Bridges

Some time ago, I read an article about bridges (HERE). Well, not exactly. It was about suicide, and the fascination bridges caused in suicidals. There is one in particular that attracts many:  The Golden Gate, in San Francisco, CA., and a friend mentioned that there´s a movie about that, which I haven´t seen, but planned to. Someday.
Bridges are connections that allow us to reach what was once unreachable. It seems that, for suicidals,  they are seen as exit doors to this life. A passage to a different other, perhaps.
Very few of those who jumped from The Golden Gate lived to tell how it was to nearly die. They had multiple fractures, but before hitting the water, they experienced an euphoric relief while falling, a sense of self-annihilation that then led to the realization suicide was not the solution. It seems the suicide attempt worked as a sort of a rebirth. To a very few.

To Kafka, the bridge is not made of concrete, stones, iron cables; it´s made of flash and bones, a human being fighting not to colapse. The fear of collapsing to the burdens of life, to the cruelty of others, what a powerful metaphor.

Kafka lived a sad, short life. Happiness was always out of his reach, it seems. Tuberculosis killed him at the age of 37. The bridge he needed simply didn´t exist at that time.











It´s hard to go through life without experiencing periods of deep sadness.  Looking for a way out is not an easy task, because, many times, and I know it very well, there´s seems to be none. But there is. And there will be a bridge. No to help you plunge into desperation, but to ease your way out of it. As long as there´s life, there´s hope.

Oddity

I was in between births; my mother´s first, my father´s second child.

My brother, the first. Older, much older than me at that time, eager to plunge into the fleshy years of his adolecence, while I was just unaware of everything. I adored him, and I know he loved me back, but we were light years apart.

Then came my sisters; twins, always together, never alone.

I was the odd. 

Circumstances. Unplanned, mundane sequences of facts. Parts of everybody else´s life. But that was my life.

I was the odd. And I will always be.

  

a million years

I was reading an interview with Alex Kapranos, Franz Ferdinand lead singer, and he mentioned he still feels as he was in his late twenties, or early thirties (not sure), the same age as he started the band. Having a rock band makes you fell like that, forever young. Take a look at Keith Richards. Despite all his creases, he plays and sound as young as he was when he and Mick started the Rolling Stones. The same with Bowie. His new album was probably one of the best of 2013, and he is in his late sixties.
My examples are kind of way up there, right? Not really. It seems to also work for those who happened to have a small band as well. It´s not the success, it´s the attitude.  I´ve  heard the same from a person who once had one. And it´s true, he has that rock n´roll attitude, and that makes all the difference.
I never had a band. I sing, but in private. My first time facing an audience was a stressful experience. Being the center of the attention was never really something I felt comfortable with. I´d rather be on the backstage, but I had no choice, I had to be in the front this time. I did sing, but I´m not sure how.I had the weird feeling of not being able to move my lips, how can someone sing without moving the lips? Anyway, I did, and, when I was done I´ve got some compliments, which means I didn´t blew it completely. What I can say is that I don´t think I´m ready for another try. There is no way I will start a band, so I will not feel young. Or younger.
But, to be honest, I never felt young even when I was. Many of the things my friends enjoyed during our youth weren´t exactly appealing to me. Considering the triad sex, drugs and rock n´roll; except for the least, and I have to confess I had some horrible preferences that I can no longer stand in terms of music; drugs were out of question - I always thought I would better have some control of my mind than no control at all-  ; and sex, well, who can actually brag to have had a satisfying sex life during his/hers teenage years?  I was the introverted type of girl, the one who was always paying attention to the stories told by others much older than me. I liked to read, especially things that I found in my father´s library, and that was when I fisrt read Oscar Wilde for the first time, the portrait of Dorian Gray.  

So maybe by reading that book at that age had affected me  more than I could have imagined at the time. The thing is, in a way, I felt as I was somehow similar to Wilde´s most famous character. I felt I had a million years. I don´t show it, but I do.
When I was autographing my book, I´ve heard from a person that she was expecting to see someone older, someone with more life experience. I just smiled and thought of Dorian, who always looked fresh and younger, but had an old, vicious, imperfect version of himself  hidden  somewhere, and thought: you have no idea.    

.      

Shoes

Shoes, some of my old memories involve observing my feet taking me somewhere; to the kindergarten, wearing a black pair, small steps, one foot in front of the other. I think the grass was green, I mean, grass is always green, but what I wanted to say is I wasn´t dreaming. I´ve heard once we don´t dream in colours, and I don´t know if this is true or not, I hardly ever remember my dreams. Anyway, this is probably one of my oldest memories, my feet walking me to school.

