i’m teaching!

With all my emotional ups and downs, I sometimes forget one of the highlights of the semester (probably THE highlight) — I’m a teacher! (well, an instructor would be more precise).

When last semester fellow students insisted on how nice it was to teach, trying to reassure me that I would also love it, I used to smile quietly and think to myself (hmmm, let’s see). I don’t like speaking in public (who does?), I forget my English and mix it with Catalan and German if I don’t prepare my responses in advance and have to improvise, my accent becomes thicker… However, my biggest fear was being unable to understand the students. I imagined all the mumbling and muttering and grumbling and rumbling… and became even more nervous.

The orientation sessions were not very promising, with all the warnings about students carrying weapons and the risk of being sued if we inappropriatedly (or even inadvertently) touch a student or act too friendly (the physical contact part is in general problematic for Mediterranean TAs and our cultural touching leanings, but not for me, as I allegedly act as a German in my interactions…).

Nonetheless, I must confess it… I like teaching! People were right. I’m enjoying it. And –imagine!– it sometimes even compensates for some gloomy moods…

selective memory

I used to think we had as many good as bad memories together. I thought that it depended on the day –and my humor– that I recalled with nostalgia the nice or I bitterly recollected the painful ones. It was not until today that I realized that all good memories are more than a year old.

What happened to the last year?

acknowledgement

It has taken a little bit long to recognize it, but
YES it was a bad relationship and
NO I don’t want it back.

fuck off la tristesse

And while she is silently observing him from the other side of the shore, measuring his movements, reading signals in every gesture, charging a wink with significance, interpreting the modulation of his distant voice, discerning from afar a slight movement towards her that –indeed!– may hint at a desire for –not crossing! but maybe– approaching the bridge… While she is mentally combining possibilities, envisioning remote chances of ifs and whethers that could only fit in an out-of-the-time future… a figure is observing her from the shadows, shaking her head disapprovingly.

All of a sudden, a shrill cry of “fuck off la tristesse” awakens her from her absorption. Still disoriented, she can only distinguish a vaguely familiar figure running past her blending a torch. Her eyes remain fixed in the burning bridge, observing with a mix of confusion and relief how all her hypotetic fantasies disappear under the flames.

ramadan…. in cairo

I will spend July in Egypt and –somehow– I hadn’t realized that Ramadan will start while I’m there. It seems strange because for years I KNEW when Ramadan was going to be.

The day I arrived in Morocco –October 2006– it was Ramadan. I had been traveling for more than a day since –in the best ME tradition– I didn’t want to “just” get there by plane, but wished to take the train and enjoy the trip. This meant leaving Barcelona at night, changing trains in Andalusia at dawn, arriving in Algeciras at noon and taking the ferry to Tangiers. I disembarked in the harbor –pretty hungry, btw– dragging my backpack short before dusk. Of course I didn’t know much about ftor, but a Portuguese guy I met at the boat invited me to join him for dinner and there I was… eating my first harira with dates and schbaquia. I was staying in the youth hostel and went to bed soon, since I had to wake up early in the morning to continue my trip (by train again) in order to reach my destination in a small city close to Rabat. But something happened: I fear I should have not drunk orange juice AND milk before going to sleep 😦

I still remember the funny stomach (no breakfast in it, although I nibbled at some rests of shbaquia half-wrapped. half-hidden under the big scarf I use as a blanket when I travel) and the 5-hour train journey… then still a taxi ride, some walking (still no rest) until I arrived in the afternoon as the wasted version of myself… pretty sad image.

But as traumatic as this story may sound, there are a lot of things I like about Ramadan. After that day I spent three whole Ramadans in Morocco, countless ftors with friends-that-were-like-family, regular friends, and acquaintances who invited me to break the fast with them. I remember how we sat at the table waiting for the muezzin to sing (in fact, I was the only expectant, the other were quite relaxed about it), and how I felt guilty when they urged me to eat, because I didn’t fast. While some of my expat friends did, I never tried. As a non-Muslim, I always felt that fasting was a religious practice and as such only believers should do it. I, for my part, used to eat less during Ramadan (I had nuts and raisins hidden under my desk) and only when I was alone in the office, but I could not imagine not drinking water.

Now in retrospect, I dearly remember many many moments of all the Ramadans I spent there. One year my friend Fatima and I used to drive every few days to Assilah short before dusk to have ftor there. The reason behind was not the good harira but my need to train my driving skills and the availability of empty roads (except for the couple latecomers rushing home) at that time.

