Actually, today

I've got so many things on my mind I'd like to put in writing.

Maybe it's the weekend's fault, spending a couple of days lazying around and thinking about everything and nothing.

Maybe it's the feedback from people, talking to them on Skype, or just some things random people say. Something that amazed you, as well as something that annoys you.

Good ideas, interesting plans, amazing places.

And then I sit down, start typing, and with it I start yawning. No wonder, as it's almost 1 AM. The jet lag is still here.

And tomorrow is the start of another week.

Another week of researching, planning, meeting, writing, e-mailing, discussing, worrying, forwarding, ringing up, meeting up, calming down, eating out, passing out, waking up, taking off, crawling back...

Actually, today.

What's up?

There's nothing to write about. There's no energy to write anything with, in any case.


I've been running around for days now, dealing with some errands, fixing my teeth, finishing up the tutoring (although the kids are horrible), looking for some shopping goodies (although they're all too expensive) and simply trying to catch a breath.


I feel like switching my phone off and dozing off on my parents' terrace. Now that I think of it, it's probably them who'd be unhappy with a situation development like that, but all in all, it seems like a good plan.


There's not much to do but wait for some news from Australia. I'm even too reluctant to start packing or to even start considering what I'd take. First of all, I don't even own a suitcase. Not that I didn't look for any. I did. They're just either too ugly, too rigid or, naturally, too expensive. Someone told me that expensive cases get stolen a lot. Thanks for the paranoia.


I did find shades though! And I was thrilled to do so, I have to admit. I've been wearing specs for over ten years now and, aside from being immensely annoyed by them, not being able to wear shades along with them has turned me into a squinting monstrosity. I have therefore decided to go with contacts and shades.


As I said, I ran into a really huge variety of specs, some really good and of nice quality and not even that expensive. And some of them don't even make me look like an island-hopping Western redneck with a waterfall mullet. I say yay!


I'll have to go back and pick out a pair though, since it was almost closing time and I couldn't really decide. I'm just glad I found some good ones. Good bye, squinting days!


I also got some good deals on some trousers and some sorts of sweaters, so all in all it was a good day. (I can't believe I'm talking about shopping! Damn you, girls!)


My sister took me shopping (and bought some stuff for me) which is great, since I have no problem walking around in torn up and oversized clothes whatsoever. She's the one who usually says yes or no to things. I rarely see myself anyway.


Here's some shoes that are being pondered upon. I'm sure you girls won't mind. (I still can't believe I'm talking about shopping...)

I can't believe it was yesterday and not today though. I have a feeling like today has lasted for four hours, and not twenty-four.


I better hit the sack before midnight strikes. G'night!

Istria

Here's just a photo from Istria now, before I come to my senses and am able to put something in writing...

Gračišće in Istria, Croatia largest peninsula
(taken by me, edited by Ivana)

Resolution

Even though I don't really like all the posts here on Insanity Breaches, it's the blog closest to my personality. I tend to dislike all the rants in case I read them a year after, but that's who I am and there's not much to be done about it.


So, with apologies to all those who prefer me writing in Croatian, I apologize. Writing in English is more likeable to create a world-wide crowd, make me famous, turn me into a star, and award me an Oscar. But then it's you who'll be on the thank-you list during my I-would-like-to-thank-the-Academy® acceptance speech.


So from now on, this is the only blog I'll be updating. Maybe I'll add something in Croatian from time to time, just to spice it up a bit - for old times' sake.


I'll just stick the latest post from the prospective-yet-failed Australian blog and that's it.


So, until we read again...

Multiblogging

I have kind of mistreated this blog by writing more and more on my Croatian one, but that might change.


I initially started writing in English during my travels and then somehow kept it going that way. Probably because of a lot of my friends who live abroad and who I speak English with, but also because (truth be told) most of the people speak it anyway.


Some are too shy to leave comments or take the step of writing their own thoughts, but it's an exercise for me, especially now when I have to focus on my English skills even more.


The reason I started writing a bit more in Croatian is that barely visible line, so thin between the language and yet fiording (I just made that up) a giant gap between expressions.


