Too late to catch the train which would take me on time. Yet too early to take the next.

A few minutes later, seating in the wagon and waiting for the departure, I was considering the good time I spent yesterday evening playing Dance Dance Revolution in Delft with two friends. With no book to read, no one else in the wagon, and a good sleep last night, my eyes kept themselves busy looking around the station.

Rotterdam Centraal is quickly changing these days. The upper cross-tracks platform for pedestrians has caught my attention for weeks already and I'll probably try it soon. The new underground tunnel will soon be ready as well - we expect it for September 1st. And still, trains are going as usual, and there is no hour in the day where the line of sight from track 1 to track 15 is clear.

Today, the noisy red train parked one track away from my train.

So exceptional and still so common at the time!

Its looks are different; no train in the region looks like this one, and the only trains from Germany that are technically related do not pass Rotterdam and do not share the same colors. But the red trains pass the station once per hour, nearly all day long. During all the time I have spent in this station, their sight has become pretty common.

And then, today was a little more unusual, for a little while.

I looked at the train, then it left, and then nothing happened. Why wasn't I nervous? Why didn't I feel the pressure of stress and expectation today?

Until today, I would watch the red train each time with fascination, my excitation would rise as the train would be accelerating to leave, and only recede when the train would move out of sight. But not today. This change, by itself, was worth some interest and I toyed with the idea for a while as my train eventually departed.

It could be that I eventually divorced from my relationship with this train. We fell in love some years ago, then we had our intense experiences together last year, but it has been a while since our last good moments together and I even cheated on it already. Maybe I just accepted that it's time to let go and change my direction. (no pun intended)

It could be that I have been subconsciously counting on them to deliver friends to my neighborhood. Now that this duty is over, or rather that I realize that it is not the train that brings the friends, but the friends who use the train, the expectation has waned and the mean has lost the undeserved attention I was giving to it.

It could be that they were representing a very concrete and repeated link between my new life and the old one. That they were nagging me as an easy way to escape the challenge of building myself and overcoming fears, and that eventually I came to accept that there is no going back now.

Or it could be simply that I am still too tired for my feelings to react as usual to my daily surroundings...

For sure, as I was waiting for my bus last Sunday, in that creepy underground international bus station at the east of Paris, a beautiful sight caught my eye:

 Two goth lovers, young
 Leave tonight for Germany
 Alone in the crowd.

They literally caught my eye, glancing in my direction every now and then — as if they were sensing how much strangers among strangers we were. As my bus was leaving, I was looking at theirs, hoping that I'd see them for a last time… And then as I drifted into sleep the memory faded.

I was smiling when I got back home at 6 in the morning on Monday.

Yesterday evening, I was jumping with the crowd at the weird sounds of Patrick Wolf. This show was a masterpiece — one of the two main reasons for my presence at Lowlands this year. The other was a performance by a Dutch ochestra — the show is called Games In Concert and it is about themes from video games.

I was smiling as I was watching the stars from my tent yesterday evening.

“A smile sticked to my lips” — these are the words I was thinking about, borrowing them from a friend from Denmark.

Spending three days at Lowlands was like a vacation. Three days of music, three days away from the city, three days without thinking about work, computers or the Internet, three days of discovery — I went there to discover new bands, new music styles, and I got just that. What a bright mid-summer!

Yet I didn't take any pictures, and my memories are fading already. Would I believe that I was there if my wristband was not left as a witness?

As I was jumping in the crowd yesterday, a spectator next to me was rather quiet, enjoying the show without moving. He wasn't jumping, clasping his hands or singing along, as most of us were doing. A stranger in the crowd, as it seemed — until I saw him embracing his boyfriend during The Stars.

Love persists in memories.

Yesterday evening was a happy evening, because I realized that it has been one year since I arrived in Rotterdam and it feels like it happened last week.

Today the occasion was duly celebrated with pastries and champagne; tonight I added the luxury of spending a few hours at a local beach club, and I even indulged myself in being grateful for my current employer for enabling me to live here.

Tomorrow the new year starts. If I recall correctly, the first year is emotionally the most intense; the second year is where the relationship develops and builds common projects; and the third year is the end of the initial flame, and the end of the relationship if it fails to find a new basis for its existence. Let's see how it goes.

Cyril is the hurricane that hit the Old Continent yesterday. Plenty of news reports already picture the general situation.

For a deadly hurricane, it was not as serious as what happened in New Orleans. Of course, there were some dead people; but I did not see cars or trees flying, not too much water, and only one house in the cities around lost its roof. However, it was very interesting.

The first interesting bit is how I felt Cyril coming. All the morning long I felt nervous, tense, not able to focus on my work as if I did not sleep properly the night before — although I did. As the wind became stronger and stronger in the early afternoon, I grew restless and was absolutely not surprised when the alert was published and everyone in the office was sent home.

