In the bus from Batumi I thought I would sleep for a while, exausted of the hitchhiking and bus tours from Ankara. But there is this kind of instinct, that one wants to see the last moment of ones life, and because the driver for sure did not get his driver licence in Canada, where one of the criteria of good driving is not spilling the cup of coffee inside the car, he was stoping when it was necessary and when it was not, what is naturally hard to judge if you are sleeping, therefore in a overtired vigilance I was observing all the cows and old zhigulis to be taken over from the left and from the right.  

It was raining in Tbilisi. This time I am more familiar here. Even though without a bike it is much more difficult to find your way, I ask now easily, romeli nomeri marjanishvilis kucha midixart? Which one is going to Marjanishvili, where I rented a room for a month, to get sorted the impressions, to write and plan the life forward.

I like Tbilisi. Moths ago, I even put it in my list of my top top cities. But since cities are also people, I was wondering about them now. I never met people in Georgia who would listen. They would talk. Monologues. It is ok. But it is the feeling of coming back here. I know I will be quite here. When I was a child in Vilnius, I used to live an autistic life with no one to talk, but since I did not know any other state, I did not suffer, and had my friendship with stones and walls I would visit every night I would go out with my dog in the dark streets of Uzupis. Entering Tbilisi I had already a list in my mind, what places to go to and was looking forward to see them.

I realised already a while ago, that the most efficient survival strategy is not to get atached to anyone and anything. Then you cannot get hurt. You might become empty as a tin bucket, but you can hardly be hurt. The thing is, it never works. Subconcious has its mysterious ways and while I am busy ejecting someone from my mind, I might get already attached to someTHING.

I liked a chachiapuri kiosk in Rustaveli. There is no trace of it there, as if it did not exist. And the people just vanished like from a screen after the film is over. I laughed about myself not being able to find a photo lab on Rustaveli, walking there down and up several times, until I realised, it is not there anymore either. And the armenian guy in the photoshop vanished naturally as well. The gallery, where I used to work with and had to pick up my post, I realised was also closed. The state does not give money anymore. I calculated again. Five months. But the old women, selling sunflower seeds, semochki, are still there. Probably also not for a long time. There are constructions in the underground zones. Sure, these people soon will be a bad sight surounded with some more expensive shops in the background.

The city council decided that it is also a bad sight to have the clothes hung out from the windows. If I refered earlier to a law in Germany prohibiting to hang out your laundry, I treated as a case of madeness which would never be strong enough to take the mainstream tracks. The more scary it sounds hearing the news about the new imposed Tblisi esthetics. Even though I could imagine someone like certain style more that the other, what does not fit in my mind is the discrpepance between the gracious law and the realities people live in. I could bet that there is virtually no room to hang out the clothes inside of the houses.

If I admire the cities like Damascus, that did not follow the esthetical dictatorship and cleansing of the city centers as did Vilnius, N.Y. , or many others. Where people of mixed economical and social background share the spaces. For me personally it is one of the criterea of subjective well-being – living in an environment, where facets of priviledges are drawn to a minimum, where there is more mixing and mingling together rather than segregation or getho building. It looks as if Tbilisi does not seem to realise it as a value and for sure their encouraging partners, such as World Bank, would be the last to object the contrary. Another law is in discussion. All the citizens of the old Tbilisi are supposed to pay taxes for the fund which should cover the costs of renovation. So far so good, it is possible to follow the neoliberalist logic. But the thing is that the amounts of money to be collected from people stand in no reasonable relation to their theoretical and practical possibilities to earn this money. Let us say, an old woman, getting her 47 lari pension is supposed to pay 80 for just the right to live in the old town. For sure, this strategy to make people sell their houses is much more convenient than burning houses in Vilnius.

The logic of the rule goes as follows  -  as soon as one is in power, one should release laws that serves your interests, but makes the others criminal. Soon all Tbilisi will be criminal, since I doubt if even a small percent of people would be realistically able to keep up with the law and pay these taxes.

