fictitious

Ugh, the stupid computer restarted, erasing my entire post. You will have to believe that the wit in the original draft was as sharp as it was elegant, and that you would have loved it. This edition will never measure up.

A while ago, A. applied to have his residence permit renewed. This has to be done yearly, and each time the amount of required papers, fees, and trips to the migration department grows exponentially, so the entire journey is really a quest for Permission to Stay With Your Actual Wife. However, this time the department was especially resourceful.

‘Hello, we would like you and your wife to come by our office this week,’ a clerk chirped to A. on the phone. And because the department apparently always gets what it wants, we schlepped through simultaneous rain and snow (no kidding, although hello? it is October? global cooling!) until we were at the door. As we squelched in, ‘Hello,’ she chirped again, ‘This is not the first time you’ve applied for a residence permit, so we have decided it is time to make sure your marriage is not fictitious!’ Her exact words. Nu, translated into English, don’t go ruining my dramatic presentation.

We were sat at two tables with our backs to each other and given a five-page questionnaire each to fill out in as much detail and precision as possible. The questionnaire featured such questions as:

- What language do you speak at home? How and where did you learn it? (Arabic. He learned it while training with the Al Qaeda, whereas I miraculously found myself speaking it fluently after narrowly surviving a plane crash organized by the same Al Qaeda. That’s how we met, actually.)

- What cultural differences do you expect to arise when you and your spouse start living together? (Gee, I don’t know, the same ones we’ve been having for the past five years? That he prays to God Almighty, while I — to the God of American Television?)

- Do you have any shared friends or acquaintances? If yes, please list them. If not, why is that? (Well, if you’re going to ask me to list seven hundred people, at least provide adequate space.)

- How many times had you met before you registered your marriage? (Three. The first time we could barely communicate through the thick layer of cultural misconceptions, the second time we really connected over our shared love of fifteenth-century Chinese stationery, the third time he proposed.)

Questions that for some reason were not on the questionnaire, even though they might have offered considerable insight into the fictitiousness of our union:

- Where and when did you consummate your marriage? And in what way exactly?

- Which of you gets to decide on the restaurant for lunch?

- How would you feel were your spouse to grow a huge beard? (On both of our copies.)

- If and when you are divorced, will you try and snatch the kids and the apartment and drive your spouse out to live with your in-laws? Will you then celebrate by getting drunk and yelling ‘We are not related anymore, you creeps!’ to said in-laws over the phone? Do you dream of the day that happens?

Because those questions were not there, we had to contend with ‘describing the apartment our spouse and us were living in’ and trying hard to ‘remember and list all the guests at our wedding’. This should bring about some conclusions on the part of the migration department, who is not intending to let us know whether or not we’re really married until the day A.’s permit expires and they either make him a new one or kick him out of the country. The upside is, it won’t be a boring wait, what with all those entertaining quirks A.’s exotic native culture has left him with.

one benefit of growing old – the memories

A couple of days ago I realized that I remember the very beginning of the Spice Girls.

I was eleven at the time, and going to school in a village half an hour’s drive away from Oxford, UK. The school had beautiful grounds and an recess-outside policy. So every time the teacher would announce a break, the following would happen: 1) spontaneous fission of girls into groups of five; 2) yelled-out bench auctions; 3) frantic running about – and then the show would begin.

Imagine your typical 1997 eleven-year-old British girl. Now imagine five of them. Imagine them standing on a bench in the school yard and screaming ‘SO TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT WHAT YOU REALLY REALLY WANT’ on the top of their relatively spacious lungs. They had this whole routine worked out: there was an elaborate sequence of jumps on and off the bench, exclamations and shout-outs as each ‘Spice’ presented herself, and ultimately – heaps of glee.

They took this very seriously, those girls. They took it seriously every single recess for the three months I was there. Seriously enough to have fights over the unlawful use of benches and to have memorized all the lyrics and all the steps from all the videos the Spice Girls were popping out. Actually, I tell a lie; there probably weren’t so many. At least, my pop-conscious classmates only had two or three routines.

