"Girl, you'll be a woman soon"

"It's probably just an age thing". A sentence I go on repeating to my girl-friends, profoundly thinking that I am handing them a key to solve all their problems.

The girls I know and talk to on a regular basis about, you know, serious stuff, and who are roughly my age (between 28 and 32) have problems that can be classified into 3 different categories:

1) They are in serious relationships, a lot of them are married or about to tie the knot, but struggling with accepting their partner the way he is and struggle to be satisfied with what they have.

2) They have no serious relationship and not only do they feel terribly lonely in their daily lives, but also the pressure of not being married and nowhere near having children passed 30 is daunting them.

3) They have a partner but their relationship does not seem to be moving forward. While their friends are getting married one after the other, they question their partner's readiness to commit and their own ability to build a family and/or a sustainable future with him.

Most of these women feel a sort of time pressure. Weirdly enough, I have always looked forward to the future and never felt "behind". However, I must admit that I have recently started to think "I'm already 28 and haven't achieved this or that".  This frustration has dangerously impacted on my relationship with my husband.

10 years ago I would have probably expected that, by now, I would have become a confirmed journalist who doesn't have to look for jobs, I would have had children with all the men I loved (and these men would be dead, yes that was a bit more subconscious), I would have seen the world, gathered diplomas and my mother and I would have finally made peace. In other words, I wisely thought that being 30 meant being over 60.

Although we all have different dreams, I would still say that, in a nutshell, most women want to combine their professional success with a truly fulfilling family life. But I realise today that me and most of my friends have not met our expectations. They were simply too high and unrealistic.

One of these days, I will turn 30. I feel liberated by the fact that I have managed to become a mother but I wish I was somewhere else career-wise and I am struggling to be a good wife. Others will feel the opposite. But this is 30. This is us becoming women and accepting to give up on our illusions.

We are not as straight forward as you, men; we are dual and each of us is a nest of contradictions. I don't know if the feminists' struggle helped us or complicated our life, but I find us fascinating, going through this melancholic age. Good luck to us x

My family in the desert

Almost a year ago, freshly married, I moved to the Gulf. Gulf as in the "Middle-East" Gulf.

The move itself was not frightening at all as I grew up away from the country that my parents both call home and have not lived anywhere near my closest relatives in the last fifteen years.

Although I was eager to leave Europe and could not wait for the day I would board on a plane with no return ticket in my bag, leaving to the Gulf was a difficult decision to make. It is not the distance, nor it is the fear of the unknown, but the place itself which was scaring me. Still today we struggle sometimes to explain our choice.

We moved to the desert. A desert in many ways. The idea of living on a dry land is appealing to some extent. The fact that everything is yet to exist or "under construction", that you can contribute actions and ideas to build a country, that you can create without banging your desires against walls. The idea that the world we live in is not saturated. The infinitely new.

The obvious downside is that by looking too much to the future, we miss the past. We also miss the present.

As a journalist, my duty is to find worthy stories everywhere I go - every place is interesting de facto. But I have realised since I moved here that curiosity is not the powerful engine I thought it was. It certainly is not enough to make me a happy woman. Curiosity does not bring me comfort. The things that I miss the most - music, good books, films - were the major components of my secret garden, my comfort zone. I now have to rely on a my new family and let go off my garden for a while.

I am simply wondering for how long I will be able to play the game. Maybe all my life, who knows?

See you in my dreams

Just received a google reminder that I should migrate. I didn't  quite understand. In a nutshell what they meant was "do something about this otherwise you're losing everything". So threatening at Google. I then realised it was about the blog.

So I thought I would delete the bloody site once and for all since I haven't posted since January 2009 and quite simply forgot about it. I couldn't find the delete button and one thing leading to another, here I am writing a completely impromptu new post.

The main motive for this blog back then was was probably to show guys I liked how funny and clever I was.  I can confess it to you since I am now a married woman and will never get to live any of these love stories other than in my dreams (Oh God).

Today, I am probably looking for a free psychotherapy here. Accepting to move on to full on adulthood is difficult. Saying goodbye to the dreams that used to show the way is more challenging than actually achieving them.

When the daily frustrations kick in, you can only rely on your dreams. Finding happiness in this new configuration can take time. You know this is right but sometimes right doesn't mean good. You miss the friends you used to be free with. If you live far from them, you hope they will come and visit you at night, when your eyes are asleep but when your soul breathes. Ghosts are alive again, dead ideas are concrete, and you kiss that one man you used to love and thought you would end up with. Maybe, you still love him a little bit.

