Pendulum

My pendulum said I should not eat bread, a duduk player told me.

Hm. But how do you ask her? ( I was not sure if pendulum was masculin or feminin. Intuitivelly I would say feminin.)

You just have to ask, he said.

Hm.

First you ask, where is YES, and were is NO. Then you can ask questions just to see if it works, like am I a woman or am I a man.

Gosh.

He pulled out a carabin tied on a string.

I remembered I had a carabin on my keys. Just have to find the string. And then to ask, where should I go.

But you have to be specific.

Like this? :

Should I learn to build yurtas in Mongolia?

Should I get an IT job in India?

Should I go to sleep now?

I guess it says YES. Good night.

Berlin and stuck diplomas

I am tired of traveling. I thought a library for the winter would be cool to have around. So I found an incredibly interesting course in TU in Berlin and decided to enroll myself there. And yes, I realised I might be a victim of the untranlatable German phenomena called “Torschlusspanik” – the feeling of panic one has, when the gates are closing in front of her. Not really that I would panic, I just thought, it would be nice to go to study again.

My diploma, original, had to reach my beloved friend and cousin, coming all way from Lithuania. She would then bring the thing to the office in the university, since the university does not accept originals sent by mail.

When she finally went to the postoffice, they said since no one came to pick it up within one week, they sent it back. Back where? Somewhere in Lithuania?

The deadline came. Diploma was somewhere in the air between Berlin and Lithuania. The university office said, they cannot make any exceptions. They would not wait.

So, no Berlin. But what then? Winters in Caucasus are harsh and cold, I will not do this again. I guess the answer will come by itself.

Toast for ancestors

Even being sedentary one cannot stop traveling I guess. Yes, I was on one spot, next to the sea. I would read books and practice poi and then have some future building activities – trying to buy a piece of land in order to set up a garden in the epicurean sense.

One can survive there before and after the season. I was before. Piles of plastic bottles, the unimaginable green around and quietness, interrupted only by at the sudden busy Georgians who seemed to grab histerically all their tools and try to repair that has not been repaired since ages. But that’s fine with me as long as the bars, playing “chornye glaza” – the music type I cannot bring over my heart, were not opened yet.

I did not move and people came here with their stories.

There was this Russian familiy around. While eating at the only opened inn I told them from the other table, that they were as smart as me to come before the season would start. Their child, Petia, had a summer cap that looked like a white boat, like from the old times. His face was incredibly Russian. Like from the old pictures in black and white. But here they were. In colour.

It took some time for us to strike the conversation. Both, me and them rather shy animals. Another, when we already would dine all at the same table, Ilja said: I am actually a Georgian. It sounded stupid. Trying to what? To complimet the culture this way, or what? No, my grandgrandfather was Jugashvili. They called him Stalin.

In Georgian tradition there is a toast that one drinks for the ancestors. One spils some of the drink to the ground.

Let us drink to our ancestors: your grandgrandfather, and my grandfather, who was forced to write a poem for your grandgrandfather.

We did not talk about politics, the future or the past. We drank toast for the houses, boats and the black sea.

On the last day, when they had to leave, I ran around trying to find them. I wanted to give them a small childish badge with moomintroll, we were talking so much about.

I found them finally. Ilja and Olia smiled. Like in one of those books of Tove Jansson they started digging in their bags, unpacking and causing a chaos just before having to leave.

They pulled out a small black bag. They said, you might need the bag more than a badge, don’t you?

There were moomintroll on it.

http://www.io.com/~fazia/Moomin.html

I waved them good bye like a grandma from the old animation film about the lion Bonifacius. I will miss you, I waved to them.