Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts

Friday, July 24, 2015

When You Don't Need Any Title Here

This blog used to have a subtitle: Girl With Post Soviet Trauma if you remember.

I am still that girl (rather big strong woman like on this picture).



I am tired.
I mean, really tired emotionally. I want to hug my babies and sleep, sleep, sleep until the world is a better place.
So childish, I know, it even makes me little sick, but I am being very honest.

I miss my friends, I miss my country and the feeling of a motherland.
Not Home though. My Home is where my family is, but the land, I was born, grew up, lived, loved, learned is so very far from me, not only in distance, but mentally too.
I have less and less common with my Georgia, with my friends and relatives there. All I have left is the love for the old memories, I guess. My mum says, it's fine and once you have your own family, you cannot keep up with your old life.

I cannot indeed.

Does it make me sad? Not really.

I am just tired.
And I wish I had a homeland - calm, stable and welcoming back its people.

I am not one of its people anymore, and probably never was either.

You'd tell me, hey, there's your Eretz Yisroel (intentionally writing in an Ashkenazic manner), don't you adore it?
I DO!!! That's where my soul belongs to, that's where my heart and roots are, but it's hard, when I've never lived there, I don't speak Yivrit as fluently as Georgian obviously, and my childhood was spent not there.

Yes, childhood - that must be it.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Me Against The World?

I haven't been much out lately to interact with people, do talks and smart discussions like I used to in my "youth". Let me say last three years.
Plus I always blame pregnancy and postpartum brain that doesn't really go away soon, at least mine, to bring the old Sophie back, who could read tons of books and then discuss about them. This is probably why I feel like I have been out of this world for good and have become sort of introvert too.

Nowadays I am this laid back, old fat mama of two little boys, who is not as laid back as she might seem to be ;-)
I am a worrier. Sometimes I just can't sleep because I worry about anything and anyone I have ever known. Really. I may have met someone just for once, but I worry how is that person doing now, is he/she happy, is he/she satisfied with life, is he/she healthy and etc. I have always been that way. I remember I was about 5 years old when one of my friend's mum got seriously sick and my friend could not come out to play (yes, I grew up in THE time when children used to go out in the yard/streets and play together). At night when my mum wished me good night, I burst into tears, because my friend's mum was sick in hospital and nobody could kiss her goodnight that night. I remember asking G-d to never make any child's mum sick so children could go out and play with friends freely, then go to sleep happy because their mums kissed them and wished them good night.

Yes, that's what kind of a girl I have always been. It doesn't matter that I'll be 30 this year, that character of mine has never changed.


Ireland - my spiritual homeland

So honestly, I logged on to write about something else and look where my typing hands got me.
I meant to write about a guest we had, who studies anthropology and humanity history, I hope I say it right. That guest was saying that today's culture, world culture and probably mostly the 1st world one,  is so depressive and even aggressive, because it almost demands from everyone to be "unique", "creative", "original", "cool" and etc. If you are just a regular nice guy, you have already lost my friend. You have to be something more, something that nobody has been before. Yeah, right. Now who believes in that?
Almost whole western world, I answer.

So when once some other guest came over and told me I should be a real minimalist, I knew it was meant to say, my home is simple and I have no sense of "creativity". Well, that is true actually. And I have my reasons (as usual).
First off, I don't like spending money on things that I don't know how to use and why to use. I don't and can't do beautiful things out of nothing like many people do and good for them. Plus, I really like having more space to BREATHE and to dance with my boys. Plus we always have space for guests and are never afraid something might break, because we don't own "cool" stuff.

Second, I am really the most non-creative person of non-creatives. I see beauty and appreciate things when other people do, but I have no desire to do that myself. For example I am so fond of Talia's (and her husband's too) photos, videos and beautiful things she makes, quilts, paints; that artistic talent absolutely becomes and defines her. Because she has it naturally.
I know people can learn all that if they want to, but I think I don't really, because I'd rather read Salinger for 100000000th time and then write letters to Ezra and Aaron telling them how hard it is to be a woman and how they should respect and appreciate me and then their wives, when they have ones on their time :-) or how they should be asking (right) questions all the time and never let system get them down.

Now to resume, I am against superficial creativity as well as against superficial hipsters and coffee drinkers, who don't even like coffee, but still drink just because they heard that would make them "hipper", and don't let me start on their nerdy spectacles, please :-D
I am also against this world and popular culture that is destroying our souls and raising terrible egos.
So I should go to sleep now. See you later, World! Beware.

