hights, lows, hellenistic hag

moral dilemmas for which i have no answers and however much i study facts or rhethoric techniques to convince myself, i won't know. for some reason they all make me feel uncomfortable with my consciousness and undermine the confidence i've been trying to build to manage exams and larger tests of time.

or maybe just low points of my day to be written on some piece of blogging to be burnt and buried in the interblag so i can sleep, get up, row and revise like normal people do...

8am - i had to book a flight with ryanair to sardinia.i need to get there for excavations, but there's nothing i have that i can compromise - time, comfort, effort - in favour of the ethical reasons against flying, except the impossible price of the ferryboat. yet, consciousness on the back-burner, i sat down to book 'cheap' flights. and honestly, they get dirtier and dirtier every time i look. the environmental damage comes first; the unneccessary consumerism ranks second; then the intrusive adds and attitude; and with every next webpage, a new kind of made-up cost added to a 'free' flight - insurance, obligatory check-in, obligatory card-handling fee, luggage, etc.

my new theory to play with is that low-cost companies molest their custommers by hidden fees, and intrusive disciplining physical discomfort, telling them where to be, when to do things etc exercises of authority. and this is all a strategy to take people's mind off guilty thoughts about carbon footprints. once you're having a shitty time and have been deceived anyway, you don't want to self-flagellate your consciousness further and enjoy your holliday.
sado-masochisstic behaviour (discomfort for self, bad for the planet) might help people get over their problematic relationship with the environment. that's how i felt on the last long flight i took anyway - 10 hours stuck next to the toilet, with a stinky fat guy next to me undermined good intentions for carbon offsetting because 'i'd suffered enough'.
or maybe they are careless bastards heading on cheap holliday.

2pm - then i met with someone who i recently learnt has published a beautiful book with funding from the getty museum, which is deeply involved in illicit antiquities (but has great outreach). this is someone whom i hold in truly high esteem, whose writings are an inspiration, and whose lectures are a privilege to attend, who has taught me more about art, antiquity, argumentation and cambridge, than any other supervisor, ... so it came as a bit of a shock and caught in the cross-fire between my two teachers (Miss Ethical black and white Heritage Management and Mr Reach Out to the Public is more important than ethical but dust-filled museums), i still don't know what to think.
anyway, he in turn found out what my exam essays would be like...
great way to motivate the last week of hard work - mutual disappointment.

4 pm talking to amiya because i'm upset and concerned, it turns out it's common advise for cambridge exam tactics - 'to do a high-mark argument, write like anything you are not': like a private-schooled english boy who can provoke by instinct, name-drop authors to parade his knowledge, and stick to disciplined timing. i'm sure where i stand on this, but i'm not sure what to do. last year i thought i would try to fit the mould to see if i can, take the best skills from it and move on. but i'm not so sure if those skills are worth it any more or it'll be time to move on to somewhere else (less mouldy) after this degree.

6pm - little 70-year old lady with blue veins under loose satine skin in grads. came up to me. she'd let a bra strap fall off her shoulder and spilt her tea with unrest, because i was bear-footed in a coffeeshop. then gave a long expose on how dangerous i was, compromising the hygene of the institution, swine flu, equatorial bugs, countryside and all. it was so tragicomical and pathetic i could not respond with anything but think 'ok whatever, if you'll fuck off and leave me worry about gender and fetishism'. i would not disagree with anything a crazy little old lady says, but it's disturbing to listen out of pity for someone who expects respect, to treat them as a story, a cultural product that needs to be tolerated or a black-white picture that only accepts respect and affection.

reminding of my great grand mother as real as she was, and aristotle's observation that we enjoy grotesque because we recognise it's art. we take distance from the hellenistic 'old hag' because she is a statue and we focus on the artist's skill rather than the degradation of the subject.
sometimes i write here to take distance from what is happening, lock it in some nice alliterations, metaphors and that kind of safe-keeping devices. then it's a bit more tolerable and thinkable through. it's text, not weight on my chest.

but it's also disturbing to treat anyone (me, the old hag, my unremembered great grandmother) as a story, a cultural product that needs to be tolerated or a black-white picture that only accepts respect and affection.