There´s another pair, red ones this time, and I am not going anywhere, I am just spinning around in excitement before my birthday party. I could do that for a long time without getting dizzy, the faster the better, what a strange thing. I just lost this ability of not getting giddy.
What I´ve never lost was an ability to twist my ankles, or maybe an inability to avoid missteps would be a better way to put it, so that´s maybe the main reason why I was always paying attention to my feet.
I like to think my feet took me places and not the other way around, that I was deliberately choosing my paths. That would be the perfect excuse for all the dead ends I faced in my lifetime.  

  

Scars

I have some in my body, remembrances of my mortality, of  my imperfections. Human imperfections, better said, since the wounds inflicted to our bodies heal, tissues recover, but not completely. Warning signs, that´s what scars are, just like those we see on the side of the roads: do not exceed the speed limit, do not pass, keep your right, keep your left. It´s the way nature found to warn us not to exceed our limits, to be more cautious the next time. 

So I have scars, it´s almost impossible to go through life without gaining some during childhood. From that period, I have one on the sole of my foot. It was caused by a huge nail that pierced my skin as I step on it. Frighthening experience from which I have very imprecise memories.  

Others were caused by medical interventions. Two C-sections brought my daughters into this world, so I am very proud of having that one (the incisions were made at the same spot twice, resulting in a single scar). Another two were the resulst of a plastic surgery. Was it worth it? I don´t know. All I can say is that it was an interesting experience to lose consciousness  and step into a condition of temporary non-existence, and then return to life with the realization that only the living could suffer from such an excrutiating pain.

I have other scars as well. They look and feel ugly to me, but are not exactly visible to others. Results of difficult healing processes, deep wounds caused by disappointments, and that is also something we cannot completely avoid during our lives; we suffer and cause suffering. Sometimes accidentally, unintentionally, sometimes with the deliberate intention of hurting as deep as possible.

And there are the scars we choose to have. Signs that only make sense to ourselves. Permanent inasmuch as life can be considered perpetual. So I added two more signs to the map of my skin. I tattoed two letters on my wrists: an A, the first letter of the alphabet, the inicial of my name on the left, and the Z on the right. There are many reasons why I´ve chosen to have those letters, but the main one is that I didn´t want to forget what they meant to me. Letters are my great companions, my partners in creating words that put together give birth to paragraphs, and then to full texts. And I just realized now that our DNAs are represented as sequences of letters. So that´s it. What we are, what I am, at the end:  a sequences of letters.    

          

Playing dead vs Playing Death

I´ve been fighting against this post for days. I should have abandoned the whole idea, but, I don´t know why, I kept on insisting. Maybe I could get something out of this subject, or maybe not. Let´s see.

Playing Dead vs Playing Death 

I read an interview with an actor that usually plays the bad guy, and, as it happens often in movies, or at least in those ones I am thinking of, bad guys tend to die spectactacular deaths, and so he did. Over, and over. Danny (that´s his name: Danny Trejo)  believes no one else in Hollywood has died so many times (or killed so many times) as he did (see LINK). But there was a sentence, that hooked me immediately as I read, which was:  "not just anybody can play dead".

I first smiled a condescendent and superior smile,  thinking, oh, c´mon. But then I realized that he had one moment of enlightment few humans experience in a lifetime. That was a definite philosophical statement. Being dead is nothing, really. It´s a condition each one of us reaches someday. And, as other things we experience in life, there´s no rehearsal. Either you get it right from the begining or you blow it, period. I was thinking about that while I was reading Don Quixote. In one of his conversations with Sancho Panza, he says something about the perfect death, and that would be an unexpected one in the battlefield, of course. Well, dying during a battle does not exactly come as a surprise, but, again, and this is very human, even soldiers do not expect to die. In fact, death is always unexpected, right? There´s always hope even in the most desperate situations. We cling to life until we can´t anymore. The surprise comes with the realization that we cannot scape. And that reminded me of the best scene of the first movie based on Stieg Larsson trilogy, I think is the one called  Men who hate women. The hero got to solve the mistery and to know the identity of the serial killer. The only problem is that he is about to become a victim as well, too bad for him, but, before going on with the kill, the bad guy not only describes his modus operandi, but also his drives. What really turned him on was to recognize in the eyes of his victims the moment they understand they were doomed. The realization of the end of their lives by his hands. A mix of surprise, disbelief, anger, perhaps? The definite end, no second chances. And, on this case, the killer played death, the major role, leaving the victims to the secondary role of simply dying.  
That´s why I think Danny is a fortunate man. He´s been having the great chance to face different ends for his different lives. Maybe not that different, considering his roles do not vary much, but still. He´s in a clear advantage when compared to mortals like you and me. He plays dead all the time. He´s rehearsing for his ultimate act. And has he learned something from his experience? Of course he did.
What he learned seems kind of a cliché, but I guess all the great truths are like that, so obvious that can easily be misunderstood: "When it´s time, it´s time. When it comes, it comes, so don´t think about it too much. Don´t be afraid of death". 

