'the heart of the wound'

scott stosell mentions the phrase 'the heart of the wound' in his book 'my age of anxiety'. a therapist told him that the thing that makes him cry when brought up, not necessarily a thing that would normally cause one to cry, hides deep wounds that are still unresolved, and that should be explored.

i myself am not easily moved to tears, but i also have a wound with a heart that makes me cry, particularly when i am in dire circumstances. over a month ago i had my fifth serious surgery caused by vhl, and the post-op period is always challenging in many ways. emotionally, the same pattern has repeated every time i recovered from an operation. many current things in my life seem to go out of focus - my family and friends, my work, apartment, country. i am not even emotional about the physical difficulties of going through recuperation, or the uncertainties about the outcome of the surgery. the only thing that remains in my emotional range and comes to life is the region where i was born - dalmatia: my earliest childhood, the people who loved me, the music played on the radio, the sound of the words, the light of the sun, the colour of the water. and deep tears start to gush.

i think the reason for this wound is that a strong desire to be in my homeland remained unfulfilled throughout my life. until i was three i lived there permanently, but then i moved to another country, then yet another. growing up, i would spend summer and winter holidays in croatia, but i never went to school there, which i had dreamed of, or worked there, or had a more permanent formal connection with my home country. there are no compunctions now for me to move there, but i doubt that would stop my tears. life took me elsewhere, and there is no easy cure for my wound. maybe i don't even want it to heal. maybe i want the tears to keep me in touch with the region of my birth and with the source of so much warmth and strength coming from there.

en gång i stockholm

i have always been prone to nostalgia. red hot nostalgia, stomach-churning nostalgia, weakness-in-the-legs nostalgia. my childhood displacements from the places i loved probably spurred its growth. now it doesn't take too long for any of its varieties to rise up within me swinging like a cobra and play tricks on my emotions.

the exact type of nostalgia i feel for stockholm is difficult to describe. it has been stirring these days, one year after i left the city in which i lived for half a year. there's a thin whitish film on the surface, and a warm, golden heart on the inside. i did not spend too much time there for my nostalgia to grow mythic roots, but neither too little to avoid being itched and carved by it. now it has an equal place in my personal atlas, along with dalmatia, munich, iceland, usa, and london. stockholm, the city on islands; the city of wispy dreams and loving lovelessness.

the view from my room in rinkeby was nondesript. the one from my hornstull abode was more dynamic. i remember them both. sitting by the window, watching snippets of stockholm life. or how gamla stan would appear ablaze when the train gets out of slussen. or haga parken in september, or countless of rounds around skeppsholmen. the beauty tears are made of.

i left stockholm on 9 february '14 with a bird in my chest. its dysthymic wings still flutter at times. but the bird might have gone.

blood like lemonade.

i have not yet figured out where i live. in my past? possibly. in my reveries? frequently. in my environment? hardly. i actually do not live. life just lives itself, and i happen to overlap with it. sometimes it is blood that runs through my veins, sometimes lemonade.

gutters, neon lights, reflections on soaked asphalt. cranberry juice from tesco express. london scattered in my head.

the art of here and now escapes me. always has. there might have been moments when i breathed time. now i breathe ash.

october smells of london. of metallic moaning of the tube and of dead daffodils in green park. my butterfly net is packed in the bag. time to chase time.

before the applause.

karen armstrong, one of my favourite religious thinkers, said that god can in no way be defined, but can possibly be compared to that pregnant silence which ensues in between the ending of a symphony being played in a concert hall and the beginning of the applause. such meaningful slots of outward emptiness and inner fullness are the portholes into the unfathomable depths of existence, and they leave us awed and puzzled. the glimpses into the deep ocean of metaphysical meaning occur spontaneously, even throughout dull daily routines, not just amid superb artistic or spiritual events. they can be seen as the dots which connect the outlines of what really matters in our lives. taking a shower, waiting at a check-out line, being stuck with the workload - instances just happen when i lose track of who, or where, or what i am. it takes a few moments of resetting to come back down to earth. but during those temporally brief moments there's an intimation of something greater, something comprehensive, warm and dark, deep, essential, illogical. does it mean that we are constantly floating on an ocean of deeper truths, and that sporadic reflections of its shiny surface on our minds reassure us about why it makes sense to live? or are those just sparklings of our own jumbled thoughts and emotions? i would love to believe that the first, not the second question can be answered positively. however, i do not have any proof for it, neither does anyone else for that matter. what remains is to either believe or not believe, both of which is perfectly fine.

taste vs. texture.

texture is more important than taste where my appreciation of food is concerned. i've always known it, but i was recently completely convinced in it. there are two food items that are almost tasteless, but that have completely opposite textures. one are water chestnuts, the other the finnish leipäjuusto, or cheese-bread. chinese and thai food are my all time favourites. however, even though i am not a picky eater, for some reason i cannot stand water chestnuts. tasteless as they are, they make me feel sick. on the other hand, the finnish pancake-looking cheese-base for either salty or sweet spreads, also with almost no taste, is something i am mad about, and prepared to pay for dearly when i come across it outside of finland. and i never put anything on it so as not to spoil the 'taste'.

a leash.

i do not know what the following feels like: to live a life that is easy and uneventful, to live a life filled with pain and suffering only, to live a life that is utter happiness. in my case, i am usually wedged in between the very bright highs and the very dark lows.

the highs and the lows of my life do not refer to my moods or my feelings, but to concrete life events. some of them extraordinary, to be dreamed of, some, on the other hand, scorching with pain.

the only way to keep some kind of balance and stability in such a position is to step back at times from both the good and the tragic facts of my life. to watch the things unfold as if taking place on a theatre stage. to get away from the burning heart of happiness and of suffering. to cast a gaze over my shoulder to the distant hills.

sometimes i take this vulnerable soul of mine on a leash and walk it in the streets of stockholm like a dog. nobody sees it, it leaves no paw prints, it does not pee or poop. it just weeps inside, and when the tears clear the chest and the nasal passages, i put it back into myself and head home.

i do not think i am able to choose which frame of life i would like to fit myself into. it is more likely that the frame of life chooses us. if i could, though, it is the easy&uneventful that sounds so enticing. yearning for it. but then again, i would find a reason to complain about it. nearly everybody does. so, it seems there is no other option but to pigeonhole ourselves into the appointed niches. and take a step back when the going gets tough.

chapters.

a year ago a new chapter started in my life, a chapter i thought would never come to a close. but it did. its ending overlapped with the beginning of a new one. other undreamed of endings took place, too, as well as some undreamed of beginnings. there are, in fact, no chapters, just branchings out into the unknown and unforeseeable. the multiple streaks that run parallel, and intertwine, and disappear, and come back again.

it happens frequently when i walk around stockholm, which beauty always hurts, that i become aware of the multifaceted nature of every moment. just like in indian yards where saris are dyed, there commences a fluttering and heaving and waving deep within me, and the threads get loose in every direction - my loves, my homelands, my dreams and my secrets. the music, the adriatic, the hands. the beauty around me. the nordic air. the rain on the windscreen as the radio plays 'sto si ti meni'. the whole world.

if i gave a conclusion now i would betray the main point of the text. novels with open endings have been written for centuries. although i prefer a neat closure when i read a book, missing epilogues are much truer to life. my preference only speaks about my immature desire for certainty in a world swaying on shaky legs.