So when it was time to leave, I, the reserved child who had only listened to music my parents had picked out prior to that, knew the phrase ‘I really really really wanna zig-a-zig-AHHH’ so well that it has stayed with me to this day. And then soon after we returned to Lithuania, there appeared Britney Spears. If pushed, I may still remember the dance we created to ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’.

relocated

Day one. Us cleaning the room the bed will go in, talking to each other in serious adult voices; me mopping and you crawling about wiping the floor with paper towels. Us eating feta sandwiches in our underwear because our clothes are too dirty to sit on the mattress, using a paper-covered stool for a table; you cutting up the tomatoes with a blunt knife, kneeling because the mattress is too low for you to sit on; me transferring my teabag into your cup, because it’s larger and because you take stronger tea. Me showering for the first time, uneasy, bringing the mop rag and some laundry with me into the booth, washing the walls first, then myself; you writing in the dust on the other side of the glass ‘LOVE YOU’, messing up only the last letter of the mirrored words. You showering next, with splashing and weird noises; me writing this, worrying that the glass needs to be wiped afterwards, calling myself silly, still worrying, not feeling at home. Us settling down to sleep, surrounded by shadows of old belongings and by dust.

Day two. Me waking up the moment you close the door and leave, wandering restlessly about the place, noticing the floor is still as dirty as before. You telling me to go out, find something to eat, stop worrying; me buying a bucket, riding the bus back with it. Me coming home from a day of meetings, self-conscious about wearing the same t-shirt; you standing inside the bedframe, almost done building it, letting me screw in the last bit. Us watching the kitchen being built, listening to endless accounts of other kitchens, other clients, other problems. Us playing hosts to my parents, our first guests, you stretched on the new bed, a sheet protecting the linen from the dirt on your back; me pointing out little details, the way the drawers slide back and forth, the paint. You cutting up our only pear for me, eating using only the knife. Us falling asleep on the bed, with the overhead light dimmed to a glow, close above us.

Day three. You remembering to lock the front door and leave the bedroom door open; my fears abate, respected. Me washing the shower, enjoying the newness and the music streaming out of our hi-fi sitting cosily on the bedroom floor; it’s Bob Dylan. Me getting worked up about the tile job; you speaking in your adult voice to me on phone. Me making plans to escape; you making plans to come home from work. My fingers red and raw from the washing solution; you forbidding me to clean. Us meeting in town for a bit, you calm, me hysterical. The kitchen finished, us washing the dishes; you rinsing, me toweling. Talking about the place, always; what to buy, to finish, to paint, to bring over from my parents’ house. Me feeling homeless, my sense of home no longer (or not yet) attached to anything.

– I kept this diary for a while, and then we went away for two weeks, returning here, our natural habitat from there on. There is no more point in keeping a log of what goes on, because the place is no longer sacred. For Pete’s sake, we hardly ever mop the floor anymore, or wash dishes together, or care. There’s still a whole room to furnish, and in the bathroom, the tiles are covered in so much residue you pretty much can’t see they’re originally black; our sink is still in its box. Yet somehow, I am no longer in a constant state of shock at us living here now. I can even sleep when A. is not here, which, mark you, is no simple feat for Miss Neurosis 2009.

schoolhouse rock

I’m gonna sing you a song, oh baby,
Gonna sing you of my school.
I’m gonna sing you a song, honey,
Gonna tell it like it is.

I got one teacher, mama, she ain’t what she wants to be, no.
Got this one teacher, mama, she ain’t what she thinks she is.
She is tuppence short of a shilling, is what I think of her.
Yeah, two sleeves short of a shirt, that is what I think she is.

She says, ‘let us read this poem y’all, let us discover what it sez.
Let us read this good old poem here, let the prosody sink in.
I got a wonderful surprise for y’all, it’s a reading you ain’t heard.
Just read the first word of each line, yeah, there’s a secret meaning there!’

Refrain (from picking my school)

I got this other teacher, mama, well she’s pretty well-disposed.
Oh yes, this other teacher, mama, she just loves me like her own.
She says, ‘you’re real smart, kid, you stand clear out of the bunch.
You know the answers to my questions, so I’ll be stingy with your grade!’

She asks me why I even bother, why I go to this old school.
She tells me I’m too smart for all of this, so why ever go to school.
Quite surprisingly, oh mama, I agree with my whole heart.
Anyone is too smart for this, dunno why it’s me she’s singled out.

Refrain (at least from picking my major)

There is this third teacher, baby, oh she is boring like my shoe.
In fact my shoe is way more fun, yeah, at least it’s got some pretty stripes.
Once when she finished teaching early, she just stood there real still.
I say, she done finished teaching, and she just stood for half an hour.

