Sigh

In the past I always thought if someday my mother passed away, I would regularly visit her grave and talk to her. I could not imagine, at the time, I would be able to stay weeks, not to say months or years, without talking to her even if it was a one way conversation. My mother had gone for few years now and my visits to her grave got less and less. It is not only because I live abroad but even when I go back home, I do not visit her. And the idea of talking to her now seems to me odd.

I used to dream of her a lot in the first year after she left, and some of these dreams were so vivid that I waked up emotionally satisfied that I saw her and she seemed fine. No dreams anymore.

I immensely miss her and miss what she represented in my life but I am aware now, after 8 years of her absence, that she is and will forever be far far away. All what remain are a blurry smiling face, faded warmth of a hug and increasing acceptance of the loss.

Dream (Sunday, February 15, 2010)

I grilled two odorless fish and I chopped the garlic to prepare the sauce. It took long time to grill and there were persons watching me. At the end, the fish did not look tasty. I wrapped them in a foil paper although I was not quite sure that they were already well cooked.

The Usual Frame

I waked up this morning and a song kept flashing in my mind for no apparent reason. The first thing I did when I arrived at the office was to play it on youtube. Old memory? Maybe. It is ABBA's the day before you came.

Dream (Friday, 12/2/ 2010)

T was at the airport carrying two suitcases and running late to catch the plane. I also ran to keep pace with him. Then he decided to abandon one of his suitcases because it would be easier to quicken the pace. As I was surprised by this decision, he explained that the suitcase did not contain important stuff except some cheese.

T disappeared in the crowd and I assumed he has already caught the plane, and I thought of going back to pick up the suitcase. The hall was empty except for a cleaning worker who finished his job although the floor was not quite proper. I tried to draw his attention in order to ask him about the lost suitcase but in vain. He walked away and I followed him until he entered an office and disappeared. I entered the same office and asked a uniformed staff about the lost luggage. The staff clarified that the lost and found office was located outside the airport. I argued about the impracticality of the location but the officer apathetically answered that that was it.

I thought that there must be a way to find the suitcase, but then I told myself it might not be that important because after all it was T who abandoned it.

Epcot Center, Florida, 1994

It is not usually very uncommon that someone tells me he/she knows an acquaintance or a friend who looks like me (I guess it is due to my "standard" look) but to see someone who really looked like me was a different feeling.
It happened once in a faraway city. A face just flashed for seconds in the crowd and I felt like looking in the mirror. One hour later I ran into the same person in a restaurant and asked my company to look and tell me what he saw. My friend replied: God, he looks exactly like you.
I felt a strange intimacy and resisted an urge to go and talk to him or at least to keep carefully looking at him.

Saturday's dream

I was completely naked in a busy street trying to hail a taxi cab. Nobody seemed to notice. A blondish smiley woman carrying a child tried also to hail a cab. She started, in a friendly way and a foreign dialect, to strike up a conversation. She said that she liked to do shopping especially buying handicrafts. I repeated what she said but instead of saying "handicrafts", I used the French word "artisanat". We found out that we wanted to go to the same place and decided to share a cab. A pistachio colored 1950s 2 door cab stopped. I ran to ride but the driver drove away. I turned around to look for the woman but she disappeared. I thought she might have taken a cab alone, and felt disappointed at her loss.

I then found myself in an underground metro station only wearing a large loose shirt. A man in his 50s with a big white moustache stood close. He had reddish skin and I guessed he must have been drunk. The man seemed friendly and kept looking at me. A female friend of his joined him and they argued about something I could not comprehend. He turned his head every now and then to look at me and smile. There was some sort of an inexplicable spark between us.

In the Army Then

It was our first lengthy talk. We briefly ran into each other before and exchanged few words, but that evening amid dozens of other recruits in the military base, we had the opportunity to talk about everything and anything. I do not know how the talk took us to the musical styles we preferred, but when I mentioned the name of my favorite singer, P seemed surprised. He said it was difficult for him to catch the lyrics of her songs because they were in a different dialect. I commented it was a matter of time and if we listened carefully, we could understand the words. P asked if I knew the lyrics of a certain mellow song that he loved without understanding the meaning. I explained it and added jokingly that I could even sing it. P was impressed and complimented me for my voice and singing skills. I thought he was sarcastic because my voice, husky as I have ever been told, had never been a singing material. P seemed honest though. He even asked me to sing it again.

It was a bit strange. In the recreational hall of the military base (where we were both performing our military service) and while dozens of other shaved head guys were shouting, talking, fighting, swearing or whatever, there were the two of us, in some corner, having our own live singing show.