In the mist of every ordinary morning, eyelids still glued one to the other, unwilling to be separated so as to allow the indiscreet morning light perform a violent rape to sleepy eyes, my pleasant state of confusion is suddenly kicked off by a peculiar feeling of urgency that somehow manages to surprise me each time, as if I felt it for the very first time (again, I insist: it happens to me every damn morning!) and as if it announced a special day with less ordinary circumstances and mythical rewards, in the end. The same urge that drags me to the kitchen, takes over my hands, guiding them through a heap of strange, neglected objects that ease up my entrance to the world ‘out there’: a metal coffee pot, a plate upon which I am to spill a handful of cereals and soak it afterwards with just a bit of tap water, a spoon that I always find myself holding in my left hand, not knowing what purpose it’s supposed to serve afterall: put the raw coffee in the pot, blend the final result with milk, or eat the cereals with?! It takes about two and a half cups of coffee to realize that the only thing that will detach my aching self from the kitchen table and the pink laptop is a cold shower (literally) and an inspired choice of items from my wardrobe (most of yesterday was saved by a mixture of three different shades of green and an acid lilac one). It takes 10 seconds of water pouring over my hair and bony back and a quick blink of an eye to start planning my day frantically and to anticipate the too-well-known agenda: stress out at noon already, seeing hours pass by like a speeding car with a thick-skinned driver, spilling the dirty liquid contains of a slop all over my pretty dress and almost ruining my favorite shoes; run out the door at least one hour later than planned, spend the next one walking and then accommodating to the smoke and noises of a seemingly serene and harmless place, find myself thrown into another hurricane of roughneck emotions, a fight always sold out by a deceptive rapid dance of the eyes (window-screen-table-window-shoes-screen-hands-phone-window-screen-paper-cup) that, hand in hand with nervous quick sips of coffee and knocking heels loudly to the rhythm of music, might give away just the right wrong impression of me: yes, I do have self-control issues, over-achievement issues, time-management issues, but – no, you don’t want to hear me talking about that, and frankly, I don’t want to talk about it either, unless I am permitted to add an important note at the end: I really DO have it all under control! Most of the time.

And all while I was busy chasing myself and looking over my back  every minute to see who else might be chasing me, some odd thing occurs and short circuits my neurotic algorithm. I don’t even bother to pack my shitty plans and send them away dancing, I don’t draw the line and use the best of my decisional strength to say ‘that’s it! away with you, nerve-racking drives!’, I don’t even realize that it’s all suddenly just gone. It was last Saturday that I stopped thinking and started cooking a plain lunch – mashed potatoes and a dill sauce- for the little curly lady of the house, she ate a huge plate of it, and with great pleasure – which filled me with a joy so simple, yet so intense – it was the rawest feeling I’ve felt for a long, long while, as I’m used to having mostly ‘ghost’ feelings, constructions that I must decipher in order to clean up the mess they produce. Next, I spent my day in the same relaxed state of mind, cleaning, doing laundry, with the little one jumping besides me, trying to help out, and even though I tried -and hard did I try, really!- to exercise calmness and keep a healthy distance to all things that, as fulfilling as they may be when finished and sent out into the world, rip me to pieces when they sneak out and remain undone, left out on the traumatic ‘to do’ list, I still don’t have the guts to admit that life is what really just happens while I run like a dog chasing cars. If I did admit it, I’d have no more excuses.

*For the sake of simplicity and classy elegance, I tried to wear this very pretty shift dress from French Connection; pointless to say that I couldn’t resist styling it up in my very own way, so that the result is a bit further away from ‘simple’ than I had planned  wanted; Jeffrey Campbell boots, vintage bag and jewelry, Bershka coat, Carturesti book bag (I’d like to be buried wearing a dress in that shade of green)

Am I forgetting something? Just about everything I’ve previously said. Hop back in, on the rollercoaster. The higher you reach, the harder the fall is.

After a year in which all fetes and holidays seemed not more than an unnecessary distraction and when the biggest and most cherished gift was the luxury of having many normal days, abundant in hours of work and preferably without the burden of less ordinary incidents, I got to expect the 8th of March (and the 1st, as well) with  both fear and controlled indifference  - a day when an incredible number of flowers were bought and forgotten in tall glass vases, when a lot of gifts where given and a lot of  ’thank you’-s were whispered by blossomed lips, on busy streets, behind office doors and in houses with enough emotional  luggage to fill museums for the unlucky lonely ones, most likely sharing their lives with the wrong person(s). I, like countless girls and women, also got flowers yesterday, and although they were in fact quite lovely  flowers and suddenly brought a lot of light and color to my room and tired mind, it was only due to a sturdy politeness that I resisted to the impulse of asking the question that has been grinding my thoughts this month: ‘What exactly am I celebrated for?’. Naturally, I ended up, as always, in company of my convoluted thoughts and with a slight choke in my throat.

