stupid is as stupid does

most of the time, and it didn't matter what he did, J felt stupid. not in a way of lacking intelligence but in the way one might feel when doing something you don't see the point of doing but still continue doing it; useless, and at the same time annoyed by the fact that even if you didn't exactly know what you could be doing instead, you knew that it would still be better than what you're stuck with.

this feeling of pointlessness infiltrated every area of his daily existence. it started the moment he opened his eyes and ended, if only momentarily, when he finally fell asleep; practically every action he performed in between made him feel stupid.

waking up. brushing his teeth. eating breakfast. putting the milk back into the fridge. getting dressed. kissing his wife goodbye. dropping his son off to daycare. going to work. working. talking with people. going to the bathroom. lunching with colleagues. working some more. making phone calls. looking out of the window down to a construction site next door. driving home. following traffic rules. mowing the lawn. eating dinner. watching tv. turning off the tv. having sex. taking a shower. undressing. falling asleep.

everything. even dreaming felt stupid, at least afterwards.

the reason he felt the way he did was that nothing made really sense when you thought about it, and lately J had. all these actions you kept on repeating until your dying day; same monotonous tasks, none of which would ever be completed. what was the point, really? it was so arduous, just staying alive, and so unbelievably dull, and there was nothing left that would have given him true pleasure or happiness.

and yet, at the same time, J didn't feel particularly sad or even down. he didn't agree with being depressed, something his wife had suggested when he had once made the mistake of talking about the subject to her. J had no desire to end his existence nor did he have any difficulties in getting out of bed or taking care of his responsibilities; basically he did everything that was expected of him, sometimes even more, but he just felt stupid about it.

it interested him somewhat how other people seemed to miss the fact that everything was pointless; but few failed attempts to bring it up in a conversation and his own inability to express the depth of his own experience in this matter soon made him stop trying.

not that it would have mattered, anyway.

but how people had the energy to build barricades and climb on them because of something entirely irrelevant was almost exhausting. so what, he felt like saying every time his wife or colleague or friend brought up some heated topic that happened to be under societal discussion at the moment. so what, what did it matter, soon they would be agitated over something else instead even if the previous matter would have not been solved at all. this ability to make fleeting emotional investment into something and then move on to some other equally stupid matter didn't cease to puzzle J. why did they bother?

didn't they see how stupid it was? their behaviour as well as the matter itself?

but of course he didn't say so what, he was too aware of the reaction this would have more often that not caused in the people talking about something they found meaningful; and J didn't have the interest to stand up for his opinion as it really wasn't that important at all. it didn't matter to him what other people thought, he really had no need to try to make them see how stupid they were being; so he just sat through the conversations reacting at appropriate times by humming approvingly or throwing in a short comment, delivered with a required amount of enthusiasm so as not to be called insensitive or selfish or some other word reserved for those who seemed not to care enough.

and if this charade sometimes made him want to bite his wrists open he certainly didn't let it show. 

J didn't quite remember if things had always been like this; wether or not there had been a time when he hadn't felt stupid. he did recognize the feeling from his childhood, recalled hiding in the bushes next to the field close to his childhood home in the midst of a game of hide and seek and thinking how absolutely ridiculous it was. he also remembered with clarity how as a teenager he had found it unnecessary to chase girls or prove his masculinity through fighting with other pubescent males. as a young man, when going to university, he always did the bare minimum required so as to get conveniently by; because even if he thought it to be stupid, he himself was not and by this age he had understood quite well that this was the way the world worked and in order for him to exist in it he had to play by its rules. so he went through the required steps, smiled in the right places and danced the necessary dances, and it all turned out rather alright.

and he didn't mind, really. he was used to it. but sometimes - it was very rare these days and to be honest he didn't remember that last time it had happened - he came across someone who had such joy and such passion in them, in everything they said and did and were - and for a fleeting second he thought it to be possible; to experience life like that, so that it didn't feel pointless. for a fraction of a second he thought that perhaps he was wrong after all, maybe there was a trick to it, something he had missed, maybe everything wasn't stupid; but then the moment always passed and the feeling of stupidity resurfaced, and he would shrug his shoulders and drink a glass of water.

but whether it was these fractions of time that kept him actually going and not the general acceptance that he had adopted as his daily guise was something he didn't know the answer to; and to be completely honest, he didn't even care.

first day of autumn

the air is fresh and a bit chilly; the acknowledgement of the upcoming fall hangs in the air and makes it feel sharp in your lungs. the puddles on the ground stand as evidence of last night's rain, and in their still surface reflects the sky that is the shade of blue you don't have the words to describe. the sea is somewhat calm, as calm as a sea can ever be, and it looks like some of the sky has fallen in it.

the rock is dry and your feet find their way on it effortlessly; and to think that you are running on the same rock that has been there longer than you can fathom and will continue to be there long after you're gone makes you smile. it feels genuinely good to be outside and running, to feel the energy converting in your cells; and whatever problems there may or may not be, they don't exist now. there is just now, and the sea and the rock and the sunshine and the sky.

as long as you move you are fine; because that's when you know you exist.

c'est la vie

and so this was what life had become, early mornings in a suburban apartment block, bread crumbs and milk splashes on the floor and something always missing when it was time to leave for the daycare. 