P.S. Ok. After all this stuff, I went (not literally) and installed Instagram on my old Samsung Galaxy S 3 Mini, which takes horrible pictures, but it's not the point. Aaron is teething (he's already got one and another coming) terribly, only sleeps on me, which is very nice, warm and all, but mama needs to entertain herself when she has time (depends on Ezra naturally), doesn't she? So what can be more entertaining than looking at the beautiful instafiltered lives of others :lol: nothing. So you can follow me if you want to and share your life :-D it's "sunnysof".
Am I really against this world? Go figure*.

*I've never used this phrase in my life before and let me play with my English phraseology, will you please, Mister Paul Auster? :-D Now hold that thought, because I should write about Paul Auster some time soon.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Post-Soviet Me


'You know, it's all just humor. Don't take life so seriously. Don't take fashion too seriously. Don't take the movie industry too seriously. Don't take love and your relationship so goddamned heavy all the time. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Life is high school and it's small and everybody talks about everybody, so just laugh your ass off.'

Drew Barrymore


It's not always so easy to do so we all know it. I wish I could be as lighthearted as Drew states herself in this sentence.

If I were born in sunny California I might also feel that way. Sure it is easy not to take life seriously when you haven't spent your childhood in the destroyed Soviet Union in 90's, or you've never experienced learning English by the light of the gas lamp. No jokes here. When I was at school it was absolutely normal for the electricity to go on and off, and doing home work near the terribly smelly gas lamp was just a regular evening thing.

Why do I recall all of this?
I don't know.
It has been my life and no matter how fast I run I can never get away from it so all I have to do is to write it down and let you know.
I often have dreams about the past; the past that was so surreal you would not believe and sometimes I don't want to believe either. Dreams about people that are there no more, dreams about the places that have faded away and the feelings that came out false and dreams about this little piece of flesh beating in one's chest and making the blood boil...
But dreams always end by the morning and another surreality starts which is known as real life and which is more illogical than the dreams one had last night.
I guess the Soviet Union was a dream too. Unbearable dream for some people. Utopia. And Utopia is nothing but surreal, isn't it?
So you can never blame this little (relatively) me of being irrational or too rational because I am a product of the gas lamp generation; the product of the lame American movies and the wall that has never been there even though the whole world claimed it was.
All my friends are the products too. Not only friends but all the people that lived around that time and by the end of the 90's did not know whether laugh or cry after becoming the citizens of so called democratic republics (for this I recommend you amazing German movie "Good bye, Lenin").
Democracy, my feet. As some people would say politely.
There is no such thing.
There's only dream, dreamers and G-d laughing at the latter.

Sometimes I do feel that life is not worth of eating oneself. Then I am carefree and laughing out loud realizing the vanity of being. I am not the first one to notice that becoming psychotic about things do not make them work actually, you only win when you are calm and self confident.
And again, does winning always means getting what you really want or need?
No it doesn't.

Therefore:

What you need you already have and what you want is just a matter of time, that's what would I suggest and keep smiling not minding my dark post-soviet childhood.

P.S. I've been 27 since last Friday :) that makes a girl think, no?

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Can we do anything???

Know that everything is according to the reckoning. And let not your evil inclination promise you that the grave will be an escape for you - for against your will you were created; against your will you were born; against your will you live; against your will you die, and against your will you are destined to give an account before the King Who rules over kings, the Holy One, Blessed is He.

(Rabbi Elazar HaKappar. Pirkei Avot 4:29)


"Pirkei Avot" is the book that I read on Shabbat. I read when I feel good and bad. I read when I have nowhere to escape and you cannot escape from yourself, you know. Today I found this quote and could not wait to share it with you.

Free will has always been an issue that bothered me since I have begun to understand life, world and G-d. My mother kept saying, you just do it, what you have to do, and the result will be from above. Sometimes I was doing what I had to do and sometimes - not. Especially if you read something like this and think: if everything is destined and happens without my will, what should I act for? If I have no power to change my life, why should I go on?

One of my friends told me that it is not a right way to think.
We, humans, are free to choose the way we go, even though it was destined for us to see it. One still has to decide where to go, what to be, what to wear, what to eat...

And still, can we??? Can we really decide what our life should be like?
I do not know and this is the question no-one could answer me so far :| Because nobody really knows. There are controversial facts, speeches and all, so one says what he/she believes or according to its life experiences, childhood and etc.

That is why I adore "Pirkei Avot", you can always find something deep in it and have thinking for rest of your life. By the way, was it destined for me to love "Pirkei Avot" anyway???