Of love, being in love and other mistakes we need to make.

Summer has arrived. Finally! It is 35 degrees in shadows and somewhere around 40 in my room, where I keep the iron running in order to guarantee impeccable garments. It has been strange, this year, so far. The usual transitions between seasons were blurred with weather´s strange behavior. Summer, spring and autumn have all been mixed together from February on. Now summer is here, however spring has been kind of missing. Not so much in the weather-like sense, as in the awakening of body and soul that accompanies it. Normally in spring I get all fired up with energy and when I see trees bloom I start to bloom within myself as well. I fall in love with Life. This year, the grey and the cold rain made me less open to emotionally glow. On the opposite, I was quite bitter and with energy level so low that I thought sometimes I would not survive the day.

It happened to me this week that a certain feeling was evoked in me. A feeling long forgotten. Actually, a feeling missed. I felt, as if I was in love. Pheromones, hormones, basic horniness...call it whatever, it was there and it still keeps in going. So I started to think about it. About love. Not only love for a particular person, but love, you know, the omnipresent one. The one we all like to talk about, but mix it the former one. I gave it a thought, deciding if I should write about this subject I have been avoiding for some time, although, I believe it has always subliminally underlined every sentence I wrote since the beginning. So I sat down and started to read a book I just bought titled: “Celebration of silence” by his holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Since I do not believe in destiny, I shall call it a purposeful coincidence, be as it may, I opened it on the pages discussing love. And here are my thoughts he provoked.

Of the woulda, shoulda and all the stuff we never do.

If the world had indeed ended on friday, I would have ran to the top of the mountain that peaks through this cloudy layer in the morning and watch the final sunrise. I would have meditated in silence looking back on my life. I would have thought about the people I'd met. I would have sent them love and tried to feel them, the way I do, when they sit next to me. I would have given them thanks for being a part of my reality. I would have  picked my phone and told you I am still in love with you. I would have laughed at my unability to recover from the hurt I feel even after one year has passed since you broke my heart. I would embraced the love I felt and cherished the gift you gave. I would then called and said sorry to anyone I feel obliged to say so. I would have felt gratitude I was able to get through all these years without knowing what real pain is. I would have thought about my mother and the emptiness she left behind when she pased away. I would have then returned from the mountain singing the songs I love and wondered, how it would have been, if I had persued a singing careeer. I would reenter my house and made myself a great breakfast. I would have greeted my father with a hug and let him know he couldn't have done a better job filling the void left by my mother and taking better care of me. I would have said thanks to him that he stood by me even though I have not mounted to very much up to this date. I would have smiled at the wish to become important part of designers' scene and felt accomplishment in the tiny gestures that had made some stranger's day. I would have praised the willingness to make things happen and adored the capability to decide to sleep in whole day and making nothing at all. I would have then go and have my regular tea in my favorite bar.  I would have given thanks to their kind service. I would have gone home and greeted people with a smile and once home, I would have made myself something nice to wear. I would have looked in the mirror and said: »You look fine, Dejan!« I would have laughed at myself for wasting so much time to get in a better shape. I would have felt regret for so many NO's I said to people who wanted to be with me in spite of that. Then I would go to Her and hold Her hand, I would have told Her for the first time outloud, that I love Her and we would have sat down still holding hands, staring into each other's eyes reasuring that everything is going to be ok. We would have closed our eyes and wait in silence. I would have felt my heartbeat, followed the sound of my breath, focused on nothing and let regret I'd felt before dissolve to the feeling that I have lived my life the way I did, for it couldn't be anything else than the life it was. If it had been different, it would not have been mine. I would then realised that in spite of hurt, in spite of  disappointment and in spite of unachieved goals that I was a happy person, lucky enough to have touched and was touched by others. I would have found my peace in knowing I couldn't have done it any other way. I was alive and for a short period of time I got to know a little bit more about myself, about world and people in it. I would have then fall deep inside into myself, shutting out the world, the noise, the tremble, the  fire, the screams, the burns, the fear and I would have let myself go, feel the only two things that make life bearable. Trust in the outcome and love for each other. And with that, I would have then opened my eyes and realised nothing has happened to the world and everything happened to me. The end as an astronomical occurence has not taken place. The world that ended, had done that in silence. It ceased with a big thump. It tore appart in connectivity. 

