User:Aitantv/blog2023

06.08.23

Amsterdam, Home, Grey overcast

I have returned from Georgia. Landing on my feet. I'm grasping for community and searching for it in the living rooms of millenial friends close by. The Netherlands is a cool grey steely geometric orderly rigid up-tight planned governed sort of place. I feel a sense of homesickness setting in as I look back on Georgia. A magentic pull from my body towards that geography, some sort of genetic map attempts to superimpose itself on that landscape; a negative layer looking for its postive, an etching finding its relief (wikipedia.etching).

I found a sense of home amongst the RB residents in Racha. This temporary community quickly formalized a schedule for domestic chores; a morning meditation and movement routine to create space for spontaneous creativity and emotional releases. Circling - the group act of attentive listening where we shared our immediate thoughts and feelings - was a tedious and challenging process. To sit with the concerns, grief, and complexities of others was a draining process. My body would be fully activated and ready to plough the day, but after circle it felt heavy, tired, and sore. These interpersonal emotions are weighty. The physical manifestation of heaviness equates with the gravity of the human experience.

I want to re-create (a slither) of this group field. My perception became a field of possibilities rather than channeled towards a specific point. Drawings became broad and almost fish-eye; film shots became mere crops of a wide omni-directional foley stereo soundscape; feasts were scattered with berries, salts, nuts, seeds, and oils, making a maximal taste mouthful of every bite. A de-centered approach to living, where the I was no longer so autonomous, produced a becomingness where process had a greater value than output.

I low-key mourn for my Georgian friends. Long-lost sisters, ex-wives, distant cousins, long-distance pen pals, a forgotten university colleague. They each occupied a position of familiarity from the very first encounter. I circle back to the body, and where the body finds its restplace. Is it climactic, cultural, social, cinematic, political, textural? Is it about colors, hairy, beauty, textiles? Is it to do with culinary tastes and satiating a void within with edible harmony? A sense of homeness in a foreign land. An uncanny belonging and being-with in the carriage of a Metro from Dezerter Bizaar to the micro-district of Gldani. Every grandma had a sparkle of Bibi with a soft comic gaze, a moth-scented wiry wool cardigan, badly-dyed hair, over-plucked eyebrows, and powdery doughy palms. Where do I go from here? Can I stay here in the cold steely grey grindhouse? Can I tolerate this clinical tepid womb?