Erykini's 4 stages of dealing with setbacks

Step 1. the existential questioning

Thats where you wonder why? why me? why now? why did it have to happen/not happen/happen this way? Why couldn't it just work?

Caution: if this step continues too long it will inevitably end up to re-thinking the possibility of the existence of a divine creature, that has decided to torture those who dared to doubt his/hers existence. Also this step is necessarily accompanied with emotional eating, and as emotional eating is not usually focused on salads and fruits, it can end up badly.

Step 2. the self-blaming

As an atheist you cannot reaaally blame God for your misfortune, and due to your trait tendency towards depression, you will eventually blame yourself either because it is indeed your fault or... you will find something you did badly. its not that hard anyway.

It includes calling yourself bad names (but not self-whipping due to lack of religious belief as already mentioned) and even greater amount of emotional eating (by now you need to refill the nutella stock).

Caution: whereas step 1 was pretty much an internal thing, now you are whining to all your significant others (this can also end up badly)

Step 3. the Self-pity

After waking up from the self-beating, you realize how pathetic you actually are for doing all that self-blaming and all that eating. So feel sorry for yourself and for reacting this way, which leads to even more emotional eating (and that's what we call a vicious circle. Delicious but vicious)

Step 4. (this part differs according to the situation)
a) something happens and you are forced  to actually DO something for the problem (or your friends make you do so cause they cant stand your whining)
b) you eat so much that you feel bad and you decide to fight your misery and do some on-line work out exercises (shake your hips to lose weight). Exercise increases hormones in your brain (i cannot remember which) that make you feel less miserable, so you actually carry on your life/whatever you were doing despite the setback
c) nothing happens and one-week passes by. After one week of self-pitying you are ready to do anything to make it stop. And the problem is solved.

The best description of my PhD progress..

Came to me today in English:

"Its like dragging a corpse to the finish line"

Relationship birthday cards ...

Relationship loves cards.

Maybe its all that time spent as a royal mail employee. 

Or just the love for written expressions of feelings. 

I should know something about that.

Over three years i got more cards than in a lifetime.
My favourite of all is that birthday card, which is not a birthday card. That one describing an escape from life (isn't that maybe the most romantic venture of all?) :

Can we?

Shall we?

One day.

Very soon.

Let us go away together 

just you and me.

Call in sick and go to the sea and hold hands all day.

Eat out sandwiches on the train. 

Get drunk on fresh air and come home tired and never tell anyone...

EVER.

Not knowing why, i remembered this today, i suppose because i am indeed growing up beside the relationship or because Paolo (and the Vipers) is another piece of beauty out there in the world. 

This world has reached to that point...

...where you feel guilty for being happy. 

Open to interpretation

New Orleans (french market)

Belgian Nights

(due to lack of inspiration i translate here something i wrote in Greek back then on my first week in Belgium)

People here kiss three times.

They drink beer and talk quietly. 

A strange smell comes from the other flats making me nauseous. I try to guess the cuisine, Indian may be.

At the first sachet of ready-made Mediterranean sauce rice it reveals itself.

Cuisine: junk.  

The jenever has really hit me. I am a bit dizzy.

At the street still lies the vomit of a drunken guy from last night’s party. The little girl that passes me by pulls up her white cape not to get it dirty.

Her little basket was full of sweets.  

The round has been fruitful.

Trick or treat? In a foreign custom of consumerism.

But why not? A bit of cultural stir-up.

There is always something lost in translation. But why not?

I think the beer after the jenever was not a good idea. Never mix up drinks my dad used to say.

It’s night and the sky is white. What would that mean? Wear my thick jacket tomorrow I assume?

Luckily I don’t need to drive. Cause I am pretty dizzy.

At the smell of the ready-made food add my burnt cheese. I have never been careful with the details.

Mascara has left discretely its marks on my fingers. I always forget the make-up.

I think I will sleep. The room is a bit blurry. Even pretty.

It’s the jenever.

August

How would summer ever be without that August moon? 

How would falling in love ever be without that August moon?

How would music or the poetry ever be without that August moon?

How would memories be without that August moon?

I wish there was a way to somehow explain, but some things, just cannot be explained. 