Then I read another interview, that one with Woody Allen ( HERE), and I could find points in common in the two different reasonings, which is kind of comforting, I guess. I am not sure Woody has played dead very often, but he certainly played with death as a writer, and as a director. Bottom line, what they say is pretty much the same: life ´s short, we´re insignificant creatures, everything passes. Get used to that. Of course, it´s hard, especially for some who have big egos and want to leave a legacy for future generations. C´mon, guys. That doesn´t make any sense, because, as he points out,  the whole universe will be gone eventually.
So why do we do what we do? Why to bother getting up everyday? Oh, well, since we´re around, we must do something in order not to get terribly bored, depressed or both. In his words: "the key is distraction" .And: "The truth of the matter is that your life is pretty much out of your control". 
Then, the best thing you can do is to chill out, and find something you think will be a good distraction. Since we´re all doomed, we better have some fun before the very end.





      

What hurts the most?

I´ve read an article where I learned that a person had developed a scale of pain for bites and stings and, in order to do it properly, he let different insects bit and sting his flesh before categorizing the level of pain felt afterwards.

What would be the use of such scale I can´t tell, maybe getting to know that a wasp bite was categorized as 2 meaning that it is painful, but not excruciating (that would be a 4), would have a soothing effect. However, if a tarantula hawk crosses your way, and that encounters works out really bad for you, meaning that you were bitten at the end, and boy, that hurts as hell, knowing that this is a top 4 type of bite would help you somehow?


Anyway, the article goes on to present the story of another man who was accidentaly bitten by a black widow spider. The bite wasn´t that bad, but the symptons after the venon started to spread were something else, pure agony, the worst pain he have ever felt (LINK).

Black widow spider

Scales of pains, categorizations of agonies. Interesting subject. I would tend to think pain is highly subjective. Something that would be very painful for me couldn´t be that awful for you. It seems thare´s a gender component as well. I´ve heard/read once that women are more resistant to pain then men, but I also read/heard that is the other way around, so, who knows, it´s a touchy subject.

I always had problems with categories in general. I don´t like the idea of putting things into specific compartments, adding values, and  attributing grades. When thinking about pain is even worse; every time I experienced some level of it, I hated it.  I don´t think it ever crossed my mind any attempt to categorize how much pain I was feeling. I just wanted to take something that could make it go away.
That´s my way of dealing with pain, others think it differently. Scientists, doctors, nurses, for scientific reasons I guess. So when I was asked to grade the level of pain after a surgery, I took the question as a valid and scientific one, even though I wanted to use very unappropriate words to describe what I was feeling, and that is also something interesting; why do we want to curse when we feel pain?
All of that made me think about pains and the different types we can experience through life. What would hurt the most? The more physical ones that reflect injuries in parts of our body, or those we usually associate with psychological agonies, such as the pain we experience after a breakup?

I wish I knew. I have the impression that although  the level of pain experienced can be highly subjective, there´s nothing like pain to attach us to the present. It´s like an anchor, forcing us to live the actual moment. There isn´t much space left  for remembering the past or thinking about the future. It´s just us, the agony and the god damned endless present.

I love this version of King of Pain by Alanis.
Have a good day.

  

Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth: writing fiction

I think I was always a writer, always wanted to be, just didn´t know if I could.  Either way, I wrote mentally long before I actually started. It´s a common thing among writers, I guess. Not trying to be pretentious, but I once read an essay by George Orwell, where he mentioned that, he was always creating stories from scenes of his everyday life. Because that´s where literature exists and breaths. We can be heroes, just for one day, a song by David Bowie. And that´s true. Literature is happening everyday around us, we just have to be aware. In a way, a writer is like a photographer. We need a snapshot, a sparkle that triggers the creative process, and then we continue from there, we create new lives.

