This unbearable word starting with 'F'

 I posted a facebook status which was my translation of some punk song's chorus. 'My freedom is none of your sin'. Only two of my friends commented on it. The rest of them probably thought about sex. 

 One of my ex-boyfriends always had problem with the words starting with 'F'. I never found out what was the reason, but somehow all of the 'F' words annoyed him, making his hands shaking and finding him going out for a cigarette in the middle of a sever winter. I was trying to find a word with 'F' completely unarmed, not able to harm by any double meaning, but then I understood that there is no such a word. Somehow, the word starting with an 'F' always has a deep meaning, recalling the demons from the outside, and at the same time sadly calm and tragic in it's constancy.

 'F...f...f..reedom'

 I deeply believe that the 'F' beginning the word 'Freedom' is not an accident. To pronounciate it, you have to let out a regular whistle of an air through your closed lips, with a little help of your upper teeth. There is something rebelious about it: your lips are getting closer to each other and your teeth try to block the corridor of your speech, and this small stream of the air is getting released as a prisoner escaping despite the guards and the fact, that outside nothing nice will really welcome them. 

'The wanderer stays in the city and gets a job. My heart is not happy.'

I Ching Chinese Oracle

Something sad has happened to me recently. I lost the friend. 

 I didn't lose them for real- I just lost them from my eyes as he moved out of the country to travel and find his freedom. 

 Admiting- they are my favourite music band. They left London to go on tour and then find a cheaper place in the world, so they can become full time musicians. But before it happened, I understood that what some people call 'sane' others rather call 'completely insane' and even if two people say 'sane' at the same time they can mean it but because of two different reason.

 Over the past week many thoughts have crossed my mind, as the autumn had been coming announcing a year of my existance in London, and my first friend in this city was about to leave. I tried to recall our first talk in the pub in Covent Garden and I surprisingly doscovered, that back then Freedom seemed to have for us a completely different meaning, but at the meantime tricky and leading to the same, the same point it led us until now. It was inevitable. 

 Everybody was happy for them. And proud, of course. We were proud to know them, to be their friends, family or colleagues, and in a pervert way we were proud to lick the facade of this 'artsy' lifestyle. When they announced their decision about moving out and choosing a gipsy life (this is how my friend described it yesterday- the band would be proud) everybody understood them. Everybody was proud and happy for them- but everybody claimed that personally they would never to it. Incompatibility? It gave me an idea that This Awful Word Starting With 'F' already mixed in my friends' minds, so the dread follows. 

 To expose this problem, all you need to do is a facebook status (or other social media tool with an access to random public). When I posted 'My freedom is none of your sin' I noticed quickly how easily my friends applied a sexual meaning connection to the phrase. Actually the full piece was going like this: 'When I say freedom you threaten me with war even if I just want to cross the road. So when I say freedom don't say I'm not allowed because my freedom is none of your sin.' Of course, the word 'sin' is not without a guilt either. But from the other hand, the symbol of a sin has a great tradition in European culture, it says a lot about conscience and spirituality. So how have we come to the moment when every word with the background within the tradition of culture seems to be connected with reproduction?

 Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to accuse modern society of a lack of morals. I just would like to explain that when my friends left to find their Freedom their principals were not about spending a life drinking vodka and enjoying the pleasure with random people. They left to make music- their choice for the lifetime, because economical reasons didn't let them concentrate of what they loved. Which led to limiting of their freedom. 

 So why does This Unbearable Word Starting With 'F' not scare me? Because it's a simple freedom of choice. Freedom of spending your life the way you want and doing what you want. Freedom is a state of mind. 

 - You are not free if you cannot concentrate on what you want to do or what you love to do, because of being forced to put something else above it- told me my friend last time when we had a chance to speak any longer.- You can do what you want, you have money to do that, but so what if you don't have a time. This is time what you need, as much time as you can get to dedicate to your own life and own dreams. Limitation is the lack of the time.

 After this phrase, Frank smiled behind me correcting his glasses with one finger. His name also starts with 'F'.