Sometimes I just miss the little phrases I'm used to. Naturally, some phrases are just untranslatable. The swear words can't be respectively mirrored. Sometimes fuck just doesn't cut it.


And being that I'm supposed to move to Australia within the next couple of months, I started thinking that I should probably keep a thorough blog about it. Who knows, someone might even use the information.


On the other hand, I don't want to make a boring blog that deals with the immigration process and initial resident issues. I'd like to keep it simple and, as much as possible, fun to read. Well, at least not boring.


Then there's the problem of the readership - again. Who'll read the English blog? My family certainly won't. (Now that I think of it, I probably don't want them to read it either.)


As you can see, I can't really seem to make up my mind, but it'll probably end up being one blog I'll try to update as regularly as I can, but I'll add links to the other ones, just for the possibility that someone maybe wants to go back in time and read what I've been ranting about.


So, there you go - another pointless post. 1:0 for me.

Coastline Comeback

I was so eager to write a new post now that I'm back from the coast. There was a story to be told as I was sitting in the car, trying to stay awake on my way home.


And what I come to is a new interface. I'm never sure whether I dislike it or not. But I surely can't write now...

The Thesis

I'm totally into it.

I'm too into it even. I haven't even properly started yet and I'm already over the average page count.

In between the rows of text I wonder why it's always so that we have to commit to one thing at a time. And committing to only one, it wraps around me so tight that I see it when I close my eyes, I dream about it when I'm so tired I pass out and it's the first thing that pops into my mind as I open my eyes.

The enthusiasm sometimes scares the hell out of me, but then I get up, open the window and get reminded that it's just another crappy day.

I make a cup of coffee, pick it up, then sneeze and spill it all over the place. Another crappy day, yah...

Another day of peeking out towards the Sun through the curtains, of reading people's statuses about how they're finally able to sit out in the Sun and sip their coffees and of people passing by, wrapped in their own tiny biospheres and not minding my own.

The more I read, the more I want to write. But it doesn't work that way. There have to be some limits. There has to be an asshole who'll say: Let's just fuck with them and make them suffer a bit more!

So I'm writing and writing and writing something that I know will be cut out in such little pieces it will be unrecognizable to my eyes. My own eyes, who come with the body that the hands that wrote it are connected to.

A collage of someone's words typed by someone else's hands to be read by people who do stuff for other people...

Sisyphus seems like a first-grade newbie now, doesn't he? Or he doesn't. I'm not sure.

I'm way too into my own crap here.

The often-called Spelling Nazi at his worst

As I lay in my bed (well, on the couch in the living room), I had a clear picture about what I wanted to write about. More a visual image of Word being opened and both my palms hovering over the keyboard than an actual image of the situations and people at hand, but I still managed to lose it.

I've written (more like ranted) about it before, especially while I was in India. I still leaf through the dodgy notebooks from time to time, trying to make some sense out of the mind storm that was going on in my head at that time. Losing, as Germans would say, den roten Faden after a blink of an eye. I see myself as one of those freaks one day, or autopsy people, talking in a digital recorder, trying to store thoughts, ideas and shapes. I wonder if it would be the same. I think not.

Trying to remember certain phrases or sentences has always been kind of hard for me. That's probably why I've always had isuues with theoretical exams in my life. It just doesn't seem natural to me to learn things by heart. Oh, when I remember the stupid poems I had to learn in school ― so pointless.

I think forcing an idea might somehow level out with losing it, if that makes any sense. Trying to remember thoughts seems like trying to copy a museum masterpiece. It's something one simply can't copy and, what's even worse, it's being stuck in an institution, in an unnatural environment, for people to stare at it and judge it.

But isn't that what we're all doing? Launching our thoughts out in the open, for everyone to see them and feel free to decide whether they like it or not. Is there a point to it after all? Aren't those our thoughts and ours only? Do we lose ownership over them by clicking the Publish button? Does is work that way at all?

