Le mirabolanti avventure di Barbara Jacob

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Former freelance web developer Barbara Jacob was on the verge of breakdown because of appalling customers behavior and the huge mortgage she had to repay for all her foreseeable life. So one day she escaped to London, where she isn't happier but at least she can keep the wolf from the door. Well, and now that we are here, what we will do with our life?

January 2009
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Archives for: January 2009

When I was nineteen, I spent all August wandering in the south of France. I started alone, but at my second or third stop, in Nice if I remember correctly, I joined a strange cohort of solitary travellers that were touring on my same itinerary. It was a very peculiar group, as they had all met along the road and nobody know the others beforehand. I remember a Neapolitan girl, a couple of French gays, a Belgian guy that spoke only Flemish, two Spanish womanizers, an older man with long white hair; no language was understood by the whole group and any conversation had to be translated and re-translated. We couldn't have been more strangely assorted; nevertheless, the atmosphere was quite pleasant and I remained with them until Arles, when they went towards Spain and I left for Toulouse.
We had absoluting nothing in common, the only thing being that we were all backpackers in south France. I was quite popular in the group, but my role was the usual one of a loner with social skills. Even when I was involved, there was always a part of me that stood a step behind and watched from the outside. I was good at observing, like I've always been; I could have told with exactitude all about the nature and quality of the interactions that were going on: who fancied who, who couldn't stand who, who was happy, who had problems, and all the why's and the how's.

It was without any doubt more fun that being all alone; still, being into a community from getting up in the morning until bed time consumed all my energies. I remember, during our long stay in an hostel in Nice, retiring to my room late at night and spending one hour or more just watching out of the window the traffic of the nearby highway, and trying to numb myself into sleeping, after too much human contact. I felt empty and restless.

My life now is not too different, with the exceptions that I am not on holiday and it goes on and on.

I am not going to say that I am uncomfortable with large groups. When I worked in theatre, for example, the amount of interactions was about the same, with even a larger group; the difference being that I usually had the morning for myself and I rarely showed my sleepy face before 1PM. The most intensive experience of communal life I've had was probably during art school. It was pretty much 24/7 but it wasn't really a disparate bunch: I had my steady friends and indeed most of my daily contacts were with the same three or four individuals.

Now, every other day I arrive home late at night, after having being in company from the morning, and I feel empty and overwhelmed and still kind of lonely. What's missing from the picture? I don't know. I feel a bit stranger; ok, I am a stranger after all, but this is not the point... I felt even more stranger when I lived in my natal country and I tended to rely on a small circle of friends. Is that that I am getting old and keeping a bit the distances and also the others keep a bit the distances from me? Maybe, I am not sure. Maybe I ought to fall in love with someone and all this kind of thin-skinnedness would go away. Maybe.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 30/01/09 at 11:04:03 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | 5 comments

So last week I did the unthinkable: I phoned R. and apologized for my rather untidy behavior on that infamous night of Autumn. Strange it may seems, I was scared sick and at least three times I dialled half the number and I hung up. Finally I managed to dial the whole number and he didn't answer - for my utter agony. I repeated all my gruelling self-coaching and in the late afternoon I called again and he was there.

He wasn't annoyed nor hostile nor distracted: elegant in his very fashion, very present and somewhat sad, he accepted my apologies and didn't take any minimal revenge. He gave me some very weird news that I won't write here; suffice to say that well, things were different from what I expected.

R. didn't ask to see me and I didn't dare to - moreover, I was pretty satisfied just by knowing he wasn't (anymore?) mad at me, and that sense of soothing acceptation I seem always to receive from my contacts with him gave me quite a good kick. The day after I felt so relieved and delivered from my ghosts of mourning and guilt-tripping, that I was all aglow and buzzing with ideas and projects.

I took some time to think about all this, about how and why this left-handed kid has touched me so deeply, that even now that the relationship is well closed and gone, its memory lingers, and all too often I find myself thinking with a smile "R. would have said that". I reckon that the explanation could be pretty simple: a very good chemistry, and although R. didn't refrain from criticizing me every now and then, I felt generally accepted, cherished and cared for - enough to make a big difference in that sour life of mine, where intimate relationship seems always to contain an unhealthy dose of antagonism. Albeit complex, prone to boredom and quite narcissist, R. lacks pretense: he likes Coke, candy and football, he can use words like "truism" and "anticlimax" but never puts a show of his culture; he wants attention and to be listened to and valued - he has his fans but I've also heard that he is considered difficult to get along with. For me, he couldn't be simpler, and his intelligence makes him one of the most rewarding and charming people I've ever met.

Broadly speaking, his very quirks validated mines. Our friendship failed mostly because his pace was significantly slower than mine. I am a paranoid and I have problems with trusting people, so I am usually the slowest one to open up. When I've decided I can give up most of my defences, usually the other one has given up his/hers already. This time it was the other way round, and I've found myself in that unexplored place, when I had already surrendered my façade and he clung desperately to his - making in the process all my alarm bells go madly off, and precipitating the tragically ridicolous end. Moreover, maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I've never been able to figure out what place he could have taken in my life if he had remained. A lover, a friend, an acquaintance? I would have joyously accepted whatever he wanted, but in theory no one of these clichés could have applied, for various reasons, and a true free-form relationship requires a depth of character that I don't frankly see neither in me or in him.