She gives us papers to present, baby, real big scholarly works.
Yeah, big old articles that sometimes we need to spell out just for her.
And she just sits there like a doll, baby, sits there smiling like a doll.
She just nods her head and smiles, yeah, I bet she doesn’t get a word.

Refrain

Oh come on over to my school, yeah, come on over, be my guest.
Yes, pay a visit to my school, babe, it’s a historic building too.
But all the history there is, babe, does not make it worth the while.
No, all the history they boast of don’t make it less of a joke.

The last news that I heard was, if you drop out they’ll make you pay.
You heard me right baby, if you drop out they make you pay.
Pay back the price of all the years, yeah, all the years you went to school.
Because of everything it gave you, the things you took and won’t return.

So this song’s about my school, honey,
Education’s so much fun.
This is a song about my school, baby,
That’s where they taught me how to rhyme.

great concert

So Bob Dylan live in concert – legendary. This was experimentally proven yesterday, when we saw (and heard) him at the Siemens Arena. I’d never been to a concert at an arena before, it was quite something.

And true, you can’t understand a word he’s singing these days, but the band is awesome, the lighting was beyond fabulous, and, well, Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan.

I do believe he has an inhuman voice, though, an effect all the more noticeable when one is not distracted by the content of the song.

Also remarkable – the speed with which the band disappeared in two large black coaches right after the show.

de-wait for it-nied

A little insight into the way I think, end-of-term style. I am sitting at the kitchen table, it’s 2:02 am, I am reading Baudrillard for tomorrow’s 11 am class, chewing things, and watching season 2 of How I Met Your Mother at the same time. Much like a diesel engine starting uphill, my brain is fluctuating between OVERLOAD! ROARRR! VROOOOMMM!! and that’s better… swooshhh… whoooo… rrrrrrrrr.

Jean Baudrillard: Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.

Barney Stinson: This would never happen at a bar!

True conversation. Happened in my mind just a few minutes ago.

twitter-style

I can’t move. Was planning to go to bed – plans canceled. The cat has crept up and nestled against my back. She is so cute and peaceful in these rare moments of not being a ferocious monster that I will do anything for her to stay that way. Like sit here and not move. Possibly forever.

shall we overcome?

What I want to be doing right now:

- reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson and The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris,

- going to Venice,

- being out with my brother taking photos,

- hanging out with certain people and bears.

Instead, I am moping about the place with a dried-out brain, out of words to post here, trying to work, work some more, and write a paper at the same time, and not succeeding at any of it.

I am absolutely convinced at this point in time that my studies are the only thing keeping me from living my life happily, but everyone is at my throat for even voicing the idea of dropping out. Of course, if I did, that would be my 2.5th failure to thrive in an academic environment, that’s probably why my close ones are concerned. But really, threatening me with no pie was a bit much.

It seems to me that I need a break. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a sabbatical here. At least not for BA students. I just need to get my head straight, because I’m starting to feel increasingly stupid, and I know for a fact that I am not, not when I apply myself to something worthwhile. Ergo (do stupid people use Latin words? surely not!) what I’m doing now must not be worth my while.

back

We’re back, and it was awesome and awful and overwhelming.

another update

Hi, we’re alive, made it to Israel and all. Lufthansa were very courteous: when we arrived, they had a team ready to solve all our troubles, everyone got new flights, hotel rooms, and food. However, they lost our luggage, and not in the good, ‘get huge refund and go buy new stuff’ way. It’s been located in Frankfurt, so we’ll get it tomorrow morning. Which basically means no new clothes, but dirty ones until tomorrow, and no shopping spree, but lots of lugging things around. At least we are safe and made it here just some ten hours off schedule.

update

So much for Tel Aviv by this morning. Our flight has been delayed; we are missing our connection in Frankfurt. The next flight from there to Tel Aviv is at 10.15 in the morning. So, on the plus side we might have a fun night at the cool airport in Frankfurt. On the minus side, it’s really boring here in our very own Vilnius airport.

i’m-all-about-the-dashes-sorry

Is there a way to stop being shocked with this whole springness of being? The sun just keeps on shining, there is no more rain, and it’s warm enough to wear a t-shirt and carry a cardigan in case of wind!