Any intention of boring you, by summing up all the reproaches one with a propensity towards feminist convictions would invoke in their attempt to argue with the grounds of our society, dominated by male representations, is not exactly part of my plan. However, I can’t avoid mentioning the harsh perspective according to which all the atributes associated with womanly beauty are nothing but constructions meant to reduce the range of our potential to that of sexual incitement and motherhood. I wonder which one of us,  overruled by more or less personal desires or interests, hasn’t at least once felt constrained to fit the narrow male fancy? Exactly. So we are ‘overwhelmed’ with presents and big words of appreciation which beg us to continue performing the same act that got us here in the first place: use your ‘natural resources’ of beauty to their full potential, hide your weaknesses, speak politely and with utter delicacy, know how to keep the balance between fragility and silent power, bear your child with grace, then raise it patiently and love it unconditionally, even if that happens to confiscate the life you’ve had ‘before’ (they like to call it ‘sacrifice’, it has a strong resonance and a highly dramatic echo) and you find yourself abandoned in a story meant for two characters – or three, counting in the child as well, cook exemplary, keep a perfectly clean house, do not farth or belch and pretend you don’t ever use the toilet either (let alone leave olfactory traces at the ‘scene’), wake up one hour before he does and brush your teeth, so you don’t get him to mistake your ‘good morning’ by ‘bad morning..breath!’,  and if you manage to sneak a good career there, among many others, you should be praised as the perfect woman. Instead… you are really not! It might sound a bit too much of a conception combining the stereotypical 50s housewife with the addition brought about (or, in fact, allowed) by the 21st century, but if you leave all false pretenses aside(that is, if you step on your  pride and thus be able to point out the fakeness in which a woman’s life is so masterfully wrapped up in), you’ll see that, sadly, things haven’t changed all that much for us in a few dozens years.

Ok, so it seems that my innate indignation got a bit ahead of me, while on my long way to finishing this post, I must admit that it doesn’t all come down to a black&grey reality. There’s a thin line between nurturing the desire to be noticed ( and this isn’t typical of females only, men also practice seduction, and, as time goes by, they seem to be fast learners!) – whether by means of appearance or other ways of loud self-expression-, and being judged solely by the above-mentioned parameters, but it’s important that there is one! And there’s much more to the subject of ‘us, ladies, and how everyone else sees us’- precisely to the subject of how we want to be seen – , because I don’t think I only speak for myself when I say that, for example, when I dress up for whatever reason drags me out of the house, I do have in mind the particular image I want to leave behind, like the sweet scent of a sophisticated perfume (or the image I want to hit in the face with, like a rainbow-colored hammer – depending on the nature and aesthetic taste of the ‘spectator’), and that image is by far not meant for sheer seduction. I like to indulge in a type of self-expression that requires an external eye to either admire, hate or be puzzled by a presence hard to ignore – the reactions are always different, and that increases the excitement! I don’t seek some sort of validation from anyone, because I’ve grown to know part of my value and to make a clear difference between me and what is important to me and what everyone else finds or overlooks in me.

As I was searching for an outfit yesterday morning, I witnessed an unlikely conflict between my raw intuition and sartorial hunger for spectacular outfits, for what I see as an assumed ostentatious celebration of womanhood in its most visual-appealing form. I felt that clothes simply don’t satisfy me fully anymore- besides from having a sadly short life ( a bad quality item only lasts a couple of weeks to one season, a decent one sticks with you for 3 or 4 years the most, and the more valuable, or designer pieces can, when well preserved and taken care of, last you a lifetime), they also usually have a short lived fashion relevance (ok, that’s less my case, because I choose not to take trends that seriously). I started looking for something more… certain, powerful, autonomous, something you can develop a steady relationship with. Jewelry! (Not the jewelry I wear all day long, cheap vintage finds from several unlikely places) Next, I was dreaming of heavy necklaces with fat gemstones , thrown carelessly over a random white cotton tee, huge diamond rings and chandelier earrings, pieces that don’t need to send any biased message, which are heart-breakingly beautiful even when resting in their dusty boxes, or forgotten on the tea table, or when lost between the sheats during precious moments of intimacy. Pieces that can speak so well of your past, when you hold them in crumpled, old hands, that you might either want to take them to the grave or leave them to your grandchildren, as tokens in which you hope they’ll decipher a small secret you’ve never told.

On my way home yesterday evening, I had already exhausted everything that I was fearing of, and, my mind released from the pinch of a very hard day, I was only wishing for a casual night in, near the person I’ve been missing the entire day, and, if I should be allowed to make a daring wishlist for this or any other day of the year – a priceless piece from a collection of jewelry that has recently caught my eye  and made my lust for jewelry even more intense- 77 Diamonds, check it out if you share my ‘hurtful’ craving! After all, I still don’t have a wedding ring.