the son was almost four years old now and impossibly difficult, and it didn't really help that she didn't enjoy being a mother all that much; but that is one of those things you cannot say out loud and if you do it's when you're drunk and feeling desperate and even then it makes the room around you go quiet in a horrified unison. so she didn't say it any more, tried not to think about it either because what good would that have done, it was as useless as dwelling in the fact that the marriage had gone foul and she hadn't really felt anything else than indifference towards her husband in ages.

but the good thing was that most of the things that life now consisted of rolled onwards as if on an autopilot, she didn't have to do much - just try not to pay attention to the details. as long as she didn't bother herself with the fact that when she hugged her son she felt nothing or that not feeling uncomfortable or awkward was the best she could hope for when intimate with her husband, she was fine. and it was fine, really it was, or this is what she told herself because it was the only way for her to keep going, and that was close enough to things actually being fine.

the son is healthy, she reminded herself, healthy and quite smart even if totally lacking the amiability all the other children of the same age seemed to possess. he will grow up, eventually, and will not define my existence as strongly as he does now; this phase of symbiotic, or rather, parasitic relationship will pass and i will be an individual again.

the son is healthy, and that is enough to be grateful.

and the husband is kind, most of the time; he is not violent, he does not drink too much, he has a job and he is responsible. he takes care of the son when she sometimes reaches her limits and cracks a little bit, closes herself in the bedroom and cries for hours, wails almost, claws her own skin and tries to rip a hole in her chest for her bleeding heart to escape from; and when she emerges, puffy-eyes and snotty and somber, he doesn't ask and this is good because she wouldn't know the answer.

and that's the thing, isn't it, that she just doesn't know. she refuses to adopt the easy explanation, the obvious one, the same her psychologist seems to be an avid supporter of  - that she feels trapped in the setting that is her life and the unhappiness brought about by the choices she has made is the reason for her distress. it cannot be so because every choice she has made she has made willingly, knowing the consequences; and even if one could argue that perhaps it might be the unexpected combined effect she could have not decided on, this doesn't ring true, either - for it would mean that the removal of the current setting would make her feel better.

and it's not so. she knows this as well as she knows the weight of the walls when she tries to keep them from falling on her, there is no mistaking about this one - the problem is not the current setting in itself. or it is, but in a way that doesn't make a difference - like it doesn't make a difference if whether you are shot or stabbed to dead. 
the process might be different; it might feel different. you might experience more pain, or less, or it might be over faster or it might take ages. but either way the outcome is that you're dead, and this is why it is not exactly so that the setting of her life would have been the real reason for anything it all.

she is still dying, from the inside, and a change in the way of it happening makes absolutely no difference.

so what is there to do than to deal with it; to do the best she can to silence the voices in her head and feign the affection needed to keep the son and the husband from suspecting anything. because even if things can't get necessarily better, she suspects they could get worse; therefore it is important to keep going. and so she kisses the son goodnight even if the son tries to slap her as she does and goes to bed next to the husband in their generic suburban apartment even if it makes no difference to her whether it'd be the husband or any other man. because that is what life has become to, and she deals with it.

and finally, when she closes her eyes and waits for the sleep to come the terrible hollowness that is life lets go, just for a while, and in her dreams she smiles.

it's normal

the past week or so was hectic. not only did i spend two nights underground which was an amazing if somewhat exhausting experience in itself, but also made my way from paris to london and onwards to manchester where a friend was wed surrounded by the picturesque english countryside. from there i flew to finland a few days ago in order to spend the month of august in the motherland; something which i am not overly excited about as i have a sever case of fomo-syndrome (fear of missing out) when it comes to paris.

this, however, i feel is a good sign. paris is definitely growing on me, and actually starts to feel like a home. and of course is not _that_ horrible to get to see and spend time with family and friends. not to mention i get to go to my shala.

something which i desperately need after having practiced only by myself for the past six months. even if i have been able to keep up a steady schedule of 3 to 5 practices a week, it is nowhere near the same to practice alone as it is to go to a shala; and during the past month or so i feel this has started to influence me more and more. i often find it difficult to concentrate and don't get the same feeling out of doing yoga as i used to. right now my practice keeps me feeling normal but not much more than that.

although this state  - feeling normal - is something i shouldn't overlook. due to the hassle of the past days i didn't have the possibility to keep up with my yoga schedule, and i must say that the outcome of this took me by surprise. it might have been a combination of many things, but in the end the way my body reacted to not practicing in about 5 days was very unpleasant and very painful; all the muscles in my back seemed to shrink about 20 percent which then caused a significant amount of discomfort, up to the point that it was very difficult to exist in my own skin.

i find this quite interesting partly because i don't know how to feel about it. even though i'm sure that the lack of yoga wasn't  the only thing contributing to my awkward state (i was also missing sleep a lot, had some fever, did a lot of traveling in a sitting position to name a few) it did make me think why it happened in the first place. is my body so used to being used on a regular basis that an interruption to this causes a some kind of shock reaction? am i doing something wrong with my practice?  do i have some underlying condition that slowly turns me into a rock unless i stretch? 

whatever it is, i'm not necessarily very worried about this as a few light practices restored my physical well-being back to the above mentioned normal (which, to be fair, is more like excellent after that ordeal) but it does puzzle me a bit. but whatever the reason, at least it serves as a good reminder to keep up the practice even on the days one doesn't necessarily feel like it - like, say, after six months practicing at home.