Maybe it's comparable to literature, poetry and any form of art really. Canvassing an idea that people might appreciate. Simply the sharing. Some might dislike it, but who cares, right? I think there's surely someone out there who'll ditch your idea. I will be the first to dislike most famous artists' products. And that often turns me into an asshole. When I say his or hers new album or some new blockbuster with a mega famous Hollywood braud sucks. Mainstream people think I'm an ass. But I think they're the ones who're doing it wrong.

I like words, since I believe that the final cause changes the idea itself. Some people might be better off with a brush or an instrument, but making art just to make it somehow loses its purpose in my head. Art’s being made for its own sake.

Not that I'm an artist ― far from that ― but I somewhat like to use my own brain. My own inner compass. I sure as hell won't let other people tell me what I like and what I dislike. I've been taught to express my opinion and that's what I tent to do. I'm aware of the fact that it can be annoying though, but believe me, I'm the first one to be annoyed by it.

I hate the fact that I see an error calami when I open up a page. I hate stressing over grammatical errors in an article I like. I hate the fact that my friends hate it when I see those errors and hiss over them. I'd love to be more tolerant. I really would.

But I still believe there’s a difference between constructive criticism and a yapping mouth. I’m not the type who’ll go comment on errors, although I feel that I might as well turn into one of those. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who reacts to spelling and grammatical errors in the daily newspapers, but it sure annoys the hell out of me. (The reason is so many self-declared journalists and news people, who in fact just have connections or a nice cleavage, but that’s another story.)

After all, we do have spell checks in this century...

And whenever I read a cover story, I open the page and see three errors. Right away. It’s not only a professional deformation, but a curse. I’m horrified by the fact that there will be a typo in my texts. Especially when I’m writing in a language that isn’t native to me. By the mere fact that it’s in English, thecoefficient of the members of the jury who might find an error storms right up. I don't think there's a point to it, but it sure does make me even more uncomfortable.

Maybe I'm just not cut out to write. After I write a text, I just can't see the errors. I'll have to give my final thesis to various people, so that they find the errors I'm surely going to oversee. Sometimes I wonder if the same systems works with other things than writing.

But I'll do something ― I'll try not to care. I really enjoy reading a good piece of a text and I won't let it affect me. And now, after not writing about what I wanted to write about, I'll just go and read some texts that I wanted to catch up on. There's very nice blogs out there and they give me hope. Hope of quality ideas and no typos. Texts that make me think about stuff an hour after reading them. Texts that make me wish I were more fluent in foreign languages. Oceans of words that make me shut my computer down with a subtle grin on my face.

You are my psychiatrists and my tour guides. You're my imagination and my windows into other worlds. You're my newspapers and my TV. My photo albums and tickling ideas about all that is out there. So cheers out to you guys from snowy but sunny Österreich!

India (Take One)

After I got back from my second trip to India in 2008, I started writing The So-Called Book, trying to combine my impressions from both the first and the second visit combined.

It's turned out to be a bunch of my thoughts really, which felt weird since they didn't make much sense to me anyway. I was writing a lot and it literally poured. I couldn't write fast enough. Nevertheless, when I started typing it from the notebooks on to the computer, I never managed to get past the second chapter, since it was just too painful to re-read the whole thing and get reminded.

Maybe this will make me get on it. So, here goes...

- - -

Zero

It all started with Dr. Marten's. They were huge before and they were still quite big then. I met her at the university cafeteria when she made some comments about the mentioned shoes. I didn't like her at first and I think she didn't like me either, but somehow she became a light spot in my life.

We'd run into each other at university and sip watery coffee while waiting for lectures. We'd drink bad coffee, chain-smoke and talk about the usual stuff: travelling, photography, languages, scholarships... But never Dr. Marten's. And this is approximately where the whole story starts.

I had seen an application form for a scholarship in India and when I saw her the next time, it was the first thing I blabbed out. If I can remember correctly, she was already in the process of fixing up the necessary documentation and trying to figure out how to spell her name in devanagari.

From then onwards, everything seems like a chain of events that enriched and in a way, which now makes perfect sense, changed my life. To good and for good.