Still, the very fact of meeting someone who was able to reach for me has changed my perspective. And even if now I don't even manage to imagine how someone else could give me even half the pleasure that the company of R. brought to me, I guess my perspective will change again and again, and the new me's could blend into the world in new and unusual ways. Isn't surprising how I have implicitely accepted to be again into the big chaos of feelings, after so many years of disdainful detachment?
Definitely I haven't see it all. More is yet to come.

And who knows, we will maybe meet again one day.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 25/01/09 at 10:15:11 pm | randomly put in the category There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | Leave a comment

Around Christmas I've taken some piccies here and there. Nothing special, as usual, just for fun.

Lights in Southwark

The unicyclist

Big city, big lights

The merrier (Selfridges)

My Secret Santa

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 25/01/09 at 12:46:31 am | randomly put in the category Me, Images | | Leave a comment

I feel silly.
I dream of unlikely, fat, smiling monsters that could come from Bonvi's drawing board. I try to make friends with people who are different from the ones I usually mingle with. I don't feel particularly happy but I definitely want to do good and I am relatively at peace with myself.

I need some new project, I need someone to tell how silly I feel.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 22/01/09 at 09:23:34 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

It took to me nearly three months of elaboration in background and one day of self-coaching, but finally I overcame my irrational fears and my shame of admitting I had been so wrong: I called him and I apologized.

I don't usually believe in apologies and I don't think they automagically heal wounds and restore relationships (with me they seldom work, for example, and in the specific case, our friendship was killed so well so soon that I doubt my apologies will weight much), but yep, I do feel quite relieved and I feel I've done the right thing.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 18/01/09 at 10:38:37 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

Since childhood and for most of my life I've had a recurring nightmare.
The settings and the details changed each time, but the gist was always the same: I had to call someone - a friend or teacher, then a friend or boyfriend - and as soon as a phone was found, a series of cruel, random incidents prevented me for calling. What happening was sometimes obvious - I couldn't remember the number, for example - but most often incredibly convoluted and ridicolous:

- my hair were extremely long and getting into my eyes, so I couldn't see the phone well and couldn't dial
- the phone had a piano keyboard instead of a normal dialling disc or buttons, and I had to count the numbers starting from the middle ut, but I didn't manage to dial
- the phone was an ocarina, and again proved impossible to use
- the phone was ok, but as soon as I started dialling it morphed into an huge vase with flowers. Another time it morphed into a 35 mm film projector.

The impossibility to communicate was regularly accompanied with confusion and pain, and more than once I ended up waking in sweats.

I remember well how this nightmare left me one night, never to come again.

I was by then twenty-eight, swept away by passion for mr. Greensleeves, and at the beginning of our long, tormented relationship, I dreamt that I had to call him, that I was in a public phone boot and tried to dial his number, to no avail. As I was struggling in despair, I discovered that the phone was only an empty box, with no inner workings.

Suddenly I remembered that I had bought a cell phone (in the real life, I had just acquired my first one, a bulky Philips with a lovely ringtone), and I used it to text him. In the dream, he answered immediately and I was overcome with a new sense of power. When, once awake, I remembered that, I knew that the nightmare that had been with me for more than twenty years was now over. It never ever came again.

That fact remembers me of an ancient Jewish joke: a bloke goes to his rabbi complaining that each night dozens of demons dance under his bed. The rabbi thinks long and hard and then finds a solution: he advised the guy to saw away the legs of the bed. There is no place anymore for the demons to throw a party and the guy finally sleeps soundly. Sometimes a very little thing is enough to scare old ghosts away.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 12/01/09 at 10:15:59 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment

Walking in Knightsbridge, in the afternoon, squashed by nostalgia, unable to say if I'm sad or cheerful, seeing my own memories in front of my eyes, awash with the violent light and the nonsensical, random beauty of the world.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 11/01/09 at 08:17:54 pm | randomly put in the category There's someone in my head but it's not me, Me | | Leave a comment

This morning I woke up thinking of R.. Then I looked at the muted tv set that had remained on all night, and there was Danny Wallace blabbing away. This time I recognized him, unlike that day R. and I bumped into him near the Pret a Manger in Southwark Road.

For a while I've found myself pining for an answer to the usual old questions. But it's always the same feeling of confusion that prevails, so I try and steered my mind away.

Outside is very cold, freezing. Had breakfast into a weird, naked greasy spoon named Orangeflex (my usual port of call, the Grafter Café, was closed for major cleaning) and met there the following people:

- a guy who is into traditional Chinese
- a classical string trio
- a producer of Irish rock bands

That was highly entertaining, and the grub and coffee were pretty good. Happy to have discovered the Orangeflex and its polished steel tabletops.

Proudly broadcasted by barbara_jacob starting from 04/01/09 at 06:58:36 pm | randomly put in the category Me | | Leave a comment