Hmmm, nice, distant memories… And funny how all these souvenirs got buried under the accumulation of fresh daily events, only to be now swiftly digged up, pulled out by a simple thought.

the blog as a substitute

From all the things that disappear when a relationship comes to an end, I always miss the conversations.

I’m walking down the street, something funny happens and I can’t help thinking how I will explain it to him, choosing the words, imagining his reaction. Then, I remember that it’s over.

I find interesting articles, watch nice movies, find pictures that would make him laugh, references to inside jokes that only we understand. But lieber nicht. Lieber kein Kontakt. Oblivion needs some effort.

I know it may sound as a sad replacement, but writing in the blog helps in these moments. Not that I get a response to my witty comments, but at least I can take the imagined conversations out of my head and force them into words. Only then can I forget them.

what’s the worst that’s gonna happen?

For the sitting-in-a-corner-looking-absentmindedly-biting-nails moments.
I love this song…

a dream

Last night I dreamt I was with somebody else. It was not somebody I know, just somebody else. I couldn’t help thinking about the “psychological immune system” we sometimes talked about when he was preparing a reading by Daniel Gilbert for his students. Is it possible that just now my system recognizes that it is inevitably over and promptly activates itself to overcome the moment of grief?

I don’t believe in dreams as bearers of signals of any kind. However, in times of distress I sometimes had weird dreams that I still remember (probably because I explained them to other people and they were the object of some debate). The last one came when I was about to leave the country I was living in and return to my home city, in a moment loaded with emotional as well as work stress. I dreamt that I was walking along my parents’ street when an elephant (!) sat on me, squashing me against a fence. Out of nowhere, my first boyfriend –the one I had when I was in high school and in my first university years, the one I haven’t seen since we broke up more than 12 years ago– was there, and he helped me to come out from under the elephant…

In a farther past, in older times of confusion and sadness, rings, glasses and an helicopter (!) also appeared in my dreams. I then tried to make sense of them –googling the words to find out their meaning in dreams– but mostly without success (they can always mean many things, both good, bad, and even reeeeaaally baaad).

Now I think that dreams are just part of the maintenance work our brains do at nights. When we remember them –for example because the clock or any other noise disrupted our sleep– it’s similar to when we enter a cafeteria before they open, with the sleepy waiter still cleaning the tables and warming up the coffee machine. Just the necessary adjustments to start a new day.

Of course, some days –for example, after a stormy night has left its traces of rainwater and wet leaves all over the place, maybe even a broken glass caused by the effect of the furious wind– the “adjustments” need to be bigger… at times reaching pachydermic dimensions…

sweet memories

Long long time ago (before the seed of cynicism was planted), my boyfriend used to read aloud to me. Like in Der Vorleser, we lied on the bed or sat in the kitchen and he read to me a chapter of a book or I read to him an article of the newspaper. Once a friend of my sister saw us reading aloud the journal to each other and found it very romantic. Probably it was. I remember that some nights he would take from the shelf a comic he brought from Mexico and we would read aloud in turns and laugh at the inconvenient questions the Catholic protagonist posed to the Church.

The memory of the past just popped up when I was reading a post in one of the blogs I’m following. It’s nothing extraordinary, but it somehow appeased my turbulent mood, recalling some sweet moments from a relationship which I usually remember for its bad ending.

pressure-cooker mood

I’m afraid of pressure cookers since my mother explained me that hers literally exploded when she was once preparing lentils. Luckily she wasn’t in the kitchen when it happened, but she heard the blast and found the walls and the floor carpeted with the small legumes.

Even though pressure cookers seem to be very practical utensils, I prefer to cook longer rather than witnessing the spectacle of whistling steam and imagining its apocalyptic consequences.

This week I feel like a walking pressure cooker, and I can assure you that I would like to miss this spectacle too. As Friday approaches, and the pressure grows, I continue with my daily activities: working, running errands, going out, enjoying the perspective of being home in a couple of days. Everything seems fine –cooking as usual– until a tiny lentil (a fleeting comment, a word) obstructs the safety valve and booooom! avalanche of emotions all around the kitchen.

After the accident, my mother stopped cooking lentils with the pressure cooker, but she didn’t put the pot away, she continues to use it for other meals.
I guess I should also forget the lentils and carry on.