?

Maybe I should write a book in September entitled The Perks of Being Homeless...(In The Place I Have Called Home For The Last Four Years)"*.
Maybe I will.

*alternative for title: The Perks of Being Homeless and A Pain in My Friends Ass.

With a Little Help From My Friends (a.k.a. Mistakes I Know I am Making Pt. 2)

Life has, indeed, been a rollercoaster ride for me as my mood and attitude towards the uncertainty of my future has been constantly changing from day to day in the past few weeks.

After I wrote that freaked-out post circa two weeks ago, I gathered myself more or less and went to work. By the time I had taken the three bus stops and the five minute walk to the language school, and I was talking to my so-called boss as I was waiting for that student of mine who is always late no less than twenty minutes, I realized that I just could not quit. There's no way I would leave my job, or leave the city or the dorm for that matter, for - as cheesy as it may sound - I love them with all of my heart. As I was standing there making silly small talk, it hit me how much I love my job, how much I enjoy teaching and the general atmosphere of the language school. I would be a fool to quit a job that I enjoy this much, that is this convenient, that is as close to not feeling like a job as it can get, as a matter of fact. I would be a fool to quit, especially in these days of such horrible economics, and move back to Miskolc where unemployment and poverty are in an even worse shape than in Budapest. I would be  a fool to move back into a town where I hardly know anybody, where I hardly have a friend, where there's no life, no culture, no entertainment, no nothing. I would fall into deep depression in no time, that's for sure. I would suffer like hell, and would not be able to see the way out from the ever-so deepening pit. 

I love Budapest, I breath Budapest, I need Budapest. She makes me happy, she is the thing that pours all that life and light into me. There's no way I could leave a place like this. There's no way I could give up a love like this. 

And so I changed my mind about moving home. I decided to stick it out with Budapest. This time I will not give up when times get tough, this time I am not gonna give in and run home like I did four and a half years ago when all of a sudden I became home- and jobless in the mist of a humid, rainy spring in London. At that time I got so scared and had gained so much bad experience that the best option, well, the only option, was buying a flight ticket and run home ASAP. And so I did. And never returned, even though I ached for classy and beautiful London for so many months. Well, this time the situation is almost as tough, but this time Lessie will not be running home so fast. 

So after work I went back to the dorm, and talked to a few people who either could help me putting a roof over my head in September when I shall be officially homeless or who are in the exact same position as I am - are homeless themselves until they are officially accepted back into the dorm as permanent residents. It turned out that I was not alone with my problem, there are other people who are struggling as much as I am and who are trying to make it work somehow. So I will give it a try too. After all, nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard. But maybe, trying a little harder, not chickening out, I could make things a little less hard.

I am not going to quit my job, I am not going to move home, I am going to stick it out, and fight until all hell breaks lose. I may need a little help from my friends though, since I don't know how to do it any better just on my own. I'm just going to have to depend on them this time. I may not like it, may not want to do it this way, it actually may be the last thing I would ever be willing to do - I mean hellooo, I am the single daughter of a single parent who's been fed, clothed, and educated since she was 3 by no one else than her hardworking mother without any help from anyone, and for whom the core values are personal freedom and independence - but I don't have any other choice right now. So in September I will have to crash here and there, and hope that I will have roof over my head and some sort of a bed under my butt every night. 

Oh, boy, did making this decision relief a hell of a lot of anxiety in me! All of a sudden things became calm and peaceful again, and I could go back into procrastinating mode and enjoy the just returned summer days in Budapest - especially with all that freetime on my hands as I had hardly an lessons to give. In those days I admired roaming the streets day and night like we owned the town, hopping on and off of yellow, stale aired trams, drinking beer, sitting in old but ever so comfortable armchairs in hipster cafes, sipping cups of sweet  and smooth melanges and listening to the humming noice of the fan in the background while the heat was unbearable on the streets of the city, hitting independent, foreign language bookstores as tiny as my palm and browsing books for hours, buying volumes and wasting money just because I felt like it, taking photos of pretty little nonsenses and grand cliches so we could pretend to be tourists any time we want, going to yet another Szabó Balázs concert so we could feel that boldog a vérkép and shout at the top of our lungs szívem milyen kemény, szívem milyen kemény neked, then whisper from the deepest of our souls- or what's left of it- that rebbenő szemmel ülök a fényben and lélek vagyok, élni szeretnék. 