hopefully one day i'll be buried and will grow into a tree. people would keep correcting my branches, trimming me, and so on to keep me alive and keep stretching higher.

that song. again.
(god took the stars and he tossed 'em
can't tell the birds from the blossoms
you'll never be free of me
he'll make a tree from me

lay your head where my heart used to be,
hold the earth above me
lay down in the green grass
remember when you loved me)

good-drinking cup tea break

* ok, the last words of the last post (and i) deserve the prosaic break because i learnt something quite fascinating (for someone who made up their mind about doing archaeology following the steps of Schliemann, with 'The Deam of Troy' in my backback, inherited from their mother):

In one of the shaft-graves at Mycenae, in 1876 Schliemann found what he believed was

... a cup,

a magnificent work Nestor had brought from home,

studded with gold. There were four handles on it,

around each one a pair of golden doves was feeding.

Below were two supports. When that cup was full,

another man could hardly lift it from the table,

but, old as he was, Nestor picked it up with ease. (Iliad 11.632ff, transl. J.Johnson)

... he was wrong, the cup was made several centuries before any Trojan war and any Nestor.
But in 1954, at Pithekoussai, one of the oldest colonies near Naples, excavations unearthed a clay cup, which spoke for itself (in a hexametric inscription, one of the earliest snippets of Greek we have!):
I am Nestor’s good-drinking cup.
Whoever drinks this cup empty, straightaway
the desire of beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize.
The clay-cup came from a child's grave, I think as a symbolic solution to completing his early-ended life cycle to the point where he would have been as old as myth or Nestor.

Other entertaining associations include Romanian death-weddings, the purposes of Platonic myths, structuralism / cognitive theory applied to Geometric vase painting, and so on, ... I'd better get on with visions and revisions.

bonfire to summon summer.

(i know it's summer even though it's gloomy grey and seeping rain and the tall towers of colleges are closed to prevent anyone climbing above the clouds or committing suicide during exam term)
because my jumper smelled of smoke one morning
and nettle burns weave healing stings around my knuckles
because a spiderweb was stretching fresh across the path and sealed my lips as i was running
because we warmed the river's waters with our naked swimming bodies
and as i pull my ore through water, there is a rhythm - 8 rocking over, 8 flicking wrists, 6am starts - that i did not know before.
and then i go to learn my Homer hexametres between cups of tea and cups of Nestor and Mycenae.*

if i had twitter

i'd say my brain is asleep after an all-nighter; but i am on a sugar high after eating too many grapes (criminally imported out of season); my eyes are reading; by bike is cycling; i'm going to listen to a four hour seminar on levi strauss; and i think i'll deconstruct all my binary oppositions by the end; but then there will be a surprise czech film.

this morning dr miracle (who is not fictional) said post-structuralist phases are something like a mid-life crises. at least for hodder. ho. ho.

will write about it later.

solid forged 4" archaeologist trowel

Long time no blogging. Skipping through my vacation, moving houses and a statistics project, term's begun again. Sap's rising, Cambridge is a pleasure to run through, breathing in its green and fragrant days, cool at the margins, warm in the middle, like fresh-baked gateaux molleux with ice-cream.

These weeks my dear fellow archaeologists and I have been weathering in the Fens, getting sun-burnt, wind-swept, sand-blown, mud-stuck, until at the end of the day we turn dark silty gray to reddish brown, like the soil we come from and go back to. Every next morning.
The protagonist of our excavation is an ancient river, whose skeleton lies tucked, folded under layers, in the buried soil, under an unremarkable field. We haven't found much, except for all the harvested flint, documenting where a hand struck a stone, and some badly made pot. The flat easily hides that this landscape was flooded regularly from palaeo-times until some 80 years ago. That most people who walked it were cold and their feet were wet when they went to sleep wrapped in wool, soaked with the smell of their sheep and the river. That the liminality of the environment was tangible as the sea came forwards up to the Fens, expulsing men and beasts towards the high ground. That in Roman and medieval times they had had enough with this liminality and cut a straight ditch, like we dig our trenches. That they enjoyed the sun as much as we do probably.
We have found out a lot. That we cannot walk the straight lines we aspire to. That a cut is a separate event within a feature with many fills, and they all have numbers with different kinds of brackets, documenting both the chronology of the dig and the chronology of the feature, and the 2- and 3-D arrangement of the site. That the record of an excavation can be more destructive to the salvaged information than millenia of erosion and worm-action. That interpretation begins at the end of the trowel before you decide to scrape further and break the boundary in order to learn about a new feature, while destroying it.

