it was like this last night, on the top of skinnarviksparken with my best friend. only 100 times more surreal and haunting. felt like another time and place, another world. but the reality is, there ARE places on earth that are like that. beyond your imagination, outside the limits of your mind. and you will suddenly find yourself standing there.
middle-earth is not something beyond... sometimes, just when you turn that corner, it is here and now.
If you know me well, you would know what my greatest weakness or fatal flaw is, the one that has something to do with my greatest fear as well.
I want the moment to last forever, and for me there will never be time enough. "Good bye" does not register in my brain and does not exist in my own vocabulary. There are no periods, just long drawn-out ... And firm beliefs, keeping promises and a steadfast core that believes love will win in the end hold it all together. The pen, my camera and my nose are weapons against forgetting, against time. And words, always words. It is a constant struggle, but I don't think there's any other way for me (is there?).
Secretly, I believe there is a way to circumvent the biggest Good Bye, and if you know me well, you would know what that is too.
One voice was raised and sounded strange, just a thought turned an idea, into something familiar, it was the whisper of freedom, that was starting a revolution, with this spirit as a weapon and unity as a shield. Yes I am.
The world was first amazed by the sex, drugs and rock & roll, these people are crazy, these people are strange, they didn't understand the power of the claim, impossible is nothing, was in front of their face. Yes I am.
An empty canvas land, is a world without a map, where air can be shared, and invisible is fear, like a dog to a child, ideas will spin, like flowers grow in the field.
It was the dream of a guy that ate flower bulbs to survive, same reason brought a woman to work from Surinam. Yes I am.
Lots of no's were said but just one yes remains, where one - seven - four, just means we are more, it was for sure, that no colors stayed pure. Yes I am. Oui je suis. Si io sono. Sim eu sou. Si yo soy. Ja ich bin. Ja ik ben.
A leaf left the tree and arrived in Amsterdam, like many hopes of others, and more and more they will, inspired by something you can just feel. Yes I am.
the smell of twilight. i remember this day clearly and i could smell everything and i could feel everything. this was the end and the beginning of things: who knew that i would be completely happy here?
and the grey silhouette of the city in pictures squeeze my heart. the view from artxanda: vast and golden, the city cradled between the mountains. that white wired bridge where you carried me the nights we went to residence. piggy back rides in the rain. this city is painted with yellow lights, golden rain and foreheads. this city is fog and the space in moyua where you first meet the friends that you will keep for life. this city is the grey afternoons tired from sitting all day in the library, a walk to the subway to get a sandwich, a spontaneous dinner at an empty vegetarian diner with a boy you are falling in love with. a walk home in the rain, towards the metro, passing by a snazzy furniture shop. a humid afternoon and a bocatta sandwich. this city is a trip to barcelona and back, with a boy waiting at casco viejo, ice creams by the river and zombie nights in hotel lobbies. the first touch of our hands. and then things started running faster and you were in the middle of everything.
and then all of a sudden, everyone has left just when you realized that you are having the time of your life. but your best friend is still there. you went to the shire where these pictures are taken, ate potato chips by the sea and promised to become like the old ladies walking along plentzia. to live and grow old together by the sea, all of us. a wish offered to the sea. let's not go yet, i'm still writing. listening to lali puna on repeat, i tried to put everything down in my notebook, only succeeding to write about one day. i try and try but these past months and everything that has happened felt bigger than i am capable of putting down. like pinning down giants. i cannot wield words like i used to. i trip and stumble and drown. i no longer have the power of the last word like corinna stonewall. but maybe that's not true.
but this is me trying. bilbao: dark turning into light, picnics outside the library, a birthday party and blowfish pictures and electric currents in the air, crying inside classrooms because of sad argentinian movies, countless lunch dates at the white cafeteria below the library (the fish! the thin sliced potatoes! the small coke bottles! the chocolate dessert!), the shins and lastfm and "are you judging me?", the dodgy area where you could buy asian stuff, norsk metal night and promises of summer 2010, 80s parties and everlasting, sparkling nights.
and you you you. artxanda and pear ciders. lost trucks and our favorite day by the beach. and now i stumble, now i fall, i can't put words to so many beautiful memories of you.
do i really have to put down everything? why do i feel that it will get lost if i don't? can you hold the memories for me too? can you promise to remember the feeling, in case i forget? will you tell me someday, hold me by the sea and tell me how it feels like to be in bilbao, when everything was running faster and has the smell of twilight?
tell me that in bilbao, the grey turned into gold. tell me that it is possible, tell me that it happened. tell me how i found you, tell me how i found love.
Wait, for now. Distrust everything, if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven't they carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again. Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting. Buds that open out of season will become lovely again. Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait. Don't go too early. You're tired. But everyone's tired. But no one is tired enough. Only wait a while and listen. Music of hair, Music of pain, music of looms weaving all our loves again. Be there to hear it, it will be the only time, most of all to hear, the flute of your whole existence, rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
Writing also separates us from lived experience and through this separation we are able to reflect on everyday experience. Immersed in the experience, the experience is seamless without reflection. To step back in reflection, the edges begin to be clear, and slowly we began to see what has been nothing more than a sequence of activities.
"Writing decontextualizes thought from practice and yet it returns thought to praxis…. [It] focuses our reflective awareness by disregarding the incidentals and contingencies that constitute the social, physical, and biographic context of a particular situation. But as we gain in this manner a deeper sense of meanings embedded in some isolated aspect of practice we are also being prepared to become more discerning of the meaning of new life experiences." (van Manen, 1990, p. 128)
"Writing objectifies thought into print and yet it subjectifies our understanding of something that truly engages us" (van Manen, 1990, p. 129). For van Manen, "research is writing in that it places consciousness in the position of the possibility of confronting itself, in a self-reflective relation" (p. 129). In phenomenological text, "it lets us see that which shines through, that which tends to hide itself…. To read or write phenomenologically requires that we be sensitively attentive to the silence around the words by means of which we attempt to disclose the deep meaning of the world" (p. 131).
/// Phenomenology as an Educational Research Method by van Manen