And then, during the extatic moments of applause it hit me: I am a soul, and I am alive, more than I have ever been because I am here, I am free, making the most of it, trying my best, sucking as much marrow out of life as I can. And I would not change it, not even for all the tea in China, because this is it, this is where I have always wanted to be, this is what I have always imagined for myself: I am free and reckless, I am seizing the days, never caring about the tomorrows, not minding that I'll have to live on memories when I run out of bread and coffee.  I am living, eating, sleeping, and drinking life, I burn, burn, burn like a thousand yellow Roman candles, okay, maybe not a thousand, maybe only a dozen, still I provide plenty of light. And after all, our twenties are the best years of our lives, cause we are young and reckless, and freedom and books and music and coffee and beer are plenty of enough to live on when you live in the city, in the middle of the world.  

I may be screwed up and broke, and could not be any further from perfection, yet, I don't think I  could be anything other than me, because I have always wanted to be like this, sometimes carefree, sometimes careless, living large - in that good old bittersweet Hungarian way I love and enjoy so much: being young, still believing that I can be anything I want to be, knowing that I will end up where I am supposed to do: living even larger, more free and independent. And then I also realize that freedom and indepence come with a great amount of risk and uncertainty. Freedom might be liberating, but it is never safe. If I should ever seek security, I must give up looking for freedom and settle for strings, for freedom and security never come in the same package, but liberty and uncertainty do.

They may have been delirious with joy, those days of peace and procrastination went by fast, and on Tuesday evening, as I was packing my unneeded stuff to be dragged home, reality and anxiety hit me in the face again. I kept thinking about tiny details of how I am going to make it through September being homeless and all, and hour by hour I kept chickening out even more. Then came the days of a hardly bearable, horrible migraine, and bouts of anxiety. By Friday all I could think about was giving in and giving up. I imagined myself lying down on the hot, bare ground of an enormous field, sun shining, heat burning, sweatdrops rolling down on every curvy part of my body, light going out my mind, dying, dying, dying, like one tiny little yellow candle, ever so slowly.

But then, after hours and hours of suffering, after I hit rock buttom, the rollercoaster  started going upwards again, and I found myself pissed for being such a coward chicken, for giving up so easily. But I was not pissed only at myself but at life too. All I felt like doing was yelling at the top of my lung:  

FUCK YOU, LIFE! I am twenty-four years old and I have NOTHING to lose. I am way too young to spend my days worrying, to play it safe and not take any risks because of my cowardice. I may have to go down, but then I'm gonna go down like a boss. So bring it on, bitch. You ain't gonna make me shit my pants. Bring it on, bring it on all you've got, I'm gonna look you in the face, and take whatever you've got for me. If you decide to throw lemons at me, then fine, let them be lemons. But you better hand me at least a dozen of them, cause I am not only going to suck out all of the vitamin C and  yell EAT THAT, LIFE!, but I'm going to make lemonade too, then  find somebody with a bottle of vodka, ask for tequilla and salt too, and have one hell of a party with my friends. Now how does that sound for a plan, bitch?! 

Cause that's how I roll.

And now, after I settled things with life, I am alright, it's all peace and quite around here, I am back to being me,  free and reckless. I am going back to Budapest tomorrow evening, I am still kind of homeless, and I only hope that things will turn out at least okay-ish for me. And if not, then... well, then we will see. And after we have seen it all, we are going to have that hell of a party with all that lemon I got.

On the Phone

A: By the way what are you doing? Am I not disturbing you?

Me: Stroking my books.

A: What?

Me: I am standing in front of my bookcase and stroking my books.

A: Right. Like other people stroke cats and you stroke books.

Me: Exactly.

The awkward moment...

...when it's past 1.30AM on a Sunday night, you are scrolling through your tumblr dashboard 'cause you suffer from summer insomnia and, at the same time, wonder about - for the ten thousandth time - getting the words scribo ergo sum tattooed on the inside of your wrist... but, then you think, you don't want to get it done until you actually wrote something.

... and then, this appears on your screen.

Yep, it hit the nail right on the head.

Un/original

 RANTING ON

EVERY SINGLE TIME (so in about every 6 months when I work up the courage and I am able to get through my laziness), when it comes to submitting my photos to a certain photo contest and I go through my photographs to pick one or two to send in, I have to realize  (and get frustrated about) how UNORIGINAL my pictures are. Seriously, they could not get any more commercial than this. It's like I was taking the most boring, most cliche-ish photos intentionally, like I was in the run for the most unoriginal amateur photographer ever. Well, congratulations to me, cause' I won the big prize, no doubt about that. 

