stopped
the rider was surprised and so was I
and the host, who walked the horse for us to ride them said:
He chooses her.
(Say what?!)

The horse chooses her (me?!).

The person riding slipped down from the saddle and I, very surprised and nonplussed, eventually got up.We made a few rounds
and I quite enjoyed the feeling and the experience
but it also left me quite perturbed
as it brought right to the top just how much untrusting I have become.

What I think I would like is more questions and less shortcuts

After this prolonged period of blog silence
blog hiatus so to speak
brought on by my unwillingness to share
(alleviated by writing food notes with some recipes in Croatian here on my other space)
I feel I want to air the contents of my scull
by verbalizing my thoughts
which is an exercise I rarely take part in.

Maybe it is time to clear the cobwebs and see what's in the corners.

Since I wrote my last post here on Tuesday
people have expressed their compassion and wished me well
which is all great and I encourage it
but I also think we're speaking different languages
and maybe that this should also be addressed
in an interest of clarity of this here situation described in the last post
and also other instances of emotion inference.

I am not hurt, angry or remorseful or disappointed,
am not wishful or riddled with doubts
and when I say that hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation skipped a beat and that my hands shook
it means I sensed the effect of stress in my body
and not that I felt bad.
This a common misconception, I feel,
in many many situations
and it is not brought on by my need to rationalize
but with unclarity of language and personal interpretation of physiological, sense-ladden and not emotion-ladden speech.

What we sense
(opposed by what we "feel" - which is clearly not sense related but thoughts/interpretation-related)
is the input to our cognitive system
and we, on occasion, emote subsequently
yet this emoting is rarely straightforward and often prone to interpretation.
Same wet palms are sometimes sign of stress
and other times proof of love
and I do not really care much about jumping the conclusion
emotion-wise
mostly because I see that lots of people are fully inept to understand or take responsibility for translating senses to responses to stimuli and prerequisites to actions.

Did I or did I not feel bad when I sensed the effect of stress in my body by way of hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation skipping a beat and by my hands shaking?

I felt...
startled, surprised, stressed
but also I felt certain I've made the right decision at the time
and sure that by consequence of that decision our eventual meeting would be unpleasant and unfavorable for any of parties involved,
not like earth-shattering extinction event but rather exercise in futility.

"Sometimes you've got to bleed to know, that you're alive and have a soul"

When returning to this here space
there is never a silence inside and consequent search for words
oh no
there is always such insane overabundance
it would be a word salad if I would only permit it to flow, to grow.

This morning I stopped at a red light behind the other car.
The car containing a person I was involved with
at one time.
My hands shook, and my hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation skipped a beat or two,
and  after I convinced myself that I was unnoticed
I spent rest of my drive to work thinking how extremely good it is that people seldom notice the effect they have on other people
(even when not separated by different moving vehicles).

I am not yet saved
but were I not extremely unpleasant and insulting
we would still be imprisoned by our good manners.

At an earlier point in time it was really difficult to me to accept the fact
that sometimes there is no way around
lovely and well mannered people
becoming prisoners of their own unconflicting nature.
There is no need to fignt, really,
or resolve conflict with violence of any kind,
and yet, the assertiveness and honesty and clarity of intentions
are sometimes still not enough to communicate
unambiguously
especially if mere existance of conflict is denied.

Were I not extremely unpleasant and insulting
I would have still wanted it to work
and if I am any judge of character WE would have still wanted it to work
and yet it would not
'cause it can not.

Primrose

I took a photo of the primroses above in friend's garden day before yesterday.
It grows warmer and, since CET time changed this weekend, it is still day when I come home from work so we can go for a walk and admire the colors of budding nature.

This weekend I went for a run in late morning
and all I could think about during the run is
how much I hate runing during the day.
People were everywhere
staring
not maleficent and rather good-spirited and curious
but everywhere
and other than fulfilling my workout task for the day I found no solace in that run.