My thoughts were with her all the time, and with that envelope on the way to Asia. My head was thundering with thoughts about what might happen and how it could all turn out. It never, not once, hit me that all of this would occur.

So in a way, the one to blame for this whole avalanche of actions is her, and maybe a scholarship obsession we shared at that time.

She was emailing me from India on a regular basis, which is technically way more demanding than one might imagine and by the time she got back, my head was already full of information. Although India was nowhere near the top of my wish list, we started thinking about going to India somehow.

I was in a rather stressful period, stuck in between university, work and life-concerning issues and I felt like I really needed a break. Not pondering upon it too much and getting into way too much debt, we booked the flight and not long after we were ready to hit the road.

Visas, vaccinations and all the official stuff had been sorted and one morning we were on our way, with two of our friends waving as us from the platform at the Central.

- - -

भारत एक विशाल देश है|


This is me, riding a saikil down south, blissful as a warthog, 2004

You can also check India (Take Two), India (Take Three) and Gotta Love Airports for some more stories.

Slow Fingers

I'm not sure whether it's slow fingers or fast brain. Well, a fast brain isn't such a bad thing. really Unless it's combined with slow fingers. I get annoyed by the fact that I simply can't write down all that's on my mind. And I seem to type quite fast, according to people's observations.

It would be nice if I could type faster and more proper though. The right way, I mean. All ten fingers and all. Would probably make things much easier. I've been forced to type as fast as possible because of the uni. Writing all those papers sure does make one wanna be done with it as soon as possible.

But what often happens is that my thoughts run too fast for me to catch them. I remember sitting on a train in India, going south. Well, half lying in fact, since the roof is way too close to the upper birth, which doesn't leave you with much space. So I'm trying to write some thoughts down, but the train is wobbling all the time and I have to make if work somehow. Constant braking and sudden all-direction movements make it even worse. And I just want to write this down, so that I can hopefully fall asleep again.

The ride takes around 36 hours and, as much pain it is, it's a special experience. A lot of tourists travel first class while in India, but I usually just take the regular ticket and travel with the crowd. Doing that, I get so many thoughts going through my head that I simply can't work them all out. Sometimes I just write small sentences. Or even words only. As much as I can.

But when I re-read the notebooks, there's so many gaps. I remember the situation and I remember writing it, but I don't remember the thought. It's like there's something on your mind that you have to do. Call someone or add something to the shopping list or find a piece of paper with an important hint (even if it's Call Whoever). I know it's there - I was just thinking about it. It's at the tip of my tongue. I look around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever: the thought, the hint, the paper, the number, the phone, the person... I think to myself I might start doing something else and it'll surely come to me. That's even worse. My memory sucks harder than my typing. Way harder.

And I see myself sitting on the train or leaning against the wall in a Delhi hotel or riding the tram, thinking of a hilarious word I could use for whatever. And I take my phone out of my pocket. Number one, I have to write stuff down since the pen-and-paper duo is regularly missing (I know it's ruining my memory even more, but I can't seem to shake it off). Number two, I use the phone as an opportunity to disguise my fits of laughter. Not to mention that someone starting to laugh out loud after a memory pops in one's head is frowned upon, while a bunch of rednecks demolishing the tram is regularly being ignored. So if I get that, I take my phone out, like there's a funny text on it. Then I can giggle. At the non-existing text, at the people and at myself.

By the time I get to the write-a-message option, the word is gone. A lot like whatever I was trying to say with this post. But it's coming back.

Someone has been constantly making noise since lunch time. Lunch was around two and it's nine now. I didn't finish lunch, since I got pissed off beyond limits - but that's a story for another post (that might come later). I barely started it, actually. It was a rabbit. Now I have a feeling it's a cosmic vengeance. So I go downstairs and redo the furniture order (I tend to do that quite often, especially when I need to clean my head). I chucked the TV on the floor, with the screen to the back. I've started to hate TV.

I created a third working surface (besides the huge desk and, well, the floor) from that trolley thing the TV used to stand on. I can't find the right word, but it's something like a commode on wheels. Super handy. It's filled with papers and books now and alas! I can move it around the room. Now I really have a mad-scientist look on my face...