I just wish that this phase of my photography "career" (*caugh*caugh*) would be over, and I moved on to less cliche-ish compositions already. 

Tonight is the deadline for submitting photos to this contest. Since it's about Budapest and it's both for amateurs and professionals, I thought I would  send in a few, cross my fingers and hope that I get lucky. I have just scanned through my photoblog looking for a photo that shows a new, underground-ish side of Budapest. Obviously, there's no such thing among  my photos. Surprize, surprize. I really really should start digging deeper and shoot more people. (I mean with my camera.)

Until then, I will just have to submit totally unoriginal photos, just for the hell of it.

RANTING OFF.

PS: This is my photoblog. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share that with me. The deadline is midnight, and I can submit as many as 10 photographs.

PPS: You can look at already submitted photos here. There are some very creative ones. 


UPDATE:
I've just looked through all 1223 (as of now) submitted photos. (Yes, I do like spending hours looking at photos.) Apparently, I am not the only one who takes most of her photos of buildings, landscapes, or totally unoriginal compositions. 


Photographs and/or photographers whose work I like the most (in no particular order)
http://indafoto.hu/Baloghz (these are exceptional. should be in National Geographic Magazine!)
http://indafoto.hu/torobala
http://indafoto.hu/ZoltanPek
http://indafoto.hu/zoliologia
http://indafoto.hu/Bolla_Laszlo
http://indafoto.hu/dismay
http://indafoto.hu/yan
http://indafoto.hu/bigjoe001/image/11768199-98afbedc/gyujtemeny/1005
http://indafoto.hu/zati/image/11115395-93c8fe0b/gyujtemeny/1005
http://indafoto.hu/imolafoto/image/12761589-b0322588/user
http://indafoto.hu/mst/image/12659255-b6c3282b/user
http://indafoto.hu/popcornplayah/image/1490461-9393627e/gyujtemeny/1005


UPDATE #2:
In the end I dedided to submit these photos:
http://indafoto.hu/cziffraandi
Now wish me luck.:)

“Leaving any bookstore is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and glares, and the books inside are cool and crisp to the touch; especially on a day in January, when the wind is blowing, the ice is treacherous, and the books inside seem to gather together in colorful warmth. It’s hard to leave a bookstore any day of the year, though, because a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.” Jane Smiley

My Blueberry Sunrise

Before reading the following post, please put this song on. 

Elizabeth: So what's wrong with the Blueberry Pie?
Jeremy: There's nothing wrong with the Blueberry Pie, just people make other choices. You can't blame the Blueberry Pie, it's just... no one wants it.
Elizabeth: Wait! I want a piece.

And so did I. Ever since I saw that charming movie, My Bluberry Nights I always wanted to try a piece of blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. (This is the movie in which Norah Jones had her first and only role on the big screen. Boy, had I been looking forward to it because of Norah! And the always sexy Jude Law. And the always beautiful Rachel Weisz. ) That was about three or four years ago, and, even though I found a neat recipe on the internet, blueberries were nowhere to be found in my neck of the woods, not even frozen ones. Although I really really wanted to trick my grandma into baking me a bluberry pie, the main ingredient was missing, hence my plan fell through. However, eventually, every once in a while I would come across some (dubiously) fresh blueberries at tesco's, but these were sold in such small portions (125g a box, I think), and so expensive (about 2200-2500 HUF/kg), that I always talked myself out of buying them. Especially since I needed about half a kilo of blueberries to make one pie.

But then, about two months ago, all of a sudden I bumped into frozen blueberries at tesco's which were/are sold relatively cheap, at the price of 400 HUF/300g. Now that really turned me on! I bought a pack, and the day before we went to see the sunrise I baked my first blueberry pie with Zsö. It turned out marvellously! Although the blueberries were not fresh, the pie ended up being really delicious, and, not at all complicated to make. Most certainly worth to try it out once or twice. However, next time I will substitute the blueberries with sour cherries, I am pretty sure it will be just as yummy, and only a tiny bit sourer. (I love sour fruits, so that won't scare me away.)

