Fred, I'm regressing!

I wish I was Ginger Rogers. I wouldn’t need to try and choose a man from countless suspicious, unreliable too-old-for-a-25-year-old individuals wanting to take me out just to feel the excitement of going out with too-young-oh-how-thrilling-indeed-25-year-old.  I could skip all that, and enjoy the excitement of marrying Fred Astaire again and again, after countless of adorably wacky relationship chaos’s. And to do it all (NB: even sleeping) in the most gorgeous dresses. On top of that, my dancing career would blossom, the world around me wouldn’t be obsessed with dead-end technology and every time I would want to write a letter or a diary note, I could type it with my Remington portable without needing to reboot it after every half an hour. Miraculous.

 But instead of all that jazz, swing and tap, I’m living in this world of post-post-contemporary dance where every performance has a cutting-edge technology projection on the back wall where the dancers aren’t even moving, marriage is “a constitution against equality” and I am indeed trying to choose a man from middle aged troubled souls, who trouble their souls with such an empty, man-made issue as "being middle aged". Surely I could choose to go for a younger man, in the same way I’m choosing to sleep naked instead of wearing a frilly, itchy and tight satin vs. lace – dream. Or in the same way that I could choose a woman instead of a man. “Today I decide to start liking women instead”. Sure. And I should be already in the bed because Fred Astaire is waiting for me to join him in my heart-shaped chamber of love…

The thing is that all the magic has been violently whipped of from the lives of modern people, and these days, when I’m feeling gloomy and tired, unwilling to lift myself up from the melancholic world of Facebook and technology, my own world looks temporarily grey as well. As if a rabbit wouldn’t be able to carry a clock in his waistcoat pocket! I regress into a lifeless narrator of Fight Club, who’s life is a pathetic realm of suicidal thoughts, or indeed like any other Finn living in darkness without one single jultomte peeking from the windows. 

And when after a day like this, yet another not-even-middle-aged  just about potential man I’ve been seeing a few times before my previous trip to Oz sends me a message telling, how he wants to “do the honorable thing by letting me know he’s dating a twenty five year old local chic”, and so “how about we bunk off and take the jeep to a pub in Kent”, I can't help but shake my head, sigh and watch Top hat instead. Fred Astaire might have seemed a little naïve when it came to showing affection towards Ginger Rogers, but that kind of clumsiness is not something you want to hear from an intelligent 43-year old post-post-modern businessman. It does make me want to go to sleep and dream of being forever ageless Ginger Rogers in golden 30’s.

lost stories

...So after I started a blog about my extraordeaneary life, everything went a bit Pete Tong, didn't it? Funny that. After that I refused to write, but now I regret that. I mean, what could be more exciting, than a story about a lost relationship, homelesness, lost student grant and a stolen bicycle, all in one! I should have made that story and fill it with colourful pictures. The pictures would have been:

1. Heidi crying in a rain in Deptford. Not one of those silent, beautifully melancholic 'tears running on my cheek as I walk down the street of misery and apathy', not at all. More like 'Heidi kneeling in front of Deptford college in a pouring rain, one hand in front of her mouth, a phone in another hand. Desperately, Pathetically, crying out loud' -kinda cries.

2. Heidi carrying her backbag from one temporary couch to another, having nothing else to wear than those clothes she chose to take with her to Asia 2 months ago. In this picture it's getting fairly chilly outside, and she had to borrow a coat from her friend. That's why the coat in this picture is too small and too black.

3. In this picture she has just received 8 human sized boxes, brought by DHL. Inside the boxes are all of her belongins. The livingroom they invade is her friends, who is also in the picture, wearing a fresh wedding dress made from the bubble wrap provided by Mr. Jones together with European Thermodynamics Ltd. In the next picture she is naked, throwing around pieces of foam material, also provided by the packaging of ETL.

...But I didn't. 

What a shame.

Weird and mental

"You look down. what's wrong?"

"I read my blog and realized, how amazing relationship I used to have... He was such an idiot, wasn't he?"

"mm...I usually write my blog when I feel down...  would you actually take him back then?"

"I don't know.. probably. I used to write the blog to share my amazingly exciting world"

"You're weird. and mental."

Taiwan

Trees in Taipei are very loud.

The first 2 days I walked in the streets staring at them, facing up in the sky like someone with a serious neck-cramp. People looked at me funnily, I tried to point the trees to them: "Don't look at me, it's your trees! can you not hear that!" I heard birds, yet I saw nothing. In the evening of my second day JJ kindly explained, that it was somekind of an insect.