 I have several of these in my mind, mundane things, faces that passed me by, sentences I´ve heard, colors, odors. I can´t help it, it´s something I´ve done without even noticing. I am always collecting memories, and I keep them stored for an occasion I can use them.  

There´s also music. Many of the stories I wrote came from lyrics I´ve heard, songs I love. Listening to them helped me creating situations where those songs would be playing; a break up, a love scene, or something completely different where a certain part of the lyrics fits perfectly. It is incredible, exciting, and almost magical. All of a sudden, I see the characters, I visualize the plot, I hear their voices, and then I know; It´s time to let the process flow. I have to tell that story.

The stories are not mine. Not autobiographical, I mean. It always amazed me how difficult it is for readers to understand that. I don´t want to write about my life. No way, that would be boring. Citing Orwell for a second time, but I think he must always be mentioned, good writers are invisible. It´s the story that counts and that just reminds me of Oscar Wilde and one of his brilliant sayings, I guess he was thinking about poets, but it is valid to all writers: the good ones are pale figures, really insignificant. Why? Because they´re not worried about being, they´re busy creating.   

Once the story is there ready to be read, it gains its own life. What a wonderful thing that is, giving voices to characters, bringing them to life.   

As I said, I always wanted to write. I never thought I could, though. But one thing about writing is that it is a hard-wired condition. Writers are born writers and one cannot escape or ignore this urge for too long.

Once I started, I could never stop. I just finished my first book. Sixteen short stories. Slices of other people´s lives, ready to get known by others, probably very few others, but that doesn´t bother me.  

I love what I do. And I do cause I love, I cannot live from what I write, but then I remember Monterroso. For him, getting paid for writing was something surreal and almost indecent. Anyway,  I am truly myself when I write, and that reminded me of a song by Regina Spektor, “beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth”. That´s exactly it. 

Wishes

I was in the kitchen preparing dinner, when my youngest said: "mom, I don´t want you to change".

When I took her plate to the dinning table, I asked what she meant, and she answered: "I dont want you to get old, cause you´re so beautiful. If you get old you will look less beautiful". I just smiled back.

I´ve been thinking about your request, sweetie. And, as much as I wanted not to change, this is simply not possible. What I am today is slightly different from what I was yesterday,  and you probably look different as well, I can tell. A new tooth is filling the gap left from the one the tooth fairy took last week, and that is just an example. You gonna turn seven, you learned to read and write, you´re facing your fears. You were so happy to finally learn to swim, and you want to sleep alone, in your bed.

It´s impossible, because we live in different times. You´re the future, you look forward to what will come. I am the past, I look backwards, in a search for things I left behind. And that´s not either good or bad, it is just the way it is.
Right now, we share our presents together. Right now, I am your beautiful mother, the most beautiful woman you know, and that´s very sweet, especially because all daugthers think their mothers are gorgeous, and that´s fair enough, I´m very pleased you see me like that.
However, I know this will not last. Not only because time will pass for me, but mainly because it will pass for you, and I am sure you will grow up to be a very good looking young woman, and by then, when you´ll look at me, you´ll see a different person. Older indeed, but that wouldn´t be so important to you anymore. You will see me with a critical eye, you´ll spot my ugliness for the first time.
I know it´ll hurt, for you and for me, but it´s part of life. You will understand someday.
So let´s enjoy our presents together. Let me be your beautiful mother, and you, my seven year old girl.

Oscilate Wildly

Smiths has been my soundtrack on the last days, and of all the songs I love, the one that brings tears to my eyes is Oscilate Wildly, an instrumental one, and the reason behind that is that I already have all the lyrics in my head, lyrics of a huge number of sad songs. And also because I live to write, something I once describe to a friend as a curse, altought at the time I said that, I just wanted to sound clever. But after wondering a lot, and also after reading a novel by Javier Cercas, I´ve came to the conclusion that that´s what it is, a curse. I go around in a constant search for a good story. Nothing is insignificant. Everything can be used somehow, someday. We´re vampires of others people´s lives, or lives that we just made up from a snapshot we get.

I thought about that when I saw a picture on monday, of a Free Syrian Army fighter playing with a dog (LINK). Since I saw the picture, I couldn´t stop thinking; who was this man? what are his bieliefs, how was his life before this gruesome war started, and I thought about the dog, about their accidental encounter, and wondered if they both make it to the end of that day. And also how was it possible for this man to ignore the background, the killings, the destruction, the gassed victims, and enjoy the company of a dog on a sunny day?

