I Used To Write With A Pen

…Skulptur…you know I love the embarrassed Bavarian way you pronounce it…

Bloody Hell! The days have whizzed by so fast yet so slow…I have pretty much been working almost everyday for the past month and have so much to say and write yet never seemingly having the time to sit down and uncork my brain. I owe e-mails to so many people everyone must think I don’t give a shit!!!!

I’m pretty sure I will have to move as soon as I have the time to look for a new place in Edinburgh and leave my rather spacious pad I’ve grown fond of. After scouting out my new work place this weekend I bumped into Victoria and her bf at the ice cream (my current and recurrent vice) stand at the local cinemaplex…I was there to see Cloverfield and I must admit it was better than I expected (I do not subscribe to internet hype…let alone hype…for it will always lessen the enjoyment so I went in rather blind). It’s a cross between Godzilla and the Blair Witch Project except it works a thousand times to the power of π better than either of those two utter pants films. If you ignore the giddy camerawork and punctuated mushy contrived moments, the story was succinct, the tension palpable and the H.P. Lovecraftian nightmarish vision and the M.R. Jamesiysh utter lack of a resolution or explanation was what made it delicious for me.

I am also very happy to have re-connected with my long lost German pal Petia. I loathe chain letters but back in the day when I was 14 I got one of these odious snail mail spam. I decided for once (and only time) in my life to forward it (picking on 5 hapless unknown girls from the local Sunday paper…muahahahahaha) and to add my name on the list and send a postcard to the name on the bottom of the list after scoring it out. In theory one should get numerous postcards from all over the world after several weeks…and I DID!!! Postcards from USA, Germany, Indonesia etc came pouring in through my mail-box. And the bizarre thing was they were all girls!?!?!! I wrote back to several who unwittingly gave me their addresses AND told me to write to them…but out of all of them, it was 16 year old artist Petia from Germany with whom I managed to cerebrally connect with the best. All our exchanges were witty (heh), informative (I learnt about the German X’ams tree tradition from her), artistic (we both drew and painted) and above all, amazingly good fun.

After some years we finally got around to actually exchanging photos and I must admit I was pleasantly blown away by her blonde winsomeness and her in turn of my unusual Eurasian background. We’ve since met several times (Germany and UK) and got along great with fantastic memories (and some I have totally forgotten…the Frankfurt Wine festivals was a definite blur as she carried me back to her car but I do remember the inebriated buzz of the München Hofbräuhaus…the meals we made together for a party at her place…the stunning medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber at sunset…and the late night showing of the Wizard of Oz at St Andrews, Scotland - I couldn’t believe she had never seen the 1939 classic and dragged her to a showing and she fell in love with it!!!)

I still have the “Radio Obernburg” mixed cassette tape with all our songs and in-jokes she made for me to this day. We lost touch (my fault really as I got caught up in hectic professional postgraduate exams and kept moving around) We have both wondered how each of us have been since but thanks to the internet (uhmm…all it took was the rather mundane act of googling her name and violà!).

On top of haunting tunes from REM’s “Automatic For The People” (my prime candidate for it being in the Top Ten albums of all time), I do remember us dancing energetically to this awesome track by the Spin Doctors…

The summer of 1993 was a significant turning point in my life from a worldly, academic and spiritual POV. But Our Song has undoubtedly got to be this one by the 4 Non Blondes…for some strange undefined reason it spoke to both of us at our stage in our lives I guess…and where unbeknownst to each other initially we adored this song to death…and then both cheered it together as we witnessed it became a Number 1 hit in Germany.

To my peculiar Petia…:)