Ani Alexander

1999 (Flash Fiction)

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I don’t have a time machine… but I can go back in time and re-create the reality of the past. Not that I live in the past and am not happy about the present, but sometimes I get nostalgic feeling. Sometimes I miss who I was before. I miss the places and people, I miss the extremely intense feelings only the first experiences bring and the careless lifestyle only the very young people have.

Today I went back exactly 15 years. I walked back all those 15 years one by one to get to 1999… Back then my life was full of dreams and hopes. Back then I did not know that none of them would come true. The hopes were destroyed and the dreams replaced by the reality later. The second half of the 1999 was the year that changed my life and turned it upside down. But that was after the time I went back to in my mind.

All the changes and events that happened during those 15 years melted now. I re-created the time, when I was still blissfully ignorant and the dreams and the hopes were still walking next to me in the rhythm of my high heels ticking on the asphalt.

I don’t have a time machine… but I can go back and re-create the reality of the past. How? Easy and fast…

First I took the perfume I had back then and sprayed it at my hair. Then I went to my laptop and put on the earphones. The songs, which inspired me back then left the earphones and flew to my ears. Once the cold bottle of beer was open I had all that was needed. Then I closed my eyes and opened my senses. The sounds of music that spread inside me brought back the old me. I shook my head and the scent of the perfume coming from my hair reminded me of different events and people. Slowly, minute after minute, I was approaching 1999…

I felt young again. Young, confident, maybe lonely but still happy… Life was full of expectations… Back then I did not know that I will face tough choices. Even worse, that at some point I will not have even a single choice. Back then I lived for the moment and did not realize that for 15 years I will be re-visiting those moments with bitter sweet feelings.

Memories can get funny sometimes. They come to my mind like completely unrelated snapshots.

I recall my favorite trousers, God knows why. In my memories I watch myself sitting on the windowsill watching the rain outside. The raindrops hit the glass and slide down and I follow them with my finger from my side of the glass. I recall a friend who died in a car crash when he was only 19. Also I recalled the times, when I drank martini from a teacup – in darkness and silence… and alone. There were long distance phone calls and questions from mum and many untold secrets she will never know about. Me riding a bike in the park… The melting balance of my bank account… The biggest bookstore I had seen by then… Few dates with friends, that stayed only friends… My white hat, which looked awkward with my black military coat but I wore them together anyway… the rock concerts that made my soul sing… My first short stories typed on ancient desktop… the Internet dial up sound… the day and the shop where I bought the perfume, which I can smell on my hair now… the cute shop assistant in Massimo Dutti I never got the courage to approach… the city that I am still in love with… my graduation ceremony to which no one from my family came… first trip to Amsterdam… my broken arm… me sitting on a suitcase and crying because I did not want to leave…

1999 – just 4 numbers next to each other, but such an intense year. A year, which I will never forget in my life… The year, which brought me to where I am now…The year, which eventually made me who I am now… 1999 – when I was both the happiest and the most miserable in my life.

The year I can go back to anytime without a time machine!

Life & Writing Opportunities

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Aghveran

Did you know that if you close your eyes facing towards the sun you’ll see very nice bright colors inside your  head. The colors will be changing and vary from yellow to bright red with a bright orange and all shades  in- between those. You will enjoy the esthetically pleasant sensations.

Well I didn’t know either, until one day when I was writing in the balcony just before the sunset. When the  sun came out and started kissing my face I decided to take a moment and concentrate on the nice sensations. So I took out the sunglasses and closed my eyes facing the sun.

 Why am I telling you this you would wander and what does it have to do with writing?

Well, while watching those nice colors I realized how important the opportunities are. I thought that we       never know what the opportunity will bring until we try something new. In the above example, just one   small and unusual act brought me to a completely new place. A place I had never been before.

I think one should pay attention to different potential opportunities. The same goes for the writing.

Sometimes the problem is that we are so obsessed with the book we are writing, that we don’t notice other things around us. We might be so focused on the initial plot of the novel that we miss the nice new twist that was not initially planned.