The second interesting bit is how poorly the alert was published and how terrible the situation was, all the afternoon long. Local reports initially explained that the worst part of the storm was coming between 6 and 7 in the evening; so people started going home in the early afternoon. Only after a while did it struck everyone that the real peak was between 3 and 4, when everyone was on the road and stuck in traffic jams. Dumb reporters, useless crisis management system.

The third interesting bit started to show up as Cyril was flying to the East. People started to get out from their homes or relax from the stress. A friend of mine invited me for dinner, and explained later that he himself got many offers to eat with people he wouldn't otherwise relate to. It seemed that everyone was happy to be still there and wanted to share the relief with other humans. Sweet.

Only in the evening did I realize that I did feel scared during the storm; scared that the car I was in would get hit by something; scared that the area would become flooded; scared that I would not get home safe. Very basic feelings, quite irrational, crudely animal. When I recall the deep, flesh-ingrained knowledge that something was coming in the morning, it appears that there is more to me than an ethereal consciousness trapped in a clumsy body. Millennia of fears and instincts rooted in my genes are at work when they become needed.

And that's scary, too.

Retour de week-end et découverte d'une vidéo sur WebJunkie : « Jésus, c'est ouf ! »

Citations au hasard :

À chaque fois que je fume pas une cigarette, il y a une âme du purgatoire qui va au paradis.

Quelqu'un m'a dit, « Anne-Laure quand tu arriveras au paradis, il y aura plein de petits chinois qui courront vers toi et qui te diront, merci Anne-Laure, c'est grâce à toi que je suis ici »

Seigneur je veux pouvoir recevoir mes frères et sœeurs de toi ce soir. Je veux pouvoir les considérer comme des tabernacles. Des tabernacles, des fois vides et des fois pleins, mais des tabernacles.

Le seigneur passe en ce moment, il vient de libérer un garçon de la masturbation.

Pour un mec, [la chasteté] ça lui demande vraiment d'être maître de ses pulsions.

Cette vidéo montre des choses horribles.

Que les lecteurs ne s'y méprennent pas, je ne suis pas méprisant et je m'associe à un des commentateurs de la vidéo dans l'idée que pour un chrétien authentique « la vrai foi n’obéit à aucune logique, à aucune raison ; je considère [l'action catholique de sauver les autres pour se sauver] comme une manipulation avec soi-même. Le vrai chrétien n’obéit pas à des lois pour le salut de son âme. La vrai foi est dans le coeur. » (je ne suis pas chrétien moi-même, mais je comprends cette valeur)

Cependant, même avec cette état de pensée on ne peut s'empêcher de voir en filigrane (vers la fin du film notamment) la souffrance extrême imposée à ces jeunes par leurs croyances, sans aucune utilité ou bénéfice en retour. Le temps qu'ils devront passer plus tard à réfléchir sur eux-même et sur le monde pour trouver une forme de paix intérieure est un gâchi ; sans cet amas d'idées glauques et malsaines, ils pourraient construire des bases de philosophie personnelle plus solides et qui leurs permettraient d'aller vers les autres, mieux et plus rapidement.

Je suis triste pour ce garçon malheureux qui ne l'est que par une foi mal exprimée et mal guidée. Et je ressens de la colère contre l'institution qui continue encore aujourd'hui à créer ces situations.

… suivez mon regard.

À propos de regard, c'est bien ce que j'ai trouvé de plus intéressant pendant notre soirée.

En fait, j'aime beaucoup les yeux.

Il y avait ceux marqués par l'expérience et pourtant joueurs ; ceux marqués par une vie de changement et curieux de profiter du moment présent ; ceux ternis de fatigue émotionnelle et pourtant sensibles et dynamiques ; ceux qui se battent à chaque instant entre l'influence de la raison et ceux des sentiments ; ceux qui cherchent leur source de bonheur dans le regard des autres ; ceux qui cachent leur richesse derrière un phlegme bonhomme ; ou encore ceux dont l'esthétique ténébreuse fait fondre au premier regard.

Et pour tous, le dynamisme et la souplesse d'un regard qui apprécie et savoure ces moments privilégiés entre gens bien.

Today I feel warmth in my chest and on my face, because I feel the pleasure of a new emotional connection.

That is both good news and bad news.

Good news, because I had almost forgotten what it feels like. It's absolutely wonderful, and I find it far more interesting than lust or limerence because it does not tax the body or the mind by draining the energy out of it. I like to remember that this good stuff makes human bond together and societies hold. I like to remember that it has happened before, as my friends are coming to visit me for New Year's eve and now I will doubleplus thank them for being my friends.

Bad news, because I had almost forgotten what it feels like. Which means that I do not find many occasions to have it happen. Or maybe I do not hang out with the right people. Whatever. Now I want more of it and I do not really know what to do.

Hence another resolution for 2007: hang out with more people and see the good in all of them, to connect more often.

