(Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of Eternity) is
emblematic of Vincent van Gogh’s suffering in his
final months in Auvers-sur-Oise.)

I see him every day. He has his usual walk on his crunches. Then he sits on the concrete bench in front of his tenement. He sits there for hours and hours until his wife takes him up to their flat.

I’ve known that man for all my life. He and his wife are my neighbors. She used to be quite neurotic when we played under her window. She threw jars on us… However my grandmother has been her friend. That woman was her hairdresser for a long, and now she is often visiting our house. I didn’t know that weak and quiet man was her husband. He seemed totally opposite to her temperament, although I’ve never had any contact with him.

Now when I stare out through the window next to the screen, I see him standing alone with his crunches on one side. I’ve heard he had a car accident last year, which obviously made him much weaker than before.

He reminds me of my late grandfather. He was that weak in his last weeks… and I visited him only about five times for two months. Grandpa always told me to consider school and studying first, but he was so happy when I was with him. In his last weeks he felt so hopeless, he didn’t even want to speak, but he seemed to be pleased when I told him of every little or slightly bigger success I had. That is why I tried to present everything good I’d done. He was the first witness of my success with jumping - I finally reached the ceiling after many years believing that I won’t be able to do it. I was so pleased that I used every opportunity to jump in my grandparents’ flat. The last time I went to visit him, before I looked at him, I casted a glance on the ceiling.

“Keep away from the TV antenna” he murmured. I smiled and didn’t jump.

I can’t watch my neighbor waiting his end like that. I must not switch on Damien Rice and watch the sunset walking in the town this time . I don’t want to do it again. I won’t be able to approach him either. I am so wretched. I write essays about changing and being able to be at ease among unfamiliar people and in different situations. Still, I am not capable of going to talk to an old desperate man. I don’t know what to tell him, I don’t know how to act. I am just going to stay here and timorously watch.

Who do most of the people share their thoughts with? With those around them.
But what happens when you talk to the same people every day? You tell them your stories every day, and soon the stories just become trivial things of your daily life. Most people get used to your way of reflecting the world. At some point, in most of the cases people just share their stories just to provoke empathy or to relive what has happened.
When you talk to a stranger, however, it’s different. He doesn’t know anything about your background and your past experience with what you’re talking about, so there are a lot of things you should add to the story to make it clear. Those are the things, which you rarely have to think about when you’re talking to your closest surrounding. You have to answer the questions you think your listener would ask, as well as these that he surprises you with. That makes you think about the stuff you “just know” and “just feel”, and find explanations for them. They make you see those things that are so close to you that in order to catch them you have to distance for a while.
This lays in the foundation of the only program on BNT (Bulgarian National Television) I can honestly say I admire – “BNT Taxi”. I accidentally came upon one evening. I don’t remember when or how that happened, but I remember I really liked it because it left me a thinking. It’s like a raw material for philosophical or sociological analysis.
It presents people who travel in a taxi, where the journalists Spas Kiosev and Nevena Spasova-Batsarova drive them for free and ask them questions related to the topic of the day. I liked it because the hosts ask reasonable questions, which lead the passengers to see their stories in an unusual way and ingenuously show their personality.

Seeing the different faces of the people in Bulgaria, one can learn about the situation here, because approaching society through different people’s eyes is a great way to explore it. He can hear all kinds of people, and observe their manner of speaking, their way of expressing, and their way of thinking. He can feel close to them and like them, or see how distanced from him they are, but still he will see his society through them.

Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Last October when I added this test as an application into my Facebook profile, I decided to hide it. It showed that I was more like right-brained, which made me scared that I’m not proper for doing astronomy.

However, a few days ago, after a month spent mainly with three piles of Physics books, when I opened it again, it was difficult for me to see the dancer turning clockwise. It was difficult to write the previous post, too.

It seems that my left part of the brain is prevailing now.

I woke up on Monday morning after a four-hour sleep.

“… let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!”

I went to the bathroom.

“… let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!”

I walked the way to school.

“… let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!”

That seemed to be the chant of my tired brain that morning. I couldn’t drive it out!

“Let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!” I said to my classmates

“Hey, what’s wrong with you? What was that?”

“Let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!”