When I was writing my first novel I thought about the characters and re-lived the story day and night. At that period I stopped driving a car, because I sometimes forgot to look at the streetlights and signs. And what happens when we get obsessed with our book? Well, besides the fact that the chances are that we will actually finish it this time, we might also miss opportunities.

The most frequent question I am getting these days is how did I find a publisher.

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Well, actually my literary agency found the publisher, not me. But I was the one who found the literary agency.

And how did it happen?

Well, I just saw their Facebook post stating that they were looking for English writers. Although I am not English, but I had books written and self published in English. So I jumped at the opportunity and contacted them. And things worked out…

If I did not notice the Facebook post, if I thought too long over whether to write them or not, nothing would have happened. Maybe nothing would have happened even after I did. That was possible too. But I would never know if I did not try.

Life is full of possibilities. We simply need to be open and flexible enough to embrace them. Pay attention to the opportunities that come your way and they may take you to a better place or change your life completely.

Just go ahead, write your best book, overcome self-doubt, don’t miss the opportunities that are around you and believe that everything is possible!

P.S. I took this photo on the day I spoke about from the balcony where I was writing just before the sunrise.

You’re alive!

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When love knocks your soul

When jealousy puts its foot on your throat

When passion makes you breathless

When everything else seems senseless

When music plays on your soul’s strings

When creativity makes strong kicks

When words are born in your mind

When feelings are storming inside

When curiosity hugs you

When excitement wraps you

When you find new insight

When your dreams become bright

When there are hopes, plans and fears

When there are joy, love and tears

… Then you are alive!…

Beer memories

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With each sip of beer a memory enters my mind … Memories,which have nothing in common,which are from different periods of mylife and which are nothing more than just memories. Most of them don’t come back to me while I am sober J
Sip 1
Tbilisi… Nice city… City where part of my blood was made. I can feel and breathe it. I can identify myself to it, although last time I was here when I wa
s about 5. Back then I was here with my parents and no matter how strange it might sound I felt that I would not come back in a long while. I am back now – almost 30 years later…This time I am here with someone, who has become part of me. Someone with whom we walked through pain right into Tbilisi…

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Midnight in Paris

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I could not skip Woody Allen’s new film and watched it with great pleasure. It seems that Woody has become milder and more romantic with the age. His sarcasm and irony have become smoother and this film was almost poetic, although still Allen-ish.

Here are moments from the film, which seemed striking to me.

The hero is absorbed with extreme admiration for Paris, but unfortunately he shares it with the wrong people. It seems that he is so very out of place and so misunderstood…

As a counter fact his fiancée adores her friends (married couple) almost as much as he adores Paris.

His fiancé, her parents and her friends are so…hmmm how to put it in exact words. Well they are people who prefer Californian wine, as opposed to French wine. It says it all, I guess.

The hero is drunk and alone, walking in Paris empty streets. What can be better? Only a trip to the past J

Shaking hands with Scot Fitzgerald, talking to Hemingway and Picasso, drinking with Dali… amazing how happy everyone ”back there is”. It’s all about drink, laugh and music. It is peaceful place with no worries. That just illustrates hero’s nostalgic idealization of the past.

Did the scenes from the present get on your nerves too? It seems that Woody managed to show the contrast between guy’s feelings in the past and in the present and how unpleasant the present is to him. Guy’s fiancée and others are distracting and annoying the viewer. We want to just get rid of them.

The scene when they go from the past to the past. I guess it shows that when real feelings, such as love, excitement, pleasure, passion, anticipation and others are there the time does not matter.

The sad fact that most of great men would like to go back to the past because they think that in the past people were better… Does it mean that regression, degradation and devaluation are permanent processes?

And the last question, which was turning in my head, was why? Why didn’t he stay in the past, where he fitted better? There was nothing in the present which could possibly keep him – nothing worth coming back to. Don’t tell me he was serious when he was telling about the antibiotics, which did not exist in the past