The world that ended is not the world we live in. It is the world we lived in a moment ago. The world ends everyday, with very passing moment. The physical one might seem the same, but that is just an illusion. Entropy always increases and new energy cannot be created. World we call ours is ephemeral, it is not the rock that evolves around the Sun. The world we call ours is inside of us, it is among us. It is the space we feel separated by and it grows bigger, sadly.

I am not a dreamer and I surely am not an idealist. I know how humans thrive on selfish needs. I do not want to preach about how we are supposed to live our lives, I am the same as everyone else. But now and then in our lives, those moments occur, the moments when fear sneaks into our thoughts, about the »what if« and the »when«. In those moments soaked with reality of passing we become aware of what we are and what we do. So, it is them that sober us up. I remember one philosopher saying: »If we carried the imminent presence of death with us all the time, we would live a perfect life.« Science might have shown us that it holds the key to knowing when The End is NOT going to happen, but it is in us to know that it might. It is up to us to accept that it will. Not in »when«, but in »what if«. And instead of feeling depresingly powerless to avoid it, we should feel empowered to embrace it and live the day as if it was our last. You see, the fear is not our enemy, the comfort is. 

And there is that.  

          

Of reality, action and other animals in disagreement.

Obviously, I have hard time following my schedule. A month just went by. When I started this, I haven´t envisioned my blog as a random pop up happening. I wanted for it to be a regular thing, but as I am the proof of how life takes us roads we haven´t anticipated, it should not come to me as a surprise, that yes, a month can go by just like that and that I cannot follow my own plan. Anyways, today it happened again. The need for me to write something down has emerged. It was triggered while I was watching a show on TV, Enlightened. You know it? Well for those who do not, just a little summary.  It is about a woman who, after a nervous breakdown at a job (love issues and betrayal), goes through months of soul searching journey in some Hippy Dippy camp, only to return back home to work at the same company with newly emerged need to help change the world around her. The show is a delight, smart and funny, but I am not here to give a review. Actually, I was intrigued by the thought of doubt about sincerity behind her actions in order to do “Good” and feeling genuine love (read acceptance) for people around her. What is more, I asked myself on what conclusion one can decide what is good for others? 

The character in the series is supposed to be the enlightened one. I still haven´t figure out, if the series is about her actually being enlightened or she is yet to become that. If the second is true I have no problem with it, however, if the first holds, than I cannot stay calm at this disfigurement of what being enlightened is supposed to mean. I can deduce from it one single fact, that there is a difference between acting and actually being enlightened. See, I cannot get rid of the feeling that her character is acting upon what she perceives as good and is not what actually IS good. Her actions are walking on a thin line between revenge and justice. Speaking of the latter, we do lean on it way too many times when we reason our actions. So my question here now is, does the perceived correspond with actual reality? Or, for that matter, what is reality?

Of past, future and other delusions of moving.

Oh your god. How time passes when one is busy. We have founded a company, as I mentioned before and we actually found a store that would like to sell our clothes. Some kind of »topshit« store in Slovenia. Naturally, we had to prepare the production and also produce it all. Hence, the month that flew by in what felt as a moment. And that somehow brings me to what I want to write about today. A moment. 

It all begun with the book A new earth.  Some hippy dippy book about, how we are enslaved by our own egos and how by freeing ourselves from it, we would create a better place to live in, hence A new Earth. Book is great. Maybe because I had been going on and on for quite some time thinking about ego and what it is, where does it show, how one develops it and how to free oneself from it? The book caught my attention when I was looking for answers. I will talk about ego in my next blog. It is a touchy subject and it needs to be addressed with care to avoid any misunderstandings. Today something else struck me while devouring the last pages. The sentence:  “All that ever has been or will be is now, outside time, which is a mental construct.” Especially the first part of it. The “All that ever has been or will be is now!”  

Of abilities, decisions and other misconceptions of love.

