Armenian Women's National Football Team

Well, it's soccer in North America, but everyone else (read: the rest of the world) calls it football, so there you have it :)

I had the chance to watch Armenian Women's Football Team play Finland a couple of weeks ago, and though we lost, I was glad to have been there. First of all, I'd never been to Hrazdan Stadium where the match was held, and second of all, I'd never seen a football game live in a stadium, much less one with women's teams, before.

I'm not really one for watching sports, but if there was any one sport I'd watch regularly, it would be football (ok, soccer).

Watching the game was a nice break from the routine of my days: wake up, eat breakfast, prepare lunch, bike to work, work like mad for 8-9 hours straight, bike home, prepare dinner (or go shopping to get items for dinner), eat, relax, go to sleep. Repeat. Sound familiar?

Though I'm not complaining. I do really enjoy my job and I love that it has also given me the opportunity to stay here long-term and to be with the person I love. Of course I miss my family and friends, and there are tons of things I miss about Toronto that I never thought I'd miss (fresh spinach, Dufferin Grove Farmers' Market, Kensington Market, toast in the mornings, gourmet coffee beverages... okay, the last one not that much, but every once in a while, I could do for a not-very-expensive latte :)

But I am glad to be here. The changing of the seasons has brought with it contemplation and an openness to new beginnings. I love the fall. And I am enjoying it here: the colours changing on the leaves, the sunshine on your face, but with a cool breeze in the air.

Trying to settle in to life here, but being in new surroundings always takes a little while to get used to. Luckily, this time I'm not alone ;)

And for those of you who might be wondering, yes, I'm still in love...

It’s about peace

Inner and outer peace. It’s what we strive for… at least in my opinion. To be at peace: at peace with ourselves, at peace in the world. A war-free, conflict-free zone; a place where we can just be. Where we can be all of ourselves, wholly, completely, comfortably. Where we are loved. Completely, for who we are.

I am happy to say that I am at peace. That doesn’t mean I have nothing to strive for, nothing else I want to do, no goal to reach… it just means that I am content. That, at my core, there is peace. There is comfort. There is love. The rest will happen in due course…

Ruminations on a September morning

A man in a grey suit
petting a black dog
soon he is joined by another man
and his purple mini-van
he has come to take
his daughter to school.
She gets in the car
with her backpack on
the man in the grey suit
lights a cigarette
the other man and his daughter
and the purple mini-van
drive away
grey suit remains
content
to just stand there and smoke
and pet the dog
but only occasionally
“A devotee,” he says.

words...

For me, words are precious. They convey a message. They have the power to move you. They set the tone, the mood of a piece. Every word is important. Every decision which determines the inclusion or exclusion of a particular word, phrase, or sentence in a piece is heavily weighted.

But these days, in my day job translating news stories for a local paper, I have had to learn to let go — to loosen, just a little bit, what around here anyway is known as a “khasyat” (my translation: a character trait).

Nobody cares if the word you chose in the piece was exactly the right word (and in my case, accurately translated) — not those who read the news and not those who pump out the stories on a hourly basis. The day’s headlines change so quickly that the story that was breaking news a minute ago — and which I laboured over, noting detail after detail — has moved to an obscure area of the website which nobody has the time to read. Perhaps I’m wrong: perhaps those, at least, who read the news care if the president was “indignant” or simply “angry”, if Armenia and Turkey “establish” relations or they “normalise” them, if a political prisoner was “restrained” or “imprisoned”.

I think even the smallest choices made in presenting the news are important. Especially in today’s political climate and especially when the tendency to speculate is so prevalent in society.

My first night alone

It is the first night since I came to Yerevan that I will be sleeping alone. It is so odd. Before I came, I had been sleeping alone for over six months. But how quickly I became used to a warm body next to mine (well, not just any warm body, but her’s).

It is so odd how one gets used to sleeping alone and then used to sleeping with someone and then suddenly, you have to sleep alone again and something which was in fact preferred and so seemingly natural before seems so much more difficult now.

It’s times like these that I feel the power of my water sign. When I feel the weight of emptiness upon me, but I do not let it envelop me.