The Philosopher’s Attic

How do we relate? Through words? Actions? Sweet words spoken to the wind of our vanities?
What happens when all of that isn’t enough?
Do we simply go back to sipping our tea and watch the world pass us by?

Try as I might, I simply may never be good enough
for either the marvelous thoughts of my friends that accompany me through my day,
nor the ones truly loving me for whatever reason only known to them.
Where does my merit lie with the life I am leading?

Detached forever and albeit longing for the simplest and highest things.
Unable to reach out, but dying to simply sigh of pleasure…

A friend of mine hit me in the head a while ago by telling me: ‘I wish I could just hear you say that you’re perfectly at ease for once… it would certainly reassure me…’

Amen to that.

I just had another one of those moments that can only happen when you live in a big city… one of those occasions where from the crowd (and I mean crowd) of faces without sense or meaning, someone comes up,stands out, looks at you and you slowly emerge from your own misty look upon the world…
Where all of a sudden you meet a neighbour you never knew he lived there in the first place… and when on top of that he tells you he has been looking for you…
I’m walking up the stairs to my appartement corridor (think about Gosford park and the two sided life: the backhouse and the shiny fronthouse… I would live behind the tapestry door where the servant’s rooms once where…) and someone stands in front of my door.
The guy turns around (I have my keys in the left hand, immediately readying them as a pointy defense, just in case…) and says ‘Are you the philosopher living in no 16 ?”

HUH?

“That would depend on the definition of ‘philosopher’ now, wouldn’t it?’ I say before I even start thinking… and at the same moment a thought of ‘Where the hell did that come from, Y.??!!’ passes my mind.
“Well, you see, I have a question for you… if you have five minutes…”

Again: HUH?

Since I just got home from a missed appointement and my head is racing I don’t really have the force to say no, and following the habit I took up in this impersonal town, I will not turn down any hand or look that is offered me. Just to be clear: I won’t do anything. Not here, nor back home. But, being here and being the way I am - frightful and distanced towards people to say the least - I swore that if someone took the time to address me personaly I wouldn’t turn it down beforehand like I most certainly would in Switzerland.

Some minutes later, coffee in hand, we’re off to the heights (or depths) of the human mind and the great questions.

His was as follows: “Do you need to love at any price - and risk losing everything - or do you only need to live for yourself?”

My inital answer of course was that this was rather a poetical question before being a philosophical one. Defiant snorting.
And it’s true. Dont’ you at first need to rid yourself of the poetical content of ‘living for love only’ and romantic feelings, before addressing the philosophical meaning of the question?
One talk later I’m not much wiser. But that’s a hazard of my profession. Sweet talk and no reward.
Even worse, isn’t it the question of my life? The one I always get back to? The one that always leaves me doubting for the next day, the next relation, the next terrible downfall to bring be to my knees? Am I not ready to give everything up in an instant, just to savour a true link to a true person? Am I not the one who’s ready to just give, and maybe hope to get some warmth back in return? And what if I have missed my chance in one of my lost loves? What if the ones I have left and the ones that have left me, were the best shot I’d have ever had at solace and peace?
What if my inner torment was of my own chosing - the last consequence of my actions - rather than just coincidence?
And how many conflicting assertions can you even pack into a question? Or several ones for that matter?

But without knowing it, he might have offered me an answer to my own conflicting feelings. A rather clear answer, and that makes him the true philosopher, not me…

Like I said, another one of those encounters you can only have here… Because you try to be much more open. So different from what you really are… And then you close the door to your appartement, your inner sanctum… and what remains is but the memory of a nice coffee and a good advice. And in that… still nothing has changed. Not really anyway.
I am still left with my fears and doubts and there is still no hint of a solution… just good advice. As if I hadn’t had those myself.

I was listening to Keane (Album: Hopes and Fears) this morning and it took me right back to my summer in Lithuania. To the Curonian Spit to be more precise…

It was a stunning experience, but the first thing I remember are not all the truly enlightening WWI, WWII or Communist era accounts, family stories or historical events that either people have told me quite openly or I have gathered through my visit to the great museums there. No.
The one thing I will always remember first about Lithuania is the sun on breaking its way to shine on the forest ground on the Curonian Spit.
The whole spit or island is mostly covered in 3 to 5 meter high pines that were planted after WWII. (The Germans had forcenates clear the hughe forest on the island for the war industry).
When setting over with the ferry from Kleipeda and entering the road through the forest the ground is covered in pine needles at first, no green grass. Just brown natural decaying nature. And the sun’s scattered beams of light turns out all the variations of brown, red and grey…

But when you get to Nida, the topmost village before entering Russia (yes, you can see the Russian military zone from the great wandering dune behind Nida and wandering to far will result in an arrest and some odd questioning…), the ground of the forest is covered in kneehigh green dune grass. Or at least some other kind of grass unknown to me. Lush. Thick. Healthy.