I wanted to talk about misinterpretations and taking responsibility for interpretations others make of us. Well, I changed my mind. I do not want to sound grim or defensive. There will be time for that when emotions subside and situations grow colder. Instead I have something more festive to talk about, Love. Yup, love again. But you have to admit, that is the sole subject that can never be discussed enough, plus it always invites people's dreamy expression on their faces. And how could one ignore that happiness? 

So many of you have asked me privately, what was going on with me and my status updates/reports on Facebook. Why the culinary titles of my insights as pieces of beef? Well, it started as simple posting of the excerpts from my conversations with my new found (and lost) love interest, but it soon became something more, a project. I will not describe it yet, but it has a point. However, it slowly moved from what is on the outside into inner perceptions. My beef, my love, my rules, my decisions!

I know I have been talking about love on two or more occasions. I was somehow detached from the subject matter, though. This is actually what I am trying to do here. To take things from my private life and lift myself above it to get the better perspective of how I think things work. This time, I am personal. Not because I have any secret agenda. No, this time I am personal, because the message could not be more insightful to me. Let me explain.

Of art exhibitions in Graz, mental orgasms and other escapes I like to call exploration.

It has not been easy for me lately. Not so much in the existential or emotional part of my life as it was in the artistic expression. I found myself in a position where I literally generated compositional clothing not being allowed to squeeze in the conceptual thought into them, which I like to do. People want to look great, they want to show what makes them appealing and hide that which makes them less of that. They want to look beautiful. Do not get me wrong, I would stand in front of an armored artillery squad defending fashion for being functional and in humble service to people. I still believe fashion is not an art form. Rather I see it as a skillful Kraftwerk, a mastery which can reach to the realms of being so well executed it looks almost divine, humanly impossible to make. The way Caravaggio’s masterpieces do. The way Michelangelo´s statues do. It is completely different story when fashion meets artistic expression, however. Then it becomes something different. Something like “Modart”, I should say. Of course, there can be intellectual stimuli to a garment, an idea that pervades it, a symbol that makes it somehow embedded in a deeper and complex subject. This is where I like to think I stand with my designs. But in the end, for the sake of being artistic, fashion cannot submit to the self proclaimed artwork dipped in nonfunctional conceptualization. To me, fashion still, in the first place, looks for an aesthetic solution to a given composition of a human body and the relations of volume between body and clothes. Thought behind it is an entity of second grade. So I found myself in situations where I was challenged only on the surface, asked to find an aesthetic solution to a given body, type of venue and event that body has planned to go to. (I see a concept developing here). In general, I love to do it, but when one ends up doing ONLY that for a longer time, one starts to look for a stimulation that is not skin-deep. And when town one lives in does not offer anything but morning rituals and afternoon obligations, with no excitement for the eye or the brain, one reaches out. What my sister likes to call an escape, I like to call exploration. And it is that what I did this week. And it is that I would like to write about. I went to Graz, thus the one day delay on this post. I am sorry for that (déjà-vu?). But here it is what excited me.

Of luck, happiness and all the weird bus connections

Who would have thought thinking about buses can bring someone to interesting philosophical reasoning. I would have. This happened to me once already. I was waiting with my friend for a bus number 6 to arrive to take us home. A bus with the number 20 blinking on its led screen approached. As it stopped the number 20 suddenly changed to 6. Just like that. I was thrown aback. How even a small change, like a number, can have a great impact on one’s perceiving of destiny. Before the bus changed from 20 to 6 I knew instantly with just looking at it, where it came from and I knew where it was going. But with that change, a bus, that was “predestined” to go one way, suddenly became a totally new, different bus, with new sets of bus stops and the past that does not correspond with the one presumed for the number displayed.

I wondered then how this can be applied to human experience. We all know how everyday common incidents can affect the course of our lives. And similarly to the bus situation, when I knew the path before and after it changed from one number to the other - although they couldn’t be more different - I always know I am on the “right” path, the one path that I am living right now, all the time. Never mind the constant changes of hearts that I have. Which I do. A lot. It is because the reality we perceive is not the reality of chances and options but of things that occur, that through outcome of random events manifest from a cloud of possibilities.

And this is what I wanted to talk about in this entry. Being happy or lucky. Wait what? It will all make sense in the end. Just stick with me.