Maybe the answer is in an essay by George Orwell, A Hanging (check HERE). Because we happen to be alive now, at this very moment. Because we´re alive up to the moment we´re dead. On this essay, Orwell describes the day he witnesses a hanging. The prisioner who´s going to be hanged walks in front of him, a walking dead. There´s a puddle on his way. What does he do? He steps aside. For what, one could ask. To avoid getting wet,of course, altought it may seem absurd. To me, the main reason is because he can step aside. At that moment, he is still a living creature. Avoiding the puddle reinforces his humanity. He does it, because he´s still alive.  
The man plays with the dog because they´re both alive in the middle of chaos, death and suffering. Others didn´t make it, too bad for them. Escaping death brings a furious happiness, something both Orwell and Cercas mention. We will keep on stepping aside puddles, playing with dogs up to the moment we cannot escape.

Bubble

When I was a child I remember watching a movie about a boy who lived his entire life inside a bubble.  I think the main character was played by John Travolta. It was a drama, because the thing this boy wanted the most was to leave his sterilized space, so he could interact with other people. He wanted to touch and to be touched by others. However, I have this belief that bubbles are not that bad. In fact, the only way to keep things going sometimes is to create one around us, live inside a limited perimeter, isolate ourselves from others, and I just remembered a song, that has been happening to me very often these days, a song by REM, I´ve read it was elected the saddest song ever written, and I think is unfair, Everybody Hurts, a song about resilience. Anyway, it is a fact: everybody hurts, but we can read this in two different ways, right? We can get hurt and we can hurt somebody. And we usually get hurt by somebody´s actions or words, even unintentionally. But I think the boy from the movie was either too young or too naive to know that.
There are the others and there´s us (and  by us I mean you, and me, as individuals, separate ones. As you may have already noticed, we - you, me - are basically alone and that I´ve got from a song by Andrew Bird ). The others are usually too worried about themselves to notice what´s going on around them. Because that´s the way we are in general, we cannot see the world from a point of view different than ours. As in that expression, as much as we try (and I guess we never bother to try hard enough) we can´t walk in other person´s shoes.  So, in a way, we´re all inside bubbles pretending we´re not, minding our own businesses.

But another characteristic we humans share is this unexplicable faith in the future, a place we never get to really know. And then we keep on holding on, as Michael Stipe tells us to do, hoping for the day we won´t feel hurt anymore.

    

Shreds

Depression # 1

It just happened, I was in my bed, in the dark, alone, trying to sleep. As it happens to all kids, I was afraid of the dark, but the nightlight was even scarier, It had the form of an elefant, it was yellow, a yellow elefant shining in the dark, a creepy thing, so I didn´t want the elefant. I was in the dark, fighting my fears, the monsters that were around trying to bite my feet, and all of a sudden, the attack came from the inside. 

What I felt was a bigger than life fear. I think I had a panic attack when I understood what a long time after that, or I should say before, but I read years later, Camus has defined as one of the absurds of life, which is, we simply die.
But the fact is I was a child, I had no idea of who Camus had been or writen, although I have to say, once I got the chance to read him, I had this feeling of identity. As crazy as it might seem, I sensed I met an equal. But that was long after that night and, again, I was, like all kids are, unaware of so many things, that I couldn´t fight that feeling with rational or even irrational arguments. I felt helpless.
I don´t recall much of that night, but I do remember the feeling, the awful and permanent sensation of being helpless, and of knewing by instinct I would say, that there was no way out, no solution. We die, it´s a fact.
So I kept that moster inside of me, while I felt his attacks on my flesh for a long time, or maybe it wasn´t that long, but when we´re small, the time seems to last forever.
And I remember my second encounter with death.
We lived in a house with a huge yard, or I thought it was huge, I don´t know. One day, while I was playing outside, I found a dead gecko. A curious thing about childhood, at least mine, is that I didn´t fear animals of any kind. I guess it´s a natural thing, atavic to our species, and even to others, to experience in order to learn. Anyway, Geckos are quite cute, and wonderful creatures that can climb walls. I used to catch them by the tail, and the funny part was to witness one of the wonders of nature: geckos can get dettached from their tails, and escape predators. Most of the time.