It would be nice if you could play this at my funeral. I don't know if it's your style.

The truth about fiction

Point 1
Meeting today with a film director helping me out with my research for an animated-documentary project, I bend to his thoughts and drink his words greedily.
And also, we talked.

- Have you seen Waltz with Bashir? he asks

(No I have not, for a very stupid reason which I will not bore you with, but I am aware that this is an unforgivable mistake I should repair promptly.)

When describing what he liked about the film, the very reasons that have pushed to start working on my own project are reminded to me. Where animation is a humanity detector, video worries about the truth primarily. Animation, by illustrating memories or feelings of a person or of a group of people, by displaying the unsaid, the un-shown, can make a story more understandable. Therefore truer. No?

Point 2
Quite obviously, Milos Forman is an impostor. Salieri did not kill Mozart, the latter was not burried in the communal grave, he had 6 children and his wife, Constanza, was the one squandering the household's earnings.

But Amadeus tells his story, despite all the lies in the film. Is it because the director only used natural lighting - imagine shooting a sequence in an opera house made of wood, with hundreds of candles on top of your heads? Is it because behind each piece of music Forman has hidden a story? Is he the one telling the story or is Mozart narrating his untold life? I think Milos Forman is working on making a past story understandable to an audience born in the 20th century. He speaks today's language, and as people of my generation know, it is the language of emotions.

Tonight I saw another Forman, Goya's Ghosts. I cannot make up my mind - did I like it? But again, I found out after doing a little bit of research that most of the protagonists did not even exist. I was annoyed by the fact that Bardem and all the other actors spoke in English sometimes with a ridiculously thick accent - which reminded of the very unpleasant feeling of watching Bardem's great talent wasted with his impersonation of Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls, spoke very good English. But again, the story of Goya's Ghosts seems true in many ways. In these notes, you may understand how a made-up story can help understand history or, should I say, a subjective eye on history. He gives you the support, now go make up your own mind.

Who said that the truth was objective anyway?
A truth vs The truth? Oh come one, we believe in the brave truth.

Point 3
After all, this is what art does. Tells stories that people can relate to. They make you think "I can so relate to that, it must be true"

Tamer in Gaza

Last time I saw Tamer, in July 2007, I thought there was a good chance we were not going to meet again. The der des der. Not that he was suffering from an incurable disease - he was just going back to his land, Gaza.

Even at the time, crossing the border with Israel was a mission. Fitted with a BBC pass, Tamer stayed in a hotel in Jordan waiting for his turn. He would travel to the border almost every day, hoping that the day had come for him to see his friends and family again. He waited alone for 5 weeks before eventually getting in Gaza. A couple of months ago, he got married. A little bit of softness in the brutal world he was living in. Of course, none of us could attend.

Tamer stayed in touch with his former classmates, including me. We spoke a few times since he left, and everytime he, the eternally optimistic face, would sound darker on the phone.

Today Tamer is one of the few journalists reporting from hell on an inhuman conflict thats killed over 1,000 Palestinians in less than three weeks. I watch him everyday, I never understand what he says but it is a relief to see his beard grow. I chatted with him online tonight very briefly. He said:

Tamer says: (21:02:18)
vic im fine butt it is verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry bad situation

Bless. Long live...

Eyes up!

Priya has decided to blog again. In her introductory post she simply says:

Now one might be forced to think why I resumed writing...The sole reason being: writing's like my heartbeat, I can't stop it.

My dear beloved fans, I could not meet your expectations in 2008 as I was captured by the adult world and trapped in a square cave eating solitude and paranoia at every meal. My life was of incommensurable misery: a never-written tragedy. Yes, in other words, it was too boring to be true.
One day a cowboy passed by and took me out of the real hole.

Fortunately today I'm feeling quite in phase with the world and Priya's words, as we quite sensitively say in French, did not fall in the ear of a deaf man. I like writing too so let's take that cyber dust off that blog and get back into techno-rambling.

World, I want to share with you again. My inner beauty, my amazing writing skills (especially in English), my unsurpassed intelligence, my French and my palpable modesty.

But before I go let me tell you one last thing - whoever you are, Peace to you.

© Coya - 2009

(This photo was taken on January 10th in Hyde Park, London, before the start of a march against the ongoing war in Gaza)

Spoilt