“Haven’t you slept at all?”

“Oh, I have. I slept from 2:30 to 6:30.”

“What were you doing last night? Watching presidential campaigns?”

“No, … ugh.., yes!!, I mean, the last thing I saw last night was Barack Obama, but I watched Hillary Clinton on Saturday. I watched her Endorsement Speech, in which, I think, she repeated that phrase for about a thousand times in a couple of minutes “

“So let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!”

“No, don’t say that again! It’s so annoying! It doesn’t sound pleasant from your mouth”

“But that’s exactly what she said… Let me show you this video!”

“Four times in three minutes?! You are as good in repeating that as she is “

However, this slogan seemed harmless compared to the repeating of “energy resources”, “global warming”, “segregation”, “women’s rights”, “Troops in Iraq”, “middle class” and “Stronger America”

I didn’t like the speech. It was trite. Clinton just repeated the main shortcomings of the US throughout the years. The only thing that kept me in front of CNN for half an hour was the fact that her wordes were so simple that I could understand everything. That made me remember the challenging SAT readings based on Martin Luther King’s speeches, and their persuasiveness. The weight of his words came from the significance of his causes as well as from his eloquence which I couldn’t catch in Clinton’s final act. I got a bit disappointed of the presidential campaign, but then a friend of mine told me about this:

This speech is different. Here Senator Obama says “I am reminded every day of my life, if not by events, then by my wife, that I’m not a perfect man. I won’t be a perfect president..”, while Hillary Clinton declares “I was proud to be running as a woman, but I was running because I thought I’d be the best president”. She’s repeating the modern society’s concerns and the causes she’d be glad to work for, while Obama’s retelling a real amusing story which shifts the focus on the ordinary individual and makes him believe that large-scale ideas stem from the smaller events. While Clinton is harping on the key points of her political program, Obama is galvanizing with: “Fired up! Ready to go!”.

This juxtaposition made me realize my brain keeps repeating: “Let’s help elect Barack Obama our president!”, only because I’d rather hear more of “Fired up! Ready to go!” in the future.

‘Hah, he is pretty weird. My friend said in the café. ‘I heard he bought his girlfriend a book about programming for her birthday. Everyone knows she dislikes informatics! Then, when everyone started laughing at him about this he said “But it’s a special and limited edition” ‘

‘I think it was a great present’, I said.

I liked that boy. I had been on a summer camp with him and his girlfriend.

A month ago I happened to be in a classroom where he had to explain one of his informatics problems. I was the only girl there. The rest of the people were good programmers who knew each other and knew the lecturer. I was very confused to be there, and I was just starting to try to efface myself and to repulse the surprised glances directed to me, when he stopped in the middle of his first word and waved at me. I surreptitiously looked back, and as I saw no one behind me, I smiled and waved back. I was surprised he remembered me. Yes, “we were together 10 days”, as he said later, but he was there with his girlfriend and his best friends, accompanied by what I considered engrossing oblivion.

‘Are you crazy?’ my friend exclaimed. ‘It’s so foolish to buy your girlfriend something she doesn’t like.’

‘Do you prefer to buy your girlfriend a teddy bear?’

‘Yes, it’s definitely better.’

‘And I would like to receive something my boyfriend likes. It would be nice, sweet and romantic. If he gives me what he likes most, he will show me that he wants me to have the best thing, because this is how he rates it. The gift will be part of what he likes, and what he likes will be part of him, so I’d feel as if he gave me part of himself.’

A few weeks after that conversation I received a notification from the post office. ‘It should be a present from my best friend,’ I thought ‘but I’ll take it tomorrow. Today I’d have other presents and I won’t be able to savor the excitement of its presence.’

I got up early next morning and went right to the post office. I got the parcel, and yes, it was a book, just as I had guessed.

When I got back home I unwrapped it. It was “The Zahir” by Paolo Coelho in Bulgarian.

What?! A love story by Paolo Coelho in Bulgarian?! The three things I didn’t want in the newly acquired books.

Then I smiled. The present was what my best friend likes. He had probably heard meny times what I thought of “The Alchemist” and still he had chosen that novel. Maybe he had had a message for me with the book and he wanted me to read the book, or he just wanted me to have something he likes.