The one I found couldn´t escape. I felt sorry for it. Ants were attacking his body, trying to get pieces of its flesh. I got a shoe box and put the dead body inside. I wanted to dig a hole in the yard, but all I had was a small plastic shovel, and the soil was so hard... I did my best to bury the box, but the hole was not that deep. So, on the next day, I went back to the spot of the burial, and realized my effort was in vain. The ants were there, finding their way inside the box, inside its body. So I tried to cover the box with plastic. It didn´t work as well. Death cannot be defeated.
One night, my father found me crying in despair, alone, looking for a way out, knowing already that I wouldn´t find any. He asked me what was wrong, but I couldn´t tell, I just couldn´t. He wouldn´t understand, that´s what I thought. So I lied and said I dind´t want to grow up.  I remember my parents trying to convince me everything was fine. I tried very hard to believe. But I knew that was a temporary thing. Death cannot be defeated.

       

It´s all in your head

Depression, a word very well known to me. Throughout my life, I had symptoms that were always associated with this condition: imnsonia, loss of appetite, weight loss, heart palpitations, crying episodes, sadness, despair.  After years of  suffering, occasional treatments (mainly psychoterapy), I was diagnosed as dysthimic.
According to Wikipedia, Dysthymia is a mood disorder consisting of the same cognitive and physical problems as in depression, with less severe but long-lasting symptoms. And this term was coined by Dr. Robert Spizter  as a replacement for depressive personality.

I don´t know why Dr. Spitzer got to the conclusion that depressive personality was bad, I´m sure there are very good reasons, but that wouldn´t change much to me, be considered a dysthimic or a depressive person instead. I just remeber hearing from a very dear friend of mine, "Alex, (she calls me Alex), you´re just too heavy all the time". And she was right. I wanted to be myself, until I realized this is socially unacceptable. No one really wants to have a depressive (dysthimic) person around. We´re too heavy, we drain people´s energy, we don´t enjoy the "small pleasures of every day life". And I just remembered an expression a Beligian friend used, that I thought was lovely, not for the expression per se, but for the fact that he translated from his mother tongue (Flemish) to English and used ignoring if that was possible. I mean, I think it´s always a possibility, creating a new use for a word,  new terms. Languages change everyday, but I do remember his expression raised some eyebrows, "fishy", that´s what he said, in the sense that something wasn´t quite good, or that it called the attention for smelling bad.. So, that´s the case, dysthimics are kind of fishy. We don´t smell bad, but we dont fit quite well.
And all that came to me while I was reading an article about how cultural aspects can influence in the identification and definition of mental illlnesses (HERE). It starts with a discussion over the latest DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder), and the main point is whether  the DSM Comittee is not expanding the categories of mental illnesses too much, creating a "diagnostic inflation" .  I don´t know, and I can´t tell, but I always believed that the number of trully sane people has to be very low. Anyway, the point I wanted to highlight was that there´s a discussion on whether cultural aspects may affect on diagnosis, and there are researchers that do believe depression is a western-culture bound syndrome, since there´s not a consensus in psychiatry on either the definition or the symptons of the illness. In addition to that, no discrete genetic variation could  be linked to depression up to the present moment. There seems to be an overlap accrosss a range of mental illnesses. So, according to them, maybe what we call depression in our western cultures is not seen as such in the east, or maybe it´s not considered to be a desease at all. Well, it´s a possibility.
This cultural bias effect is a very interesting thing. The country of origin should play un important part in the formation of  the personality of an individual right? The culture were we are raised and educated. I would be inclined to believe in that. However, if I consider my personal case, something went wrong. I was born in Brazil, and Brazilians are seen as happy and optimistic, to the point of insanity I would add,  but that´s the way Brazilians are, always hopefull, even when perspectives for the future don´t seem bright, (as you can check on this LINK from The Economist). I think someone got my share of optimism.
Being heavy and sad would not go against my cultural identity if I was french. According to this other LINK, French people are taught to be gloomy. Amazing, huh? They have the best cuisine, great wines, haute couture, perfumes, the most beautiful language, and they will always have Paris, but they feel depressed because that´s the way French people are raised. An authentic French Paradox.
Well, I keep on trying to fight my gloominess and my heaviness. It´s a hard thing to do. One days are okay, others not, but I am seriously considering a séjour in Paris. I would love to be gloomy there. The only Paris I have at the moment is the one presented at a fantastic book. Paris seen from above. It´s called Above Paris: the aerial survey of Roger Henrard by Jean-Louis Cohen. It´s a personal attempt to change my perspective, seeing things from a different side. Coming from a person that tends to look down most of the time, it´s a good start.  