I came back. After the four months.  In that time  – Damascus, Jerusalem, Istanbul. Now, in Batumi  waiting for the bus to fill with people. It is damn hot here now. An elder lady, dressed in pink satin shirt and a straw hat comes up to sell me a new issue of playboy. After a while, another lady dressed less excentrically sells chachiapuri.

 Well, as the saying goes, one cannot enter the same river twice. The first time I entered Batumi was a half year ago. After a hard trip through the Turkey, Georgia was like an island in a chasing game, where you have to jump on something above the ground in order not to be caught. At that time I did not have any notion, that jumping on an island I would engage in another game with different rules.  This time I feel so much more empty. Not because the bike is not here and because all my load is one bag instead of usual five bike bags. No, I guess emotionally I just hit the bottom. The emptiness. Absolute emptiness. And if usually I swear I would like to become a complete sclerotic in order not to remember the moments that hurt with the same intensity every-time they appear on the surface of your consciousness, this time I try to scratch all the crumbs from the corners of the pockets, remembering details and spreading them over the hurting emptiness.

 These were the last kilometers before entering Georgia last time, in October. The road from Ardahan to Artvin is I would bet the most wonderful I have seen in Turkey and as enchanted as I was rolling down the winding road in the valley of amazing mountains coloured with November colors I realised it was time to find a shelter for the night. Since the valley road is narrow, there are almost no suitable places for a tent, so I looked around.  He came out from the yard and closed the fence after him, which looked as a dance, or a prayer, the calmness the whole process was radiating. He wore a suite. And a decent hat, that postman are supposed to wear in old fashioned books.  A tent? Come in. We entered a lawn. I was expecting to go into a house full of his daughters and grandchildren. But we turned from the house. There were in-numerous bee houses. And then I saw it in the end of the field. A tent. My first though was that it is his summerhouse. With the mixture of the languages I learned in Turkey on the way I asked, if he was living here. Since he spoke some unfamiliar to me dialect, I thought he did not understand. But during that day and the coming day I realised this phenomena of not speaking the language, but understanding so perfectly.  He indeed lived in the tent. A nomad. In winter also? Yes, in winter also. And then he would show me the enhancements on the tent he did in order to insulate it. I could hardly believe it. A soul-mate.. I thought to myself. A real nomad, detached from the pleasures or hardships of the sedentary life. He would bring the bees to the fields of Ardahan in the summer. And then his sons would sell the honey in Istanbul. He makes very good honey. He smiled at me. And he looked like some dwarf from a fairy tale sent to me just to make me believe, that there are people like him and me.  While the sun was setting beyond the mountains, the water from the river was setting on the grass and on the air. Guelverdi made some more tea. Do I want to see something else? Sure. He was connecting some kind of cables and before I realised what was really happening the was an extremely loud shot. Against thieves and robbers he said, and showed me his device. It was like a miniature bomb machine from the military fields. It is only to make a sound, he said proudly turning off the gas.  In his tent there were drawers and bags neatly stacked one on the other, everything like from some hobbit like shelter. I asked about his wife. She died long time ago, he said, and offered me walnuts. I met so many people on the way. Every time I would become more and more tired forcing myself to be polite and excited. At a certain point you get tired, socially tired. I felt as if I hit the secret place in the game, where one does not have to play, where one can have a legitimate rest. We sat in silence and it felt exactly the right thing to do. We ate, he told me some more stories, and it felt as if I had this babel-fish in my ear. I did not have to struggle to understand. It felt, as if he would tell me those stories for the one thousandth time, and I would know them by heart anyway, enjoying them as songs accompanying your movements.  I pitched up my tent aside to his. The day before I was almost forced by two men to make love with them. Somehow they did not loose their reason and took my explanations about being a mother of a child and so on. They watched their porno films. I slept, but calculating in my dreams, how I would be able to open the door of the bus in case they would change their minds again. Tired, I was tired of intensity of every day would bring to me in a positive or negative form. And I slept next to the tent of Guelverdi as sound as possible for people who live their set lives, where everyday comes back as a familiar soothing refrain.  Next morning I asked him. What can I do for you? You provided me shelter. Maybe I can saith? Wash your clothes? Bring something from the town? Guelverdi looked in my eyes as if we would know each other for years. Actually, if felt we never were separated. He smiled and said, can you cook for me?  Guelverdi was shaving, while the morning sun lazy came out of the hazy clouds. I would shout from the tent and ask, where do you have rice? And he would say, look in the box under the bed. And I would find some neat onions, some rice, and with the ceremony of the offering I would cook my best pilaf I could cook. Rice, the smell of fried onions, few tomatoes. We would exchange looks once in a while. Sometimes I would feel like his daughter. But no, the daughters are probably less idealistic about their own fathers. No, maybe I am like his granddaughter. They are caring for their grandfathers remembering all the extensive loving care they would give to them when the busy parents would bring them for the weekend.  We ate. And Guelverdi said slowly, it is very very tasty. And smiled. The midday sun came out. Time to go, my visa is ending in two days, still have mountains on the coast to go over. I will go now, Guelverdi, I said. I packed my bike bags and he opened the fence door to get out. We stood there, next to the road. He touched my face with his old wrinkled hand. I realised, I was not his daughter. In the last, or in the next life we were lovers.  