I read the novel, and I didn’t like it much, but I like the present I have.

This is a good way for me to stop worrying about my problems.

When something takes control over me, I drive it away thinking about space. I imagine a view of myself sitting where I am, then I see my town, the whole country, Europe, and the whole continent. I continue with the entire Solar system, our galaxy, our cluster of galaxy, the whole observable universe. And as I go further away from myself, I stop thinking of what is so pettily occupying my mind. It seems so insignificant compared to the new questions about the outer space. What was it start? What caused it existence? What’s going on with it now? Is it going to vanish someday… I’m getting perplexed, and… erm what was I doing? … oh, I’ daydreaming again…and I’ve got so much to do today, let’s go back to work!

When I felt the pity started to prevail in the visit at my grandparents’ flat last night I stepped aside and started exploring the back row of one of the book shelves. It was the first time that I was aware of what of variety of books was hidden there: Maupassant, Goethe, Stephen Zweig, Jane Austen, Fitzgerald, and…

‘Grandma, did you know you have “A word Child” by Iris Murdoch?’

‘Who’s she? I haven’t even heard of that name… Once, together with the good books, you were given lame ones… O! You like her? The book is yours then, actually they are all yours, but take this one with you now if you like it.’

Now it is on my bookshelf, on the pile of books I’ve planned to read soon, and… all of the books I’m reading now. I never read just one book, and now, it seems worse than ever. I’ve been given a lot of books in the last few moths, and I’m getting confused. Neither of them can’t capture my attention entirely, so I read a few other books parallel with the first one. Thus I take the stories and the ideas in small portions; soon I loose my initial interest and I no longer understand the book. At that stage, I want to take a new book and leave the old ones. I am greedy for books. I’ve been living in a house with hundreds of all kinds of books and I’m used to having loads of them. I do not read most of them, and I probably do not understand the ideas of most of them, but I want more. Ha,I feel like rich people’s kids, who are used to having money; who don’t know how to use them properly, they do not understand their meaning, but want a lot more of them.

This makes me feel wealthy! I feel thick with… BOOKS!!!

Yesterday evening when I was just ready to open “the message to the planet” by Iris Murdoch the telephone rang. It was my mother. She told me I could go and visit my grandparents with her. I couldn’t say no. My grandfather’s been worse recently. In the summer he had his gall-bladder removed, but his heart was going worse, as the doctors finished the operations before they could kill all the neurons damaged by the surgery. The pain caused by them, together with the pain of his sore pancreas and gastritis, made him afraid of eating. He was so cautious not to eat food which could cause him pain that he nearly stopped swallowing anything. Naturally, he got too weak, and now he can’t do anything but lying and thinking about his missing health. The worst thing of all is that he doesn’t want to believe that he can ever get better and he doesn’t even try to eat more or distract from the bleak feelings of the last few moths.

Every time I visit him I am trying to be as cheerful as possible. I think he hasn’t encountered anything but concern faces and health instructions for quite a long. Nonetheless, I can’t do it for a long, because soon after I see his apathy and surrender to the illness, my empathy takes place and I transmit nothing by pity.

On my way to my grandparents’ apartment the picture of what our visit was going to be like was already vivid in my head, and again I started thinking of a possible plan how to take grandpa out of this all. I had already rejected making him meet people - he can’t talk to anyone; everything makes him rather nervous and he is unbearably impolite; he could neither do agriculture anymore - the only thing that has ever been his entertainment, nor he could read books - he says he can’t see any point in doing it anymore, and he refuses to read anything. The only thing left, I thought, was finding a faith healer to disperse his despair, only if there were some psychoanalysts in Haskovo…(Please, tell me if you know someone to practice this here, I’d be really happy if I could find someone to help). The other profession that works with faith healing is energy therapy, I suppose, but it would sound very nutty to my rational-minded relatives to rely on a charlatan, mesmerizing people by talking about energy fields.

How can I persuade my mother to take grandpa to her nephew’s godmother (a well-known energy therapist in Haskovo) as she always consider her job ridiculous and she barely meets to my cousin after his wife decided she doesn’t like us? How could I possibly help? … or how could I stay indifferent to my grandfather’s aggravation?!

