Get lost

The local festival Fringe is back, so this week I went with some friends to see Going on the way to get lost. This play was a 90 minute long internal monologue of a 30 year old girl from Tokyo, played out through her and her dead sister, unborn child, ex-lovers and parents.

There was definitely some good stuff, like how the scenes were woven together in the weirdest ways, the very same way our dreams and daydreams can go through time and space with little effort. A very tall mother reveals the father upon whose shoulder she is literally sitting, and the father becomes an old lover, who then gets a toothache that turns into a gynecological scene with plenty of Japanese porn references about the aching hole and then she slips into herself (in classic Pedro Almodovar style, think Habla con ella) rents out her inner space a combined uterus and heart with a great view over Tokyo and eventually she climbs up Tokyo Tower and the play is over.

A minor detail that pissed me off was the translation that was shown on a screen above the actors. Five minutes of Japanese chattering and expressive "ooohhh's and aaaahh's" gets a freaking single line at the translation board. It felt JUST LIKE the scene in Lost in Translation when Bill Murray gets a really long speech from the director, and the translator just says "turn and look into the camera" (YouTube clip here where some wonderful people have actually translated everything in the comment section). Operas are okay in a foreign language with subtitles. Theater not so much.

As getting lost, losing one's mind and the general feeling of not knowing what the f#ck life is really all about, is as we all know a very common feeling, unfortunately this particular play didn't exactly contribute to neither a sense of "yeah that's like my life, right there!" or some sort of revelation that
'getting lost was an illusion I'm so on my way to success and eternal happiness". Nevertheless, I enjoyed the gathering, the play and the hot chocolate at the after-talk with my friends.

Moving on. Where I live one has to walk 4 flights of stairs before reaching home. There is no elevator, no light and basically no isolation so we all hear what happens out in the hallway. In addition I think the stairs are uneven, and they turn around in a very unsatisfying way at odd levels, which makes a discreet homecoming from late night adventures very close to impossible. I have indeed managed to walk straight into a couple of people, I have fallen and I have stumbled.  Still someone has mysteriously managed to bring a huge refrigerator to the second floor of the stairs. It looks old, so maybe it is on its way out. But how how how did it get there?!?! Who carried it silently in the middle of the night? Because it appeared overnight. Suspicious in itself right?!

Finally a little baby talk, as the whole getting lost thing gets so much more interesting when you throw a new little person in the mix. One of my friends just had a baby - big up and major congratulations. Another friend is in her fifth year of trying and hoping, another friend just found out she's accidentally pregnant. Another friend is missing her lost child and it pains me to tears every time I think about it. And lastly another one has decided she does not want kids at all, a decision she has to fight for on a multitude of levels.

In discussions of me leaving Hubby, it is one of the most common things people have said. "At least you don't have any kids, so that's good." Yes, naturally things would have been different if we would have had kids. We might not even be in Singapore if that were the case. I find it an odd, yet understandable thing to say. I say it myself at times, as it makes conversations easier and to cheer up the topic somehow. Our choice to not have a kid in a situation where we were happily married, has now become a trump card when separating. Great.

'Nuff said, the weekend has arrived and it's time to get lost in the glory of Friday fever, Saturday boogie-woggie, Sunday brunch recovery and unwinding. Next week I'll apply for a million jobs and get lots of stuff done. :)