Math Problems and the People I Don't Know That Well
The two things I’ve been afraid of for most of my life are dealing with Math problems and the people I don’t know that well. If I had to choose, I think I’d take people over Math, as they are a bit more willing to give you the answers you are looking for. Probably, you won’t be graded as hard, either, or the very least, no one will be running around with a red pen and screaming, why you are so stupid. I still think Math teachers are a different breed of human beings, but we can talk about that some other time. I’ll end on this note – they knew better than to scream at ME.
I’ve got rid of Math and all its problems for good now, but the shyness remains the most loyal of companions. It just wanes or gains in shape, depending on the phase of my life and the company I keep. It had a full pearly face and blood-red cheeks yesterday, but today as each of us got to speak, first individually and then to each other, it started waning and waning and, eventually, looked like one of those lifeless, ghostlike crescent moons in the daylight. It was there, but nobody cared.
The conversations we had today, though brief, were very sweet to me as I could sense the same skinny ghostlike moon looming over everyone else’s heads. Perhaps that’s why I feel so at peace in the company of writers – they don’t have to be too bubbly or talk too much for their words and their presence to mean something. From all the talks I’ve had today, what hit closest to home was my conversation with Sam, regarding atheism. As someone who’s from a deeply religious background (like most of the participants I think), it was not easy to admit to myself I did not buy half of the things my religion was selling. Unlike Sam, I still very much tiptoed around the word “atheist” and decided I was probably agnostic, which if any of the Christian teachings about afterlife are true, will probably get me a B+ in hell.
Sam thinks this life is all we’ve got and we ourselves are the only ones responsible for it and he seems to be okay with that, which to me is brave. But maybe because some part of me has not fully grown up yet and still wants to feel like a special, destiny-favored princess, powdered with star dust and all of that, I keep believing some magical forces are protecting and guiding us up to the starry stepladder towards the limitless sky. Or maybe they are just guiding those who believe.
Mariam Gurgenishvili
My name is Mariam, like any other girl’s, born during the 90’s in Georgia. In my case, it was 1996 and late May – a month of clear, balmy days and enthusiastic, newly awakened mosquitos. Ever since then, each and every birthday I had to listen to the toasts of my father’s friends about Jesus and Mary, how I was a bearer of the greatest name and had to lead an equally great, worthy-of-the-name life. Often mid-toasts I felt like asking them to focus a little on me, too.
Despite all the birthday wishes, ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a witch and a writer. Perhaps it began at the gates of Villa Villekula where I met Pippi who could do anything or in the magical forest where the little witch lived with her talking raven, Abraxas. In any case, I started daydreaming and writing around eight years old and still have tons of finished and unfinished stories from my primary school years, partly inspired by Colombian soap operas I watched with my grandmothers and partly by the tales of Hans Christian Andersen I read every night. I wrote all those stories during my gym classes where some part of my body was always hurting and I needed to be invalided out and carried inside a school library. I used to sit there gleefully and write about John Smiths and Bridget Watsons who drank Gin and Tonic and ate pineapple cubes with sugar coating and called one another “darling” and “beloved”, instead of “dumbhead” and “scumbag”, like the women in my neighborhood called their husbands. I was seventeen years old when I took a part in an exchange program and went to the United States to study there for a year. I have met many John Smiths and Bridget Watsons I had been admiring from books and films before, I tried pineapple cubes too for the first time (too young for Gin & Tonic), got called “darling”, “sweetie” and “love” and had a beautiful experience overall, but my deepest feelings, impressions and memories still belonged to the people I had left behind. People who had never tried pineapple cubes or Gin & Tonic in their lives. Those were the people that raised me and the people I grew up with. My first novel “Pearls”, which debuted in 2021, is a collection of those childhood impressions and memories, not only mine, but also of my mother and my grandmothers. It is mainly inspired by the women in my family and is about sisterhood and survival during the 90’s Georgia. I want to keep telling stories of young girls and women who were silenced, who were made to believe they were unimportant, so that those stories can bring them back their voices and their strength to make big old mountains tremble like tiny baby leaves. For me to continue writing, especially about the topics that require both courage and delicacy, I will have to grow, learn and evolve myself and I am deeply grateful that I am given the chance to do so.