Here is the recipe we used: 

Ingredients for pie crust: (source)

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, chilled and diced
• 1/4 cup ice (= really cold) water

Ingredients for filling: (source)

• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch plain flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 cups fresh blueberries  (I only had one pack = 300g ~ 2 cups of blueberries. It was enough, but the pie will most certainly be richer if you add at least 500g or 2 packs of blueberries.)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). 
2. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. (The original recipe does not include sugar, however, it could have used one or two spoonfuls, to make the crust a bit sweeter.) Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. (I never had the time and the patience to refrigerate the dough. We rolled it into the cake pan right after making it. Still, it worked out fine.)
3. Divide the dough into two, to 2:1 ratio. (So one ball is twice as big as the other.)
4. Roll the bigger dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.  
5. To make the filling, mix sugar, flour, salt, and cinnamon, and sprinkle over blueberries. 
6. Pour berry mixture into the crust, and dot with butter. Cut remaining pastry into 1/2 - 3/4 inch wide strips, and make lattice top. Crimp and flute edges. 
7. Bake pie on lower shelf of oven for about 50 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. ( I don't think we baked it for more than 30 minutes. It is sufficient enough. And 220° is too high, about 175° is high enough, otherwise the crust will burn in a few minutes and the filling won't be baked.)

Have fun baking & then enjoy the pie!

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.” Sylvia Plath

mistakes i know i am making

WARNING: the following text is the combination of endless whining, ranting, babbling, scribbling, and stream of consciousness thinking without one clear point in mind. this is not a beneficial text. neither is it an entertaining one. in fact, you may want to skip it completely, and move to the next post (in case there is one). however, you are best off by simply shutting down your computer and reading a book instead. any book. twilight and fejős éva books excluded, i mean. (i would not call those books, anyway. so you shouldn't either.)

if you are still reading this post, you should note that by reading it all the way through - in case you manage to hold out that long - you may realize:

a, what a pathetic person i am

b, how much i like to feel sorry for myself and drown in my own sorrow

c, how broke i am

d, how pointless being an english/ american studies major is

d, how it is not worth to go to university and earn a degree at all. and spend all that money on it.

so here comes the endless whining:

i am so bloody fallen apart. i feel two rather heavy, hard rocks the size of my fist in/on my body. one is in my stomach. the other is on my chest. oh, and there's a lump too. now that one is in my throat. all very comfortable. and they are getting more and more comfortable by every hour. i dont think they are planning to go away in the next three or four months. or at least until i more or less manage to sort myself out. or until i find a more or less steady job that pays at least the minimum wage. 

i am not sure that's how my great, marvellous liberty is supposed to feel.

i think that's how unbearable liberty is supposed to feel.

about a week ago i learnt that i cannot stay in the student hostel from september. even though i have been living here for four years, i know everybody around here and everybody knows me around here (meaning that i have connections in this neck of the woods), i should pull some serious strings and lick quite a few bottoms just to attempt to sort out my staying here. i don't think that will happen. and not just because i am not ready to lick asses. i am not broken in enough. even if i did lick them, i dont think i could sort things out. i dont even know whether i want to sort them out. i dont know whether i want to stay here.

anyway, yesterday my two-week vacation breakation ended. and i came back to budapest with the intention of working at the language school for another two or three weeks, then leave my job, and move home on the 1st of september. then start looking for a job, and, hopefully, find something that i dont loath completely, and start working. or, worst case scenario, find anything that hires and pays me.

then yesterday, on my way back to budapest i got a phone call and i learnt that 4/5 of lessons are cancelled for the next two weeks. meaning that, instead of about 20 lessons per week, i will only give about four or five lessons in the next fortnight. great, isn't it? now that really pissed me off. that's hell of a lot of money i had planned to earn and had counted on, yet, i won't be able do so. had i known things would turn out this way, i would have moved home 1st august. i could have saved myself from some serious expenses. it is just not worth it for me to hang around in budapest in august. financially, i mean. and it's all because of some idiot and lazy teenager who decided to ditch her language exam and postpone her lessons with me. it is just really pissing me off. she wants to have her remaining lesson in november. well, guess what? i won't be hanging around here those days. (unfortunately.)

and i still do not know what to do.

now i most certainly cannot afford to stay here, not with all that money lost. (now, at this point you may ask: how can it be lost when it wasn't even earned? well, it was counted on.)

and i am freaking out, i am scared to death that i will not be able to find any job at home. (now, that's what i call some serious quarter life panic.) 

i mean, common, it's borsod, that's where the unemployment rate is the highest in the country.