Then, as we embody the site, via mattocking calluses, burnt skin, iron-pan-stained trouser knees, it comes to the end of a day with watermelon, beer and sound sleep.
And I remember why I want to be this.

Well, ideally, I wouldn't be doing that much river and that minimalist Mesolithic folk, instead of some painted tombs with pretty pots for wine and a good fake Greek story.

за лифта и езерата.

(in brief, they have built a cable car to the Rila lakes, breaking environmental and safety laws, trespassing on state property. this path was my rite of passage to mountaineering and leads to a sacred landscape for followers of the white brotherhood. i expect the mountain will punish those who disrespect her. avalanches and sliding stones are common enough to snap the cables and claim the lives of ignorant innocents. but that's how karma works.)

явно безочието е стигнало до там да избоде очите на планината. засега няколко статии и информацийки.

за да остане природа в българия
дневник
моите планини

за да остане природа казват, че:
- проектът не е преминал процедурите за одобрение от държавата и може да е опасен
- лифтът не е минал оценка за въздействието му върху околната среда
- нито технически преглед
- изходната станция стои върху свлачище
- територията, която обхваща е част от национален парк Рила, т.е. държавна собственост и трябва да бъде отдадена чрез концесия, но към момента не е

Кметът на Сапарева баня инж. Сашо Иванов казва:
"Изграждането на лифта до Седемте рилски езера ще гарантира запазването на екологичното равновесие в природен парк Рила"
"Потокът към Седемте рилски езера е голям и хората се качват с различни видове автомобили - така замърсяват значително околната среда, отколкото една седалко-въжена линия, която ще даде възможност на много хора да видят едно от най-красивите кътчета на нашата страна"

сещам се за френските алпи, които са доста тежко екипирани с лифтове.
сещам се за първия ми път сериозно на планина със скаутите и две кифли, късен ноември по козята пътечка до езерата. кифлите се качиха на камиончето с хижаря, а аз бавих момчетиите пешком. спомням си, че ясен ни изгуби в гората преди билото по тъмно. че исках да се сгуша в един корен и да спя, без да ми пука за студа, снега и зверчетата, а като капнахме в хижата бях малка, уморена и щастлива. иво направи най-воднистата супа на света, от която си вадих шпека, а по канал едно даваха фаренхайт 451.
тая пътека ми взе душата и планината още я държи, а някой ще се качва до светата светих на дъновистите и ще приближава най-високата хижа на балканите - Вазов - седнал и увиснал. ... но нали знаем за да си припомним къде ни е мястото стига само едно свлачище. то всичко се връща.

wtf is wrong with the homophobic parliament...

edit: fuck this. there are worse things.

sap rising to the new 5th floor.

somewhere else a Parisian spring is happening
it sent me signs: in the way the dust particles dance in the sun, in the kinds of flowers pushing in the neatly cut grass (i do not know their names in english), in the letters from my parents, with neat sketches of a new flat attached, with old-fashioned placards and a big balcony with views to discover. i imagine circulating around the pen-drawn lines, on my way to the cupboard with the chocolates or the tea-box.

i might sometimes
prefer writing mes essais in the english rain
and dreaming about sun-pressed past of turkey, greece and rome
through post-colonial lenses / winows obscured by condensation and raindrops.

the rain curtain, doubling the library windows makes britain more of an island.
water from all sides, taking boats of thoughts to all sides.
by now my essay is as watered down and cold as morning tea by noon.