Crocus

Crocus in a forest on Medvednica, near Ponikve meadow

Spring is here.

I know that spring is here because I start noticing people noticing people more.
There is more daylight so some are starting with beach-body-friendly activities
- like running -
but they are not running in my time.

Tonight I ran through the neighbourhood and it is in bloom
- plums and apricots and daffodils
and primroses -
but most beautiful sight was green mist of a budding salix sepulchralis in front of a street light,
wetly emerald and vibrant with life.
Lately,
I'm preoccupied with sociopolitical moment in Croatia,
and how I'm not at all surprised by it*
but also how futile I regard participation in this daily whirl of redneck display of impotence.

It is like a huge bear made of ice,
imposing and fright-provoking at first sight,
but likely to melt not only if heated by action but also natural environment.

The End of the Tour

Original theatrical release poster

I watched The End of the Tour few days ago.

I loved the movie and it also left me quite pensive. Turmoil’d.

Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg are both great, with Segel being absolutely, hauntingly awesome.

Hauntingly.

I have this trouble with knurd, can’t seem to suspend it for the duration of some things. I do not dislike that, in fact I usually revel it, but I acknowledge it is sometimes impractical. Like while trying to believe an actor is a character. In this case Segel was so perfect and so persuasive it was extremely hard for me to believe he’s not just reciting somebody else’s words - but THAT would be just the point of him doing an awesome job of being an actor transformed to a character. But the character in this case is a biographical sketch, likeness, a ghost of the person once existing and now deceased. Crazy. And beautiful. And crazy. Convoluted stuff.*

Segel’s Wallace is haunting.

I am not much of an expert on David Foster Wallace. Most of the things I know about him come from This Is Water, from opinions, reviews and obituaries. That really is not much, and yet … yet I acknowledge we share a few characteristics and many of them were the axis of this movie.

I used to be somewhat of a prodigy. I used to write a lot and to stir things up with my writing. I drank an awful lot and medicated myself to assert control over my life. I committed suicide.

That was 20 years ago and I was 18 at the time. In a month I will be 38 and later still, somewhen beginning autumn, there will be 20^th anniversary of my second life; life of practicality, moderation and adamant exclusion of television entertainment.

I loved the movie. I loved how we are only jumping on that train just for one final station. I loved how we are making the jump with bundle of conventional-ness and insecurity (Lipsky). It is well-paced movie and also a movie with definite feel of prose; few interactions brought to the top of the stream of life, to be noted and to be representative of writer’s impression of things. I loved the natural feel of happenings; the hanging out, the smoking, the stuffing of bellies with treats facilitated with being in company - to comfort and ease social awkwardness - sacred ouroboros of misfits everywhere.

In many a scene I could not help taking it personal and being moved, borderline insulted, with… how things are. It poked me right into my sense of appropriateness, that notion of people taking for granted that author is known through his work, implying we only write the things we are. We do not. Sometimes we write the things we most definitely aren’t, sometimes we write things we wished we could be, sometimes we write the people we loathe. That is the magic of creation. This need to attain security through elimination of ambiguity I find...

tiresome.

* Opposite, yet also knurd-unsuspensing thing happens when people are presenting themselves in movies, never really being persuasive enough to fill in the expectations.

Plastic Knives, Rens Argoa and Portman @Tvornica 16Jan2016

I rarely dance.

I mean... I do move to the music appreciating it with my body but I would be hard pressed to call that dancing. Somehow I feel true that I enjoy it more "from the inside" then it could be appreciated by watching me do it. I have previously been complimented on my dancing but, considering context of those compliments, I ruled that there cannot be lot of authority in those assessments. Or should I say ASSesments lol.