But why does the song have to be sad
it feels like it cut a piece from my heart
and at this moment that I'm overwhelmed with joy
it rose up to my lips and choked me...
save yourself for the end, you will tell me 

I love you but i don't haven't voice to say it to you
and this is an unbearable sadness 
I' m melting in pain because I also feel
that the road we're taking is impassable...
be strong, it will pass, you will tell me 

How can I forget her loose hair 
the sand washing me like a waterfall while she leaned over me
thousands of kisses, diamonds she offered me so generously
I'll go, even if it turns out to be bad.

Upon which ecstacy, which magic dance
could such a creature have been born?
from which distant star is the light
that went to hide inside her two eyes
and me, the lucky one who has seen it 

In her eyes, a tiny sky
lightens, clouds and unfolds itself
but when the night falls it is flooded with light
an August moon rises
illuminating the prison inside 

How can I forget her loose hair 
the sand that washed me like a waterfall, while she leaned over me
thousands of kisses, diamonds she offered me so generously
I'll go, even if it turns out to be bad.

Organizing my pc..

I stumbled across these, forgotten under my picture folder. No other part of a city can denote its living, moving spirit more than street art.  

PARIS:

Paris (where even cigarette butts serve the art)

BRUSSELS (so many, selected my favorites from the Marolles):

ATHENS
out of many i selected this (oh those greek poets), which can only lose in translation: Love or nothing...

To the sea

The route from Nicosia to Limassol was always my favorite as a child (and the most frequent too). Mostly because of the anticipation.

Its a rather boring drive through the highway that crosses brownish hills with scarce vegetation, at that yellowish sort of green frequently found at the area of eastern Mediterranean or Middle East (wherever you would place this little island). And suddenly after about 40 minutes of drivingand counting of numerous brown bushes, somewhere around Zygi, there is appears. The first blue ribbon inbetween the hills, the first sign of water, that very first glimpse of the sea. 

I remember our faces, mine and my brother's, as children stuck on the left window at the back seat of our old car, restless, staring hill after hill, bush after bush. Waiting.

"It's the sea !! It' s the sea!! It's the sea!!' we would yell in the car with that sort of excitement children get with the simplest things that exist, and that sort of excitement that fades away with growth or maturity as they like to say.

From that moment, you know. Its only a few minutes to the sea. A while later you are there. You lay on the water, floating, with your arms open, and your eyes closed. The sun is so bright that you cant even see darkness (if seeing darkness is possible) when you close your eyelids. You can feel the sun kissing your face and your forehead and your belly, the water subtly drifting your body, the voice of the people out there in the world fade away. And you let go. 

I had lots to say...

about clear blue skies, and blue seas, and the feeling of the hot sand under your feet, and water-melons, and summer dresses and movies under the stars.

but as i open my mouth no voice comes out of it.
Both real loss and real lonelyness require silence.

Maybe some other time...   

At the office

Staring at the page. Still.
On top of a pile of boring textbooks and tables with numbers, and graphs and hand-written notes. 
There lies in-between the lines i am reading over and over again the little red threat. 
Ignore it. 
Even better, hide it with my flashy green highlighter used to signify the important information to be stored in  memory.
No use. Still there.
Trying to read. Highlight. Take notes. Remember.
Still there. That little red threat.
Pull it. Follow the threat along the lines.
To worlds where important information cannot be highlighted. To worlds without numbers, without highlighters, without time. To worlds with lovers and bodies and kisses and stars and jasmine-smelling nights of August. 


Daydreaming is my favorite office activity...

Here i am...

again writing an akward first post. Pretty much 4 years after my first akward one. In english this time (what to do? non-cypriot fans).

So, my friend. I am not sure how this will go (well... there is too little in life you can be sure of).

The last time i started a blog the purpose was to get those badly written pieces out of the bottom of the drawer and put into the test my (eventually) non-existent talent in writing. With time (surprise, surprise) things got quite a different turn. So my blog became more of a friend (one of those you share your thoughts, and your jokes, and your pessimism and your worries and the stupid little things that come up every now and then with) than a stage.

So i think i would try to make this one my stage (since anyway all these things i put in Erykini are not really feasible to be expressed in English). Of course that would mean a) writing again and b) writing in english.

It shall be fun.