We sat down looking at each other across the table of differences in age and life experiences. But we were very similar to each other. Same cups of milk coffee, same eyes, same gap between the front teeth, fat ankles. We were sitting there in silence and I must have looked outside the window to catch a glimpse of a plum tree. There was nothing extraordinary in two women sitting together in a kitchen. The bond of womanhood.
'Sometimes I don't feel like living anymore' she said.
Many years and thousand of coffees later we spoke on the phone in the evening. 'I will live, I promise, I want to'... And we made plans of life and what it would be like and laughed at the perspective of their realisation.
But sometimes promises are not meant to be kept... like shoe lace hanging from the fan, like 100 tablets of heart medicine and a bottle of wine, like jumping down from 16th floor of an apartment building, or jumping into the coldest of cold waters, or in the most prosaic of ways on the hospital bed..........................
I'm sitting now by the table with a cup of tea and as I think about her in the kitchen I begin to wonder what it means to be alive. Where is the difference between living a life and surviving from one day to another.
It is so simple when we look at it at the basic level of our needs of food and shelter - but what if financial security is not enough for somebody to feel alive?
I am scared of big metro stations and streets with hundreds of words staring at me from the advertising boards. I stopped at the metro station once and kept looking at an old man in a hat, who walked so slowly among the speeding crowd. Where was everybody rushing at that hour? His lips looked as if they had been sealed, as if he had not spoken for years, and I couldn't but begin to wonder if you actually pay attention to what he wanted to say. Did I actually pay attention to what she wanted to say while she was sitting in her armchair... What happens to those whose words and ways of living do not conform with the images thrown at us from a TV screen?
Driver, please, stop the world and allow me to get down at the next stop.
Can you remember the last time you felt truly alive? I feel alive in my work but outside that space? I used to feel alive while sitting under the tree with a cup of chai and a book in my hand. A dog would come for a pat and as I looked up I could feel the sun on my face and I would become amazed with the colours of leaves above my head.
Life hides in the smallest moments around us. It is like a patchwork quilt of tiny pieces of memories and happiness. It is hand made, and not stitched by some machine and sold as a mass product.
I heard them talk about a business plan today - buy cheap, stitch cheap, sell cheap, earn fast...
A friend of mine paints her own shirts... private use.
I like sleeping under cheap colourful bedsheets. I always take time to choose them carefully. They are me.
'Sometimes I don't feel like living anymore' she said.
Many years and thousand of coffees later we spoke on the phone in the evening. 'I will live, I promise, I want to'... And we made plans of life and what it would be like and laughed at the perspective of their realisation.
But sometimes promises are not meant to be kept... like shoe lace hanging from the fan, like 100 tablets of heart medicine and a bottle of wine, like jumping down from 16th floor of an apartment building, or jumping into the coldest of cold waters, or in the most prosaic of ways on the hospital bed..........................
I'm sitting now by the table with a cup of tea and as I think about her in the kitchen I begin to wonder what it means to be alive. Where is the difference between living a life and surviving from one day to another.
It is so simple when we look at it at the basic level of our needs of food and shelter - but what if financial security is not enough for somebody to feel alive?
I am scared of big metro stations and streets with hundreds of words staring at me from the advertising boards. I stopped at the metro station once and kept looking at an old man in a hat, who walked so slowly among the speeding crowd. Where was everybody rushing at that hour? His lips looked as if they had been sealed, as if he had not spoken for years, and I couldn't but begin to wonder if you actually pay attention to what he wanted to say. Did I actually pay attention to what she wanted to say while she was sitting in her armchair... What happens to those whose words and ways of living do not conform with the images thrown at us from a TV screen?
Driver, please, stop the world and allow me to get down at the next stop.
Can you remember the last time you felt truly alive? I feel alive in my work but outside that space? I used to feel alive while sitting under the tree with a cup of chai and a book in my hand. A dog would come for a pat and as I looked up I could feel the sun on my face and I would become amazed with the colours of leaves above my head.
Life hides in the smallest moments around us. It is like a patchwork quilt of tiny pieces of memories and happiness. It is hand made, and not stitched by some machine and sold as a mass product.
I heard them talk about a business plan today - buy cheap, stitch cheap, sell cheap, earn fast...
A friend of mine paints her own shirts... private use.
I like sleeping under cheap colourful bedsheets. I always take time to choose them carefully. They are me.