I spent yesterday hanging about town, reading weather-appropriate books (The Sun Also Rises and To Kill A Mockingbird are not happy-day books or beach-reads, but there is undeniably a lot of sun in there), wandering from one spot in the sun to another, squinting from the direct light, and meeting friends at the university for short meaningless conversations.

A. said we could go buy some clothes, so we went to the nearest thrift store just in time for happy hour. (That’s when the cheap clothes become almost-free clothes, yay.) We got me some trousers and a shirt, and then, as I sat in A.’s lap and cried about being fat (necessary ritual), I couldn’t help but register that we were sitting on actual, real, full-fledged, sittable grass.

On Saturday we are flying to Israel, and it was supposed to be our flight from the steely cold into the sunny heat, but it will be +20 centigrade in Jerusalem on Sunday, and while that’s still a bit warmer than it is here, I think the difference won’t be as striking as it could have been. Cool.

zero contacts online

I don’t really do social networks. I use Facebook for birthday reminders, have accounts here and there from when I thought it rude to ignore a friend’s invite (I know better now), or when I sincerely believed that would help me connect with people from my past.

But since recently I believe it’s a little clingy to be like that. Hi, we haven’t talked for seven years, and before that we spent a week together in math camp (don’t get me wrong, I never really went to math camp). Now let’s hang out, tell me about your life, quickly like.

And being a desperately lonely kind of person, I need to fight the urge to be clingy every fricking day of my life. You have no idea how hard it is to not shower the people I love with texts, gifts, and stuff, just to make sure they love me back just as much, yea verily.

At one point in my life I felt the ‘living encyclopedia’ gig I had going was getting tired, wasn’t bringing in any more dividends, so I started pretending to be dumber than I was. I errrm’d and uhh’d a lot, used only short words, and said ‘how should I know’ all the time.

Now is kind of like that, only for emotional neediness. So I never switch on my MSN messenger anymore (oh, all the Arabic wedding proposals I used to get), I’ve forgotten the password to my ICQ account, and don’t expect me to accept your Orkut/Habbo invite.

I take pictures instead. Want a free portrait shoot? I’m better than you’d think.

an exercise in stereotype (with a moral)

The language student: most often female, carries around a heap of assorted pages, has dozens of pens and pencils poking out of every bag pocket, looks a bit nerdy and very frazzled, especially around the end of term.

The history student: most often male, carries a backpack which looks empty, looks like a sweet hard-rock-nerd or like he’s not even a student, cycles everywhere even in the winter, the end of term makes him frazzled.

The psychology student: is modern, independent, a bit childish, takes up tons of activities and responsibilities, likes talking to everyone, is friendly and helpful to new and lost people, is only frazzled around the end of term.

The management student: looks very grown-up, wears fashionable clothes and accessories, drives to school, goes clubbing on Friday night through Sunday afternoon, has a part-time job, the end of term leaves him/her frazzled.

The law student: looks business-like, carries a serious-looking folder, dresses as though holding a position of attorney at a major law firm already, spends a lot of time studying, but is still very much frazzled at the end of term.

Moral of the story: even though this was my worst exam session as yet, I couldn’t be happier, because today it is over. And I get to go to the theatre tonight, and then chill out for something like eleven days.

And now I’m going to hum along to Tom Lehrer, be proud that I resisted whining about the exams here, and ignore my inner perfectionist who is saying “B+? B plus?! That’s not nearly good enough!”

roy g biv challenged

I’ve never liked colouring my pictures. When I was a kid, I thought very highly of my own artistic abilities, but grew bored of every picture as soon as the pencil sketch was done. My mother, when presented with these creations, usually expressed displeasure. She felt they were unfinished and wanted me to colour them. I, in turn, felt disappointed at her for not appreciating my ‘art’.

Today, I love colour and try to bring it into my life in every possible way. But at the same time, I’m faithful to my monochromatic self. I take black and white photos. All my Christmas cards are drawn in black ink on white paper and not coloured. I carry a notebook around, and a 0.1 Faber-Castell pen, and make little black-and-white sketches now and then. They are the way I see the world.

The picture above is a colourless still of a very colourful event. It’s the belfry of our university’s church (‘the Johns’), seen from a window in the library tower, which I visited today as part of a tour of the secret passageways of the library. It was an exclusive tour for university instructors. My mom took me. I believe she’s learned to appreciate my black-and-white side, and I’m delighted.