* Wearing no-name jacket, Zara sweater, vintage skirt, bag and jewelry, Jeffrey Campbell shoes

* Pictures taken by Bernadette Demeter – thanks, B.! (I’ve been wanting to say that ever since I first watched Gossip Girl )

PS.  The following pictures are a proof that spring has – finally! – arrived, as I could walk around wearing no more than a sweater and jacket and feel damn goood about it!

Lace, wool and color block all over myself; rumpled skin on my hands that have the amazing capacity of cooling hot drinks in winter, by means of temperature transfer, and chipped neon enamel on my nails;

confusing pairings of fear and blind enthusiasm, tights and socks and more socks and sandals in mid-February, heart-racing anxiety and dead-calm when faced with impossible choices and dead ends;

broad smiles decorating good moods and impressive resources of ugly pouts and smashing curses, casual substitutes of throwing glass objects and mobile phones into naked walls – silent witnesses of my ups and downs on that damn ladder I have to climb all day long in order to prove my minute worthiness, the fragile, slippery ladder that has the  annoying habit  of throwing  me off balance just as soon as I reach its upper steps, causing a lot of pain in my ass bones, after landing back on the ground;

jumping and spinning and singing to the songs that make me glide into the sweetest rock&roll brisk sorrow, dancing in puffed skirts with bows and candy sticks, wearing shoes that hurt my feet and push up the adrenaline when I feel that I’m about to fall and sprain my ankle; occasionally falling from 5 inches above the ground, ruining a good pair of tights and causing other derisory damages to my stark knees;

parading around in clothes that exude the exuberant joy that I would be completely incapable of showing if, God forbid, my closet caught fire or be emptied by thieves with a good taste in fashion; occasionally planting small pieces of myself in long, winding phrases that probably few have the patience and interest to read, on this leaflet named Five Inch Memories;

crying the hell out of a sunny day, then blaming the red swollen eyes to a fictive conjunctivitis when suddenly bumping into a random aquaintance; a cursed obsession with the fatidic number shown by the scale – the one, possibly only, thing I hate stepping on;

food-phobia, automobile- phobia, thick-hair-on-girls’-arms-phobia, swimming-in-the-sea-phobia, sweaty-people-in-summer-phobia, official-phonecalls-phobia, hospital-phobia, ugly-shoes-and-flat-sandals-that-show-too-much-skin-phobia;

food addiction, 5 inch platform shoes addiction, Ipod, laptop and camera addiction; a blessed addiction to holding my little girl tight before sleep, and to the smell of her curly hair in the morning;

repeated attempts (of increasing intensity) to believe in God; not being able to feel completely awake until I hit the ground; giving too much credit to half-people, then being obliged to correct my naivety and flush them down the toilet; still looking for that mid-road between not feeling worthy for what I have and being hungry for a lot more.

*Wearing Jaeger sweater, vintage lace dress, Asos socks, Topshop platfroms & bag, vintage earrings

When I’m wearing a coat, I like to take long walks between one place and another. I seem to have a clear purpose and also a lot of strength in my arms, especially while also carrying around a large and heavy bag, hiding away toys and guns of all sorts and shapes and colors. My face is rigid and pleased, my smile is all canny and bitter and my legs look  foxy and tireless as they step on columns of pride and calculated nonchalance. Everyone and everything around smells like a juicy joke and all gestures feel like an already lost battle with the threat of nothingness. Those blue eyes behind the dark lenses held together by a cheap blue & yellow plastic frame throw the stiffest looks at the pile of human flesh cramming and flowing towards me like a wave of noisy bees, distorting the view of the afternoon light on bitter buildings and wrecked window panes. Words like courage, kindness, trust or pity are rendered irrelevant and cut to the root by the stinging cold that freezes  hands and wrinckled grotesque masks, and that’s where coats come in – commonplace winter gear, generous objects over-worn by their unassumed devotion to the delicate task of sheltering crippled hearts, exhausted lungs and sick stomachs.

With my coat on, I might be feeling safe and warm, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing to accept from a plain piece of wool. Beneath it, I am sweating and choking and I only wish I could run naked, while vomiting all the toxines of my raw disgust and inborn disdain of the poisonous world I was forced to swallow like candy, day by day, for the past two insignificant decades. The poison of knowing that my scrawny self will ultimately have to narrow down all choices to only two: to hide behind my sheltering coat or to unbutton and just take it off.

* Wearing Zara coat, Jaeger sweater, vintage dress, Topshop wedges & bag, Asos socks, vintage earrings