да (не) ти се случи нещо, което 45 години след това няма да можеш да разказваш

развълнуваща и тъжна статия, свързана с конкурса за истории за лични социализми, проведен от интститута за изследване на близкото минало.
искам стаж там. искам да чета и да разказвам. искам да си ровя нахалния студентски вирнат и още пъпчив нос из страниците на партиздат и на тетрадките с тънко и дебело писане. искам от вторични суровини да вадя думи и смисли и яркост в черно белите безименни снимки от албумите на баба и дядо. искам дядо да можеше да ги прочете и да ми разкаже.

"дневниците на Мария от Варна – „вуйчо Бечо се самоуби, бесило черно...Свако Марко се самоуби...пил сода каустик пред вратата на Борисовата градина...господи, станаха много самоубийствата в нашия род...”

"Има едно особено чувство, в гърлото, физическо усещане, че четеш история, която никога не ти е била преподавана, разказана."

1989 краят на историята -> мълчание, игнориране, не отваряне на информация

"тетрадката за приходи и разходи от 1989-а година на семейството на Григор от Пазарджик. Забележителен документ, в който всеки ден от годината е измерен в покупки. Така например първи януари 1989-а година е равен на „ хляб – половин Добруджа, захар 2 кг по 1.50 лв, тахан халва с какао 1 кутия 0.580 кг, на децата за нова година по 5 лева, новогодишни картички и пощенски, общо 54.70 лв”, а 10 ноември, петък, е обикновен ден, в който има „поръчка в стола на здравните работници, хляб – 2броя, отиване и връщане от Лесичево, вестници”, общо 3.30 лв.."

"Няма нито един разказ на човек от висшите етажи на комунистическата номенклатура или на тайните служби."

"Забелязвам, докато чета, два основни типа стратегии, през които се гледа и описва миналото – първата е желанието то да бъде представено като положителен опит, като добро и да бъде противопоставено на днешното, на времето след промените. [...]
Има и друга стратегия – да разказваш за миналото като „лошото”, от което следва днешното още по-лошо.
Има много меланхолия и много тъга. Има ясното осъзнаване, че миналото продължава да е разделено между тези две стратегии и че близо18 години след края на комунизма, ние, които наследяваме историите и на жертвите,и на победителите, не можем да ги синтезираме, да родим една друга, обща история."

"...проумявам „непосилната лекота” на такава съдба – да ти се случи нещо, което след това повече от 45 години няма да можеш да разказваш."

roofs of sofia & streets of paris.

1.
photos by bistra boshnakova
of places loved by me too.

nostalgia comes as synaesthesia. i could smell the ink of the pages of my preferred magazine where these were published. in my mind's eye i also hold the touch of sofiiski smog and rain against my skin.

in the front plane you see the university of sofia. rumour has it that one of the domes hosts a full standing mamooth skeleton. the second done is the archaeology department library. and the third dome is the indoors climbing wall where i go bright and early to strain arms and legs, and listen to climbery tales. there's a little window you can climb out of and walk on the roofs, but now it's blocked by iron bars.

i started exploring roofs in the middle of a serious english exam for a serious certificate. it was held in the building of виас (the architecture institute). marina and i wondered around in the break, we found ourselves on the easily accessable roof with a gorgeous view over sofia. then the security guards made us come down and finish our exams. marina now studies architecture and i know nothing else of her.
the picture above is hilton, i think. hotels are useful because they're generally too polite to stop people from roaming aimlessly on their top-floors looking out of windows, unlike educational institutions.

the last picture is the structural opposite of the view you get if you lean unsafely out of the window of our living room. my street looks the same mosaic of sun-kissed bare bricks and yellows, alternating with greys. looking south, you can see the snowy top of vitosha mountain. looking north you should theoretically spot the fumes comming out of tall chimneys in the area of zaharna fabrika ('sugar factory') near the central station.

2.

streets of paris, populated by
the 2-D souls created by ernest pignon-ernest

i think i fell in love with the streets of paris a. because it's easy and b. because i didn't have any friends for a long time there, so i befriended my camera, my map, the musea and the pavements and went on long long walks. i think many other people do the same and leave their signatures here and there on the walls, so i collected them with my camera, and watched them change, like a letter addressed in the writing.

they say telephone boots are disappearing with the advent of the mobile phone, so they will survive only in photos and archaeologist's books.

and defenestrated - a cool street photography / city art blog i found randomly.