That was the topic of an essay I chose to write for school 2 weeks ago. I thought it would be simple, as I know how many things and ideas I just overlook.

I thought a lot, and finally wrote about my inclination to leave my own country and live with my family away from here, with no excess of money, but working as a scientist. My essay received “5″ (B), because “A lot of other things could be considered as well”. Anyway, Istill keep in mind to reveal th efull picture of what I aquiesce.

A friend of mine has put that link (http://www.storyofstuff.com) in his Skype profile today. I felt it was worthy, because he’s prooved to me the value of his liking, so I followed it.

This short production includes the better part of what I dislike on Earth. But obviously noone does enough to prevent it. It makes me feel dizzy and whirling, but I don’t do anything considerable to change it. Our life seems to get more and more tangled and we are just… watching.

At least, I hope that by watching more, people would realise the problems of what we call civilization, and one day we’re going to pass the new level and work for preventing the disturbances of people and their habitat.

Ten years ago my parents bought me and my brother a clock, representing a just-married couple in front of a church. I’ve completely got used to living with it. It controls me daily and determines my life in a fascinating way.

When I got up for school on Friday, at dawn, I noticed it told me it was ten past twelve. It got me ruined. I couldn’t get ready to leave at the time I had to. I was in a hurry, but I didn’t know how much how much exactly do I need to speed up. I was going to miss the first lesson for the second time this month, and this time my class teacher wouldn’t delete it as the first time when she told the class “It’s the first one for these 3 years…”.

In the evening, when I came back, after school, a competition in informatics and a hot chocolate in Titanic cafe, I didn’t feel comfortable, because I didn’t see the time right there in front of me. I didn’t feel the lack of it… so… I downloaded a movie and watched it after dinner, and also made an arrangement for the Student’s Night on Saturday.

I went to bed late. I don’t know at what time exactly… but I intentionally put my mobile phone away - the last bridge between me and real time. In the morning my father woke me up uttering “Hey, Ite, I made you lunch, get up, it’s 12″. What a surprise, my clock was precise! No… it’s just 12:10 again, as if the time had stopped for me. Then I had endless time to read!!! However, the missing deadline for me to stop enjoying the book, left the door of my daydreams wide open, and I sneaked through it every time I could, until I realised it was time for me to leave for the party… But I didn’t hurry anyway. I even took a call from a friend, and he told me that what I’d been dreaming of all afternoon, could happen - he told me I could go and be with him in Sofia at New Year’s Eve together with a couple a friends I really miss. When my parents came back, I came back to reality and decided I should go, but i promised him that we could talk at 2 am.

I went to the party, and for the first time in a few months I had a great time. (Since I’ve stopped drinking alcohol, I’ve started to see the uselessness of all kind of parties, but this one, made me believe that I just need to be with people who like having fun in a way more similar to a witty conversation, than to drunken chalga bacchanalia. ). When I came back at 2 am, I didn’t mind the time. I spoke to my friend, and then I played “Traveller IQ Challenge” till later. As a result in the morning I didn’t wake up with my grandma’s occasional loud speaking and again I was awaken by an invitation for lunch, which was followed by a great waste of time, accompanied by a little physics.

On Monday morning, thanks goodness, I woke up earlier than noon, at 6:30, but as I didn’t see I’ve got a little left to an absence at school, I got up at 7:10. I was in an unstated hurry again, but this time I went to school 10 minutes earlier with a decent look, too.

I’ve always been astonished by the way my uncle lives without any clocks around - he says he just can’t have a rest while something is ticking next to him. In contradiction to this, now I see, I can’t live properly without it.

I’ve always felt that as an astronomer’s child I don’t have access to my biological clock. I don’t make any difference between day and night or breakfast and lunch. Naturally, it help me adapt to weird schedules easily, I never get used to routine and thus not only spend a lot of time improperly, but also tenaciously help my body’s disadvantages develop.

I need the clock to be uttering minutes and hours and put some limits to my chaotic world, as time actually does with the whole Universe. Without it, I’m condemned to float into the mix of many unfulfilled wishes to read this and do that, and I will always do less than what I do, because a material point that does not speed up, slows down with the resistance.