I quit walking funnily, yet people kept on staring at me. Perhaps it wasn't my neck cramp, perhaps it was the fact, that I'm the only blond in in Taipei. Sometimes I get excited, when I think I see someone with a blond hair. I look closer and realize, it's an old lady with light gray hair.

I don't mind people staring, but it's a bit like being on stage. I used to do all kinds of inapproprioate acts in the streets, like fixing my panties, eating and all sort. In London no-one cares. And even if they do, I don't. But in here, the audience is too wide and it makes me a bit nervous sometimes. Occasionally children starts to follow me.It's fine, I would probably be the one following if I was in that kind of situation. (Once I nearly did in London. I saw a man with a billion of tattoos and piercings, a black cape and a magician's hat. He was so strangely beautiful I couldn't do anything but stare mouth open. I'm sure he appreciated it...)

My Mr.J used to say, that the humidity will hit me hard once I get to Asia. I would say that instead of a violent punch, it wraps around like a wet, hot towel.

I still haven't slept enough. I don't have problems of getting sleep, and I wake up promptly around 7, like in Europe. But like in Europe, I wouldn't mind sleeping a bit longer, but for some reason my body knows when it's 7am, even in another timezone. My problem is that I'm too excited to go to sleep, or sleep long in the morning. Too many things to see, too little time.

Cloud Gate.

"Don't worry, we're not ballet dancers neither, this is a contemporary dance company!" Said my new (male)friend from Cloud Gate Company, and lifted a leg next to his ear.

Without a warning, I had been thrown straight into a ballet class with the company on my first morning in Taiwan. I travelled for 2 hours from my hotel with 3 MTR and one buss.I was proud of of finding all the right trains and busses with my amazing map- and Hanzi-reading skills, plus my newly established, unfailing "if in doubt, look in doubt!"-technique, which invited someone to help me within one minute.Taiwanese people are beautiful.

The dancers from Cloud Gate are alle genuine and open-hearted people. For me, they seem like pure gold in the field of dance. There's no competition among the dancers, no ranking order of any kind, nor could I sense any kind of negative energy of any kind. I felt welcome, and althought I expected to cry out of shame and look like a Kung-Fu panda, I actually enjoyed the ballet class with them. The atmosphere of the class was encouraging, humble yet hard-working, and yes, they all looked amazing.

The assistant artistic director, JJ, has been taking care of me and spent a lot of time showing me around, introducing me to everyone and driving me to different places. She also invited me to a dinner and to Cloud Gates tour in Chiayi next week, as well as her own gig as an assistant for a blind choir's prison-gig in another town in Taipei. 

I Always new I'm a lucky person in an extraordinary world, and the first couple of days has taught me a great deal about life and the universe again. Everything is starting to come together inside my head, after a few months of a great struggle. It all starts to make sense again.

Men of Mumbai

They all have the same bored and mean look in their faces when they stare. And they do, constantly. It’s not a friendly, “I’m interested”-stare, of what European men occasionally give, nor a cheeky, intruding “let’s shag”-smile and a wink, what you get from a Turkish guy. It’s something different. It’s says,(for me, atleast) “I don’t give a fuck”, yet it means something completely different, as it is a lot more intense and shameless than the previous examples. An Indian man doesn’t look away when you look back. Not even when you stare back. His stone-face is fixed. So if you then poor steaming coffee on your fingers in the middle of these stony starings, knowing that about 20 individuals are following the show, you shouldn’t expect any help or sympathy from any of them. The face is so set, it controls the rest of the body, so unlike any other man (or women), who would care to ask if you hurt yourself, (except Finnish, who’d want to ask, but does not dare) an Indian guy carries on giving you the adamant stone face.

Mumbai 4pm

I’v been in Mumbai  for 5 hours now. In an airport, no-man’s land, as a transit.  People stare in Mumbai, and the Wifi is not working. Why does the security personnel need to wear camouflage-suits? Equal rights are not the most significant feature in here, I’m pondering, as I jump in front of a queue of men at the security point. Not as bad human rights violation, as the one I had to witness very closely on a plane:  As soon as I got some sleep, I woke up with someone probing my nipples. That Indian guy next to me. I hit him in the fingers and turn my back at him. Then he tried to approach me from behind. I hit him again and learned my lesson: As I wouldn’t go lying naked near a rat’s nest, I shouldn’t go near (Indian) men without a bra, sixteen shirts and a blanket.  The same kind of behavior seems to apply with both of these species.

(Perhaps this can be a bit over-exaggerated. Surely there are some well-mannered men in India just waiting to introduce themselves, and that’s why they’ve been staring shamelessly at me quite a while in this airport. Also not all rats bite.)