I went to see live gig yesterday at Tvornica; Plastic Knives, Rens Argoa and Portman. I could not believe my luck that this gig is happening on my "weekend off", when my offspringess is at her father's. Sometimes having this "me time" really feels like being off the leash. But I digress. Anyway, another ticket bought through Entrio (I love that service), got all dressed up to show off my brand new boots and then spent half an hour driving around the block in search of a parking spot. When I was almost at the end of my patience a spot appeared right across the street from the venue.

It's all in the good omens.

Got in, bought beer and Plastic Knives started to play.

Plastic Knives at Tvornica. Good spot in the front row.

There was just this one tiny moment, just in the start itself, when they started to play and after half a line music momentarily stuttered, just like the performers have startled themselves by loudness of their music (like a shifting reference frame) and from that moment on everything (and I mean everything!) was perfect. I made a few photos with my phone and I stood there completely in awe. At some point I got out my phone and typed short text exchange:

wow indeed

And I stood there, mesmerized, thinking:"This is how I look like, when dancing, to other people. Like a sloth on speed - with exactly zero natural grace." but the music was beyond amazing and  Damjan and Nikola's musician chemistry was amazing and the shitload of doodahs and doohickeys on the floor around Damjan added and subtracted sounds and loops and delays and it was un-fuckin-believably good! Fresh and potent and so much more alive than on the albums (which are also awesome and you can sample them here, on their bandcamp page).

Then they were over. It was a performance so amazing I cannot stop talking about it.

And then there was a longest pause between two bands in the history of multiple-band performances. Gazzilion things were subtracted from stage set and some were also added. I drank lot of water, got myself another beer and stood there, in the front row, while overdressed, weird-smelling guy pitched himself to two very petite girls, unsuccesfully.

Rens Argoa finished setting up and started to play.

Rens Argoa at Tvornica

I've already seen five of their live gigs and all of them were one better than the next. They are, by far, domestic music act I listen to most at home. They are in my top 5 most listened to artists overall. This gig was no different, delivery was just as beautiful as expected: relaxed, professional, rehearsed to perfection, adding flare of impeccable live act to familiar sounds from the albums. I always take a peek if the drummer started wearing shoes while playing but no - all is well with the world. They played some new stuff and some old ones and for most of it I just forgot myself and danced, danced, danced in my new boots. A guy from the middle front row came and said:"I'm holding a spot for you there." and I smiled and blushed and just kept on stomping there where I stood. Muscles felt supple and strong, boots fitted perfectly, music flowed like thunderous whitewater.

And then there was Portman.

I already wrote about them a bunch of times and have seen several of their shows and whenever I see announcement of their gig I try to go and see them again. And again. And AGAIN. They are that good.

They are also very appealing to see.

Portman

Thanks to some unknown reason there were two metallic foil fringe bushes decorating the drum set. Ivan always looks like the force that takes care of operational details, guitar guy felt like he spent quite a deal of time dressing up for the occasion with his Jethro Tull T-shirt and slouchy hat and frontman was so overwhelmingly relaxed, with his aura of not giving a ... care.. and this awesome black matt bass. That must be the single most beautiful bass I have ever seen, pulling the light into itself as a black hole.

This guy is just so cool it is beyond comparison. I love that.

Slaven Jedvaj* - Portman

The music was alive and strong and uncompromisisng, leaving no space for dilly-dallying. When I listen to their music at home I find it very melodic and very math-defined deliberate. I find it precise and spaced in time intentionally and measured, like crop circles. But on live gig it feels like a wild animal attacking you - it may still be measured and precise, but there is no way of noticing that considering how strongly it advances.

The three performances we saw during this concert night were so excellent, each in its own right, it felt like I attended three full gigs. Absolute awesomeness.


*Apologies for misidentification of Portman bass player previously id'd as Josip Zupčić under the photo of Slaven Jedvaj. This is what happens when being socially autistic and identifying people from their bandcamp biographies. Thanks to Slaven for bringing this to my attention gracefully :)
 
You can also see this review on Terapija in english here: http://www.terapija.net/english.asp?ID=23305