and it's also where the level of culture the lowest, probably. 

i do not want to move back home, my heart is keep whispering me to stay here, stick around budapest. i am happy here. i love the place. there are opportunities here. i could probably find a job here much easier than in miskolc.

but then my mind answers my heart. as a matter of fact, he can't stop telling her off (yep, in my thinking my mind is male, whereas my heart is a female. typical stereotypes of the sexes, huh?): yeah, stupid, but you just cannot afford sticking around. you are broke as hell. you were never the kind of grasshopper who thought about winter at all. you are the kind of grasshopper who is a true free spirit, who always seizes the day, lives for the moment, and never cares for tomorrow. hence, you burn yourself every once in a while. and suffer all right, and get pulled deep down under water by those heavy rocks in your stomach and on your chest. and that enormous lump miriculously transfers into tears all of a sudden, and they come, bubbling out of the corner of your eyes when you least expect them. now that's the kind of grasshopper you are. the kind for whom life is not a journey up on a hill, but a rollercoaster with constant rotation of heaven and hell. naaa, you are not the cold-headed kind, who always plans ahead, and who executes those plans perfectly. you are the what-the-hell kind.

and now here i am burning, and being pulled under water by those big rocks. falling deeper and deeper. i wonder when i will hit bottom rock.

and i still don't know what to do.

well, actually, i do.

since i don't have a choice, i just move home in a couple of weeks, and start looking for some shitty job.

by the way, who was that idiot that said that your twenties are the best years of your life? he must have been high during that decade.

i should have stayed a child forever.

or i should have found a better way to ignore reality completely.

i guess i will be watching the graduate and post-grad quite a few times in the next couple of months.

now these are those trully marvellous anxiety-ridden days of quarter life panic i will hopefully look back on in a few years and note to myself that i have managed to get through them too. this shall too pass, right?

these are also the days i should take good notes of cause i might turn them into a book one day.

i wonder whether anybody would read it.

(ps: i wonder why i always feel better after writing. i guess i should stick with the darn thing. the rocks got a teeny bit smaller.)

Na milyen ez az érzés, hogy boldog a vérkép?

I've been off-work for over a week now, away on a two-week holiday. Even though I cannot afford a proper vacation this year either, I'm trying to fill my off-days with as much fun and entertainment as possible, despite of the autumnish weather and all the things I can't stop worrying about. 

On the first day of my breakation I ended up going to a Szabó Balázs Band concert with Zsö and K. They are pretty much my favorite Hungarian band, especially since I hardly listen to any Hungarian music at all, and SZBB is kind of the only band I like. This was the second concert of theirs that I ever attended. The first was back in May (or April?), during Bölcsész-days at the university when they played in Könyvtár Klub. The place was completely packed, the acoustics were kind of crapy (even though I don't know much about acoustics, you could simply hear it), you could literally not drop a needle, and neither could you see through all that cigarette smoke. Clearly, Könyvtár Klub was not the best venue, especially for a band that is so popular among humanities students. 

This time both the place and the audience was quite different: the concert was held at Millenáris, on a chilly Saturday evening at the end of July. We were not wedged in between the four walls of a tiny, stale-aired pub, neither were the cigarette smoke visible, if there was any in the air. There weren't more than a couple of hundred people assembled in the beginning of the concert. (Were there even two hundred? It was actually closer to one hundred, I reckon.) Yet, the atmosphere was fantastic and absolutely cheerful from the very first chords. Szabó Balázs was in an utterly entertaining mood, the whole performance much resembled a concert/stand up-comedy evening combo, rather than just a simple music concert. SZB is most certainly not only an extremely talented (or should I say brilliant?) musician, but a hilarious entertainer with a great sense of humour and, as a bonus, ridiculous trapeze pants of his own. 

Despite the previously mentioned pants - or thanks to them? - it was one hell of a fun concert that I wished could have, would have lasted longer than an hour and a half. I bet I wasn't the only one doing such wishing, as there were at least three (or maybe even four?) "very last songs". Seriously, this guy is so talented, with such a sweet, soothing, yet outstanding voice, that I could listen to him recite a washing machine manual, I still would not mind, would not get bored of it; in fact, I would enjoy it to the very last syllable. 

That's most certainly not the muled wine talking in me, because we drank it all - accompanied by pretzels - on that not-so-chilly fun Saturday night, at the very end of July.