So, even though there's two desks (if we put it that way), I'm sitting on the floor. Well, more lying, again. But there's only a thin IKEA rug and I'm so thin as well and the wooden floor is too hard on my bones and I can't keep lying down and I'm even more annoyed and why can't I gain some weight and it's all oh so fucked up, so eventually I sit up. So yeah, I'm sitting on the floor.

I'm trying to make some sense out of the whole material, trying to compare Latin declination types to the Greek ones and then Sanskrit and Old Slavic and finally Lithuanian. It should all make perfect sense, but somehow it doesn't. I'm rusty, that must be it. I'll do my best though, since the exam is in three weeks and, as occupied as I've been with it, I still need to prepare it better. Way better. But it's OK - I like doing that. I like linguistics, I've wanted to study that and now I'm almost done. It's the final exam and it's supposed to be huge, right? I console myself.

In fact, linguistics was actually the reason I stormed off right at the beginning of the lunch. I was going to write about that, but I better finish this one off first. Suppresses and ignores the whole lunch story...

And as I'm trying to position myself so that I don't end up with any cracks and bruises in my anatomy, someone seems to be cracking nuts or something. I don't know what kind of nuts and whose nuts, but it's annoying as hell. (I've fast forwarded a couple of hours, since it'd be a mega boring read.) So it's been five hours and I can still hear it. I don't know who it is and maybe it's better that I don't or I'd be breaking into someone's flat Mad-Max style.

Considering the mood that I'm in, I figure I better imagine a nice meadow full of flowers, drown myself in incense sticks and wander off seriously dangerous to flipping out by remembering nice places and sweet memories in my head. It's shit cold and I'm out of incense, so I simply play the most relaxing music I've got. Since I tend to listen to some really chill music, it's quite of a challenge to find something yet slower and more relaxing.

So I run into something called Native American Flute or whatever and play that. I air the room out and hope a condor will fly in and instant kill me while the window is open. Now I remember someone telling me that their perfect way of dying was being killed by a pigeon flying into their head. Imagine reading that in the newspapers, she said. Alrighty then...

I listen to the flute and it's nice. In my head I see Anna climbing to the Machu Picchu, kicking lamas (or whatever they are) off the mountain and, despite the somewhat disturbing imagery, I manage to relax a bit. The music is nice and there's still some sunlight coming in and it's all nice and calm and fuzzy and shit.

And the hammering is still on. The light turns into dark, the warmth into cold and the soothing flute becomes the most annoying imaginable sound in the galaxy. I get up, look out the window and I can't figure it out. It's weird since one neighbour lives in Sydney (so it's probably not him) and the flat on the other side is vacant. I'm clueless. What I do know is that I'm very edgy indeed.

I'll check my Facebook page - maybe someone's suggesting a kick-ass going-out thing. Not really. I download my photos from there and plan to liquidate the account. Fuck Facebook. Then I go and play some cards online. Need I say I lost? Three times. I red-x the window and check my blog. Nothing. Who cares anyway.

I run into some blog suggestions, write a couple of posts and see what cool ideas people have to write and keep writing regularly, often also including other people and seeing what they had to say. At this point I wonder whether I'll ever stop ranting. The blogs that I've ran into say whatever, it's ok to rant, we all do it. Good.

So I think to myself (and I'll write it as it is, since it's a big mess): I could actually write something. But I've read so many stories and have so many ideas now. If I start typing, I'll surely leave something out. I always leave something out. I wish there was a mind recorder. Damn that Dumbledore! Oh, I'll open the pages in Recently Closed Tabs. OK, write fast. Paper or Word? Or blog? Not paper, I'll never type it again. Like India. Oh my, I'll never finish that book. So-called book. So many thoughts lost. Can they be lost anyway? Maybe if I read it again, it'll be easier. Shit, it won't be easier - it'll be crappier. Thinking about India, you moron. With this hammer smith around. Geez, will he ever stop? OK, start typing, you'll lose it all. Okay, okay.

What was I gonna write again?

Shit.