           

Peripheral

I was thinking about that, because that´s what I am, peripheral, or how I feel I am for many reasons, but, on this particular case, because I come from a peripheral country, where we speak a peripheral language.
It isn´t a bad thing. I feel is quite the opposite. It forces you to push your cultural boundaries. When your peripheral, you look to what is in the center, you want to be there. And the first step towards this goal of belonging is by learning other languages.
So I started with English which is the global language. Some say Mandarin would become more important, but I doubt, since I´ve heard that even native speakers avoid having long conversations on the phone because they can get easily confused. English is certainly easier than Mandarin, and for sure easier than French, a language that I love and have been trying to reach an above ridicule fluency for years. And despite protests that every once in a while take place in France (for those interested, I added some links Here & Here), Helàs, that´s the way the world goes.
So I thought trying to write in English could be an interesting and challenging exercise. I have a blog where I write in my peripheral and lovely native language, Portuguese, but, in English, I could reach a different public, write about different things, certainly from a different point of view, because an interesting aspect of learning foreign languages is that we think differently when we´re using a language that´s not our native. Every time I wrote something in either English or Spanish, I didn´t start by using Portuguese. My way of dealing with the subject was different, the logic behind the text was also distinct.
So here, I would be a peripheral writer, from a peripheral country, trying to write in a dominant and foreign language. Let´s see how it goes.    

The unbearable lightness of being, in the search of lost time: two childhood memories

I have a plan of reading Proust someday. The Search of Lost Time is waiting for me on the top shelf of my bookcase. I keep on postponing though, and the main reason is that I´m afraid of giving up reading. Proust is considered one of the most important names in  the twentieth century literature altogether with Joyce, and since I couln´t make it to the end of Ulysses (in fact, I coulnd´t make it to the end of the third page), failing to read him as well would have a terrible effect on my self-esteem, so I am waiting to read it when I have some free time.

But I started this post using the tittle from a different book, The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera. What is the connection, one might think. Well, memories, I would say. Just like the Madeleine in Proust´s book, the tittle of Kundera´s novel triggered several of  my own memories. And, since the idea I had in mind once I started this blog was to tell a history, a version of my history, of how I became invisible, well, it seemed to me as a very interesting begining.

The unbearable lightness of being. I read this book a long time ago. A sad story, from what I can remember. I always enjoyed sad histories, they seem more real, more close to me. I never got to understand the tittle, though. As I said, many years have passed, I was young, but maybe what Kundera wanted to express was how fragile life is and how hard it is to deal with that.  Anyway, what I most remember from the book is a dog, a female boxer breed named Karenin. Boxers are the sweetest dogs in the world, and I know that because I had one when I was a child.

Our dog was a male named Calèche, the name of a French perfume. It is a strange name for either a dog or a perfume, and the dog didn´t smell like French eau de toillette at all, but that was his name. We could do whatever we wanted with him. He never barked or tried to bite. Once, he brought home a chicken. A living one. The animal was stressed with the situation, but not injured. I think my father took the chicken back to its owner. One of my oldest childhood memory is of Calèche trying to catch his tail and never succeding, but he kept trying over and over.


One day, I woke up to see my dog agonizing in our front yard. It seems he had eaten some rodenticide, but we never knew for sure. He died right in front of my eyes and that is a memory I have. I was probably three or four. The unbearable heaviness of not being, he left us. My first encounter with death.

Years have passed and I got seriously ill: Hepatitis. I spent the whole period of my summer vacation in bed. I felt terribly alone, don´t remember seeing other kids around for a long time. I had to go through blood exams to see if my liver was fighting back the virus. I hated needles, I cried of fear. I thought I was going to die. I was seven.
The unbearable lightness of being, I didn´t die.

After that, I had my first depression. But that is another story. 

The art of becoming invisible

Part 1

I came to the conclusion that I am becoming invisible as years pass me by. Time passes and leaves me empty handed. Or, better said, leaves me with memories of what I was, or, even worse, of what I dreamed to be and never got to be.

I will try to tell my story. I´m not sure if I´m going to succeed, and if that would be of any interest. But the only way to know for sure is by trying, right? Let´s see how it goes. But not now, not today. Baby steps. Today, the blog was created. Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, I will start.