Love stories can be so short, ugh?

recieved several requests from friends about my adress.

write you from a secret japanese house ın ıstanbul, but soon i wıll be based here.

Evelına Taunyte

c/o Tsira Chelidze

Toidze 6, Chugureti

Tbilisi

Georgia

a matter of luck, since post in georgia is like a game… but as with everythıng ı guess - worth trying

Matas asked me to buy Matzen. Matzen is traditional Jewish bread - no yeast. Like crackers. Sure we buy Matzen. But whaaa, it feels like a stone. Just as every time in Israel I would get mad realising another case of injustice of the “screaming to heaven” sort and Manar would say, please, no politics, I would keep it like swolen stone inside of me.

After having seen with my own eyes things over there, it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between the nations and politics. Olmert is not the same as Amos Oz, Putin is not the same as Tolstoy, Sarkozy is not Bourdeau and Bush not Thoreau. It is probably one of the biggest challenges of humanity I guess - to separate nation from politics. It would be better not to have a nationality concept at all. Just people living in places, as it was not soo long ago. And making politics not a matter of national pride, but as a business to meet the needs of people living here and now. No wonder, that Gaza explodes. As long as Palestinians don’t have even water, things will stay as they are. And the gay community in Lithuania will face the same reactions as those days as long as the children won’t read anything about homosexuality as a fact in their schoolbooks, and there will be others after Bush leading religious wars as long as the idea of evolution will stay banned from many schools in US.

One state solution in Palestine is just as unimaginable as, let’s say, France today with a president with Algerian background. Although issues are so sensitive that one can hardly put these chronical wounds of the society in comparison. Why still societies and not SOCIETY? One thing. Not only in Palestine. We are all in one sinking boat. Same boat.
Global citizenship is not a matter of natural process. It is a matter of political will. Just as it was and is a strategical goal of EU to create a EU identity adjusting structures to it and providing financial injections to anything that supports the idea, it is the same with any kind of identity. It is an illusion to think we are individual and free in our thinking.

Just as a graffiti in Tel Aviv says. Custom made. We could and would think in a different way about nationalities, economics, gays and lesbians, if there would be a different political will. How can we get around I wonder?

kai pavoge kompa gruzijoj, tai praradau ir savo visa muzika, tai va kiek pas draugus uzsilike jos, tiek ir yra. vakar pas goetz uztikau savo gabaliuka, visai nieko, net nebezinojau, kad toki buvau irasius. tom waits coveris.

puiku, ir vel atsivere verslo nisha marijos zemej

Zaliasis obuolys! Net jei jusu galiojimo laikas pasibaige, uzkande skubiai ir patogiai galimte isspresti jusu potencijos problemas. Ir niekas nebesutrukdys doros seimos kurimui!

Efektyvus lauzai! Skubiai ir patogiai sudeginsime kiekviena desimta zmogu, kuris jums pasirodys nukrypes nuo seimos doroves.