In an online news report I can read today how the traditional practice of firing a cannon during american football games in Snohomish, USA has cost a boy's leg due to the cannon exploding.

The un-funny part of the article is that members of the community are threatening the boy and his family against investigating the cause-to-effect relationship between the cannon and his maimed leg; for the tradition is so important for them that they would rather have the boy's other leg maimed than be prevented from firing the cannon again.

Not only I'm disgusted, but I can't help thinking that this kind of situation would never happen in any of the kingdoms of mainland Europe.

Activity on the workplace has been quite hectic for the last few months. Increase in work load, decrease in business, environment changes piling up one over another, conflicts, political dances, uncertainty… Although I could handle everything until now, I was spared nothing.

Yesterday I felt that I reached my limits. I was stressed when I went to sleep, for the first time since my arrival in February. I had a few nightmares. I was angry when I woke up.

One of my projects for the day was to skip work pretending to feel unwell, to remind my supervisors that my technical skills should not exempt them from paying all due respect to my well-being. To explain them that the situation they let me put myself in is precisely the kind of situation I have been running away from multiple times in the past. I felt as if “they” put me in a position where I was not meeting expectations and not knowing how to perform better. I felt betrayed in my trust in our relationship.

But then I blinked my eyes and I was enlightened.

I realized that I would achieve far more interesting results by trying to state my concerns and work a solution with “them,” instead of running away from the situation. Because I feel I now have the power to change my surroundings and make people adapt, instead of the other way around. Decide to be part of the flow and work to shift it where I want to go, and not fight against or get out of it.

This is a huge personal achievement! My first of the kind in a lifetime.

Now I'm relieved. The pressure is still there, but the stress has disappeared.

I guess that feels like growing up. What a life.

There were two guests at my place this week.

Hosting guests is one of the activities that help me keep care of my home.

There was a time when the mess would only be cleared when someone visited me. A reflex due to a contrast between the carelessness of youth and a deeply ingrained respect for the comfort of visitors. A principle acquired from my mum says that receiving someone properly goes necessarily through making every effort possible to make them feel home, and that is now part of my life.

Then it happened that I grew up (a bit). I started to realize the truth behind the age-old French saying: “charité bien ordonnée commence par soi-même,” and that the way to build the feeling of being at home for myself would go through making the kind of efforts I deploy for guests, for myself.

That was the moment when vacuum-cleaning, dish washing, mopping, laundry and disposing of the cat's litter became pleasurable (sometimes even fun), instead of a necessary chore to avoid as long and as often as possible. That was also the moment when I started actually caring about home decoration in shops in all places I visit. After that I would choose my furniture not only for practical aspects but also for the overall harmony they would bring at the place it would be eventually fitted. And so on; the list is long.

Oddly enough, it coincides more-or-less with my settling in Rotterdam. (ok, not that odd, but the coincidence is part of another story.)

But this is not a happy-ending story. I sometimes lose sight of the feeling of being at home when it becomes part of the invisible world of the daily routine.

Then come guests. Those people I like being with, for which I would just do the little extra that I can share with them and of which I know that it would make myself happy if it was reciprocated. Like preparing breakfast in the morning, or setting up beds in advance, and so on.

And doing so breaks the routine and brings the feeling of being at home back into sight.

Today was a day of rest, following a tiring fight against a cold for my voice.

But today was also a day for myself, time to organize some thoughts and renew my surroundings at home.

Inspired by a simple and clever classification system it was decided that I would stop spending time to find and decide what kind of classification hierarchy would fit the thousands of computer files I collected over years and don't want to throw away (yet).

Relieved by that thought, I was in the perfect mood for an experiment with a beautiful mind opener. The experiment was successful; upon waking up again it felt like a new birth.

And with birth comes celebration and change. I indulged myself with chocolate, then went on to experiment with new layouts for my furniture.

The afternoon and early evening were busy, and I eventually created a new home for myself. Coming up with a new layout for lighting was an integral part of this effort, and I am now feeling confortable in my living room for the first time since I arrived in this apartment.

The feeling of "gezelligheid" experienced through listening to di.fm / Mostly Classical and enjoying a beautiful view on a series of candles is totally awesome and nearly competes with the sense of fulfillment I have sometimes by looking at the sky when walking in the streets around my beloved new place.

That to say that I regret having underestimated the effect of a gezellig lighting on my mood and feelings until now. It becomes more and more clear to me that I tend to mistakenly ignore or disregard the requirements for my well-being which I cannot satisfy immediately or without effort. I noticed it many times in the past, for instance when I re-discovered music, reading, casual sex, taking care of a home, seeing friends, watching romance movies, hosting commendable guests and light-hearted conversations.

I also realize that many other things come to my mind if I let it open to more sources of well-being. And that comes with mitigated feelings, part of them fear and laziness about the required efforts and part of them curiosity and excitement about involving myself into new activities.