A little optimism can go a long way
I woke up yesterday determined to take better care of my body and soul, which, in my case, translates into more frequent visits to the gym and to yoga classes. This was nothing unique as I wake up feeling like this quite often. The truth, however, is that I hate exercising so usually by the time I have had a shower I persuade myself to think differently.
Yesterday this wasn’t the case. Maybe it was the spring in the air or the fact that it was Monday. Whatever the reason, I decided it was high time to start an exercise routine and made a phone call to a yoga teacher who had once before managed to convince me that exercising three times a week is possible and may even be good for me.
So I called Athena, who apart from teaching yoga is one of those gorgeous, classically-trained ballet dancers able to bend her legs in the wrong direction and put them in places that I can’t even imagine I have. We agreed I would attend her class later in the evening, and then I started to proceed with my day.
I don’t know how you imagine the day of an average freelance journalist to be but the sad fact is I hate writing almost as much as exercising so I am really good at finding excuses to procrastinate. Unfortunately, yesterday my sense of duty took over and I didn’t feel I could follow my natural inclination. It was, then, pure luck that just as I was preparing myself mentally for the torture of creativity the phone rang and a liberating opportunity presented itself – a walk around the old town with an Italian photographer interested in urban archaeology.
You see, I consider walking around Nicosia as working so I couldn’t see anything wrong with saying yes. But if you think that the urban archaeology the guy was interested in was Lusignan ruins you’re totally wrong. Yes he was after ruins, but of a completely different sort.
For the next few hours I wandered with him and his friend, a Greek architect, around the town, taking photos of the familiar state of neglect that is old Nicosia. My visitors’ enthusiasm increased proportionally with the size of abandonment, while mine waned to the same extent at seeing the same old thing. Then, when they were just about to explode with happiness, I had to leave them, literally, in the worst hole I could find on the Turkish side. I had to run to my yoga class…
Alas, yoga wasn’t meant to be. Next to the Ledra Palace crossing, at Hamur, I saw two friends of mine, both excellent artists, stuffing themselves with minced meat and halloumi boreks, pushing them down with zivania. Needless to say, yoga to benefit body and soul, disappeared.
“You are not fat, just curvy,” Emin said in support of my decision. “Besides, I once did transcendental meditation and it didn’t work. When you are an artist, just painting puts you into a transcendental state. I am sure it is the same with writing.”
We continued ‘putting ourselves in a transcendental state’ for a while, if not by creating works of art or meditation then definitely by more conventional means, while coming up with “101 sexy ways of consuming borek”. Then my friends left for Kyrenia and I went to Intercollege to see Lights in the Dusk, a very optimistic film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki.
Calling Kaurismaki “optimistic” may be a bit of an overstatement but this is an adjective I heard in relation to his works from Virpi, my Finnish friend with whom I always stay in Dublin. Last time I was there we watched Ariel, also by Kaurismaki, which is a story about a guy who, for me, is a modern equivalent of Job. Literally, whatever bad could happen to this guy happened in this movie yet he still remained hopeful. At the end, he left Finland for Mexico, which struck me as depressing. Frankly speaking, I just couldn’t see what a luckless loser like him would do in Mexico. But Virpi explained that that was the most optimistic bit because Mexico was the guy’s dream and he was about to realise it.
Lights in the Dusk is about a similar guy, only in a much worse state because he doesn’t even dream about Mexico. Instead, he wants to start a private security business, doesn’t succeed, is dumped by his girlfriend, who uses him mercilessly, and ends up in jail for a crime that he doesn’t commit and almost dies after being beaten up by Russian mafiosos.
Still, since I was in a transcendental state I agreed with Virpi. The film was optimistic. And I am sure it would have been even more so had I gone to see it after yoga.