One evening with the setting sun, we set out to cross the whole island (about 2km… maybe a bit more) from one side (we started behind Thomas Mann’s Summer house and the evangelic church) - the sweet water side - to the sea.
Wandering through the already dying light of the day, which delved the soothing green around us in a wonderful display of a fairytale forest. The earth below my feet is not earth, but sand. And from it grows the light green of the dune grass, sharp figures in the growing shadows. You can hear the roaring of the sea through the trees although we’re still 20 minutes away from the cold eastern sea.
There is no breeze or wind to ruffle either the tree canopy above me, nor the green I’m surrounded by.

A perfect display of natural silence. The very essence of nature captured in this removed instance of peace.

We reached the top of the dune overlooking the sea just as the sun was setting behind the coulds torn and tattered by the stiff breeze…

And since I had not taken my camera with me on this walk… there are no pictures of this moment, nor of the grass I will never forget. And it is for the better… this way I am allowed to sublimate my mental image of this place as I see fit, without reality ever dragging down the wonderful images before my inner eye.

Not what you might think… no… smokey silence above the roofs of Paris…

Music of the Moment: Mozart, Clarinet Concerto KV 622, 2. Movement: Adagio

“Why do you feel this way?”
Why do we feel at all?
Do feelings even serve a purpose?
And if yes, what purpose would that be?
What does it all mean?
The love, the yearning, the hurt,
the agony of rejection and the peace of a fullfilled dream?
What would we be without the feeling and the pain?
Mere satelites, monads without windows.

I wonder if Leibniz ever thought of Individuality this way.
I strongly doubt it. But let’s give it a moment.
What if the shared feeling was the only thing to connect us,
the only thing that allows us to really position ourselves,
define what we are and who we are?
Seems like a simple common place, no?

Just as common as we all…
And what about those moments where you write yourself
into a mood you haven’t really dreamt of being in to start with?
Is it a revelation, or rather a change of spirit?
Right into the wall with a speed of 200kmh…
What if you’re not just subjected to the feelings,
but you’re actually the one to make them?
Would that change anything?
I bet it wouldn’t…
… real is what you make out of it.
… real is whatever has meaning to you.
… real is whatever future you covet.
… real is different.

Paris was under the snow today…
… that’s not really astonishing as a news line now, is it?

Well… maybe you don’t know that this city has not a single snow vehicle, nor any salt to prevent the snow from icing over, nor do they send out any maintenance people in the morning to make some pathways on the streets for people who should be so bold as to try to get to work in the morning…

400km of traffic jam from the peripheric to the center is all I am saying.
Here… or here or here maybe… or here or then again (even made CNN, haha) and again HAHA!!! (The Rugby fans for the Six nations cup are grounded in Cardiff… Airports of Paris closed…)

I’m sorry, but this really makes me laugh… and I am sure it would have Krystin up in the Great White North laughing on the floor.
Er… hello? Weather control to the pompous French…? There is another load of the terrible alien white headed your way… What are you gonna do? Have a 10h week? This’ll be your end… muuuuaaaaahhhh….

Not even half of the students came into the seminar today. Lol… OK. Let’s get real. It did snow quite heavily. And it was about… well, 10cm. Pathetic… and this is supposed to be one of Europe’s center pieces of a new society? Hmm…

I had my enjoyable moment with the snow this morning at 7:30. I went out spend an hour to get all ’snowed up’… with the wind from the boulevards I was white when I got to my café at the corner to get some smokes. “Ah, Uh… vous êtes toute blanche…??!” the guy said… He hates snow, just like every one in this town. All I could manage was a “Alors… je me sens comme chez moi en Suisse…” - He looks at me appalled and timid, stating: “Ah… alors cela ne vous fait rien?”

Hahaha…

I’ll better stop laughing, because it’s possible that I have opened all windows and doors to that flu bug that has been bothering me for the last weeks…

Trying my best Penkala: “I am shakin’ so goddamn much…I feel like I’m dancin’.”
What a YYBWBOBTM moment… *sipping hot tea with lemon*

More impressions of Paris under the snow
1 (the angel of the Column of July, Plc dl Bastille)- 2 (bvl Richard Lenoir towards Plc dl République)- 3 (same)- 4 (still the same) - 5 (the angel again… ah)
If you want to know where that is… go here…

After another almost sleepless night without any better advice to offer to my beloved soulsister Marie than the evening before, I opened the window at 6 am and it was snowing. It was really snowing, slightly and curly, but it was the first snow to see here.
So I took a moment to stand at the open window, let myself get chilled down to the core of my very bones, of my own aching soul and longing heart, just watching the iced water spiral down to the warm earth… transform… become liquid again.
Some gray clouds were lingering there against the darker shade of the sky, and I was briefly wondering at the different shades nature can mirror.
And like a character out of my own stories my thoughts went out to the ones I had left behind during the course of my short life. The ones that had either not kept up with my pace or had simply not the force to keep me. To the ones I would certainly meet today, tomorrow or in some distant nearer future. To the ones that deeply affected me, had hurt or loved me and were possibly still loving me now.
And just as the tiny speckles of snow were ever falling down to earth, my thoughts were drawn by everyday weight downwards… lost between the deep pits of the backyards of the shiny houses of the ‘eternal city of light’, where a solitary soul just stood… watching the snow muffle the doubting voices of the mind.