Pirkdami siuos du produktus gausite su 10% nuolaida saules akinius su filtru, kuris isfiltruos jums visas visuomenes nedorybes ir gyvensite roziniame pasaulyje!

Raganu UAB - zinios ir patirtis nuo 1519 A.D. !

pagaliau esu prie laidu ir kompu. kraunu i galerijas fotkes is palestinos ir izraelio. kur grazu ir zalia - ten buves arabu kaimas, izraelieciu sugriautas ir pusaitem apsodintas. siaip druzokai mano ten, manar, elena, sagi. grafiti is jeruzales, tel avivo ir quneitra checkpoint, jeruzalej grotuoti namai, kuriuos zydai jega pereme is arabu, ir dabar tik su kruva grotu ir spynu gyvena, vaikai eina gatven zaisti su palyda nesina automatais. ziurime cia

siaip sirijos ir turkijos nuotrauku nauju dar yr cia

bet jokios fotkes negali nusakyti tokiu fakteliu, kaip pvz. kad gazoj vaikai, gyvenantys prie juros iki praeitu metu negalejo lipti i vandeni, cia taip jau keli desimtmeciai buvo, pernai izraelieciai netycia issprogdino pleze piknikaujancia palestinieciu seima, kad jeruzalej, jei turi araba drauga ir nori ieiti i kabaka, tai nebutinai ileidzia, kad negali eiti i univiera ar niekur kitur, jei izraelieciai sugalvoja uzdaryt checkpoints. todel paskutines naujienos daugiau nei suprantamos.

kaip beziureciau, man viskas susiveda i religijas. jei turit laiko, paziurekit dawkins filmuka. ir “paradise now”.

gero sekmadienio. ka renkates siandiena? vysniu pyraga, ar kremo?

turkijoj tuo tarpu ne pyragai. karinis sekuliarumas, ar religine demokratija?

atrodo, lyg ir sventiskai pavasariskai ir puosniai bobutes baznytelen sekmadieni traukia.

po jaruzales matau daugiau. jaruzale savo zydejime stai cia

from jerusalem to ramallah is one step for me,

but an eternity for humanity there.

see the film.

for more realities: palestine times

Jerusalem is the strangest city I have ever entered…. I found this piece by Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese writer and philosopher and am sure, he must have had Jerusalem in mind.

—————————–

The Blessed City

In my youth I was told that in a certain city every one lived according to the Scriptures.

And I said, “I will seek that city and the blessedness thereof.” And it was far. And I made great provision for my journey. And after forty days I beheld the city and on the forty-first day I entered into it.

And lo! the whole company of the inhabitants had each but a single eye and but one hand. And I was astonished and said to myself, “Shall they of this so holy city have but one eye and one hand?”

Then I saw that they too were astonished, for they were marvelling greatly at my two hands and my two eyes. And as they were speaking together I inquired of them saying, “Is this indeed the Blessed City, where each man lives according to the Scriptures?” And they said, “Yes, this is that city.”

“And what,” said I, “hath befallen you, and where are your right eyes and your right hands?”

And all the people were moved. And they said, “Come thou and see.”

And they took me to the temple in the midst of the city. And in the temple I saw a heap of hands and eyes. All withered. Then said I, “Alas! what conqueror hath committed this cruelty upon you?”

And there went a murmur amongst them. And one of their elders stood forth and said, “This doing is of ourselves. God hath made us conquerors over the evil that was in us.”

And he led me to a high altar, and all the people followed. And he showed me above the altar an inscription graven, and I read:

“If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

Then I understood. And I turned about to all the people and cried, “Hath no man or woman among you two eyes or two hands?”

And they answered me saying, “No, not one. There is none whole save such as are yet too young to read the Scripture and to understand its commandment.”

And when we had come out of the temple, I straightway left that Blessed City; for I was not too young, and I could read the scripture.

The Madman: His Parables and Poems by Kahlil Gibran (©1918 by Kahlil Gibran and ©1946 by the Administrators CTA of Kahlil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran)

uploaded some pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46539910@N00