The right to be forgotten

I´ve heard (and read) about the changes the top European Community court  of justice is requiring Google to adopt: whenever asked, the company has to remove from its search results data that is considered by the demanding part as inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relavant (see links HERE). It´s a complex subject, involving delicate aspects; on one side, the right for privacy claimed by european citizens. On the other,the so called freedom of expression claimed by Google. However, what really caught my attention was the tittle of the proposal: The right to be forgotten.

The right to be forgotten.  Five words that can tell a whole story, or many different stories, depending on the reader understanding of what´s behind of a carefull selection of words. One example: If you read one of the most famous short stories ever written, supposedly by Hemingway, using only six words: "For sale: baby shoes never worn", and burst into tears - as many has done before you, as you can check by reading this LINK -, you´ve imagined a terrible drama: a couple that has lost a child. Was it during labor? Was it after for an unexpected desease? As consequence of an accident? It could be whatever you choose to, including something completely different. What if the baby was born healthy and heavy, bigger than the mother expected and the clothes simply didn´t fit? The story loses its dramatic strenght, for sure, but not everybody appreciates sad endings. There are the ones who love the happy ones. The story goes on according to the reader´s imagination.

The right to be forgotten, a legitimate claim. Thinking about that sentence, about this sequence of words, all I could envision was a collection of dramas: couples that split, families torn apart by different types of tragedies. As much as I tried, I couldn´t come up with a happy ending story. But that´s me, I´m quite dramatic. And there was something else that came up to my mind. It´s funny how sometimes we choose a specific  sequence of words that have a very clear meaning if we take them literally, but we wish for the exact opposite of what we´re saying. There are times when leave me alone means don´t leave me alone. So, for me, in many cases, ask to be forgotten means you wish you wouldn´t be. Humans are strange animals, don´t you think?
I´ve also heard (and read) that sad stories can make great art, whereas the happy ones hardly ever. Why would that be? I´m not sure. I guess Tolstoy has the best explanation I´ve read: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Happyness is worth living, not reading about it.
And this song in particular is a wonderful example of pain turned into art. Enjoy.

  


 

    

The cracked house

Draw a cracked house, I´ve heard. No, it wasn´t exaclty what he said. I had a hard time trying to translate such a simple sentence from Portuguese to English, but what am I saying? There´s no such a thing as a simple sentence. Anyway, what he meant was that we should come up with a house that was somehow wrong, inappropriate, and he said that in his lovely peninsular accent.


I draw the first thing that came to my mind: a corner, the encounter of two walls forming a right angle, which is interesting considering I was supposed to draw a cracked house. Then I draw a hole on the floor. One of my walls had, well, a huge crack, and from the fissure the branches of a tree could be seen. There was a window and, from the outside, faces staring at the emptiness of the inside.
The others came up with different ideas: houses with no doors or windows, houses that were placed upside down, all inappropriate because living between those walls was impossible. At the end, we all came up with representations of empty spaces. Ultimately, a cracked house is not a place to live in.  

memories of losses

The first thing I remember to lose was a teddy bear. As a toddler, I guess I was always carrying it around, and that´s why I´ came to lose it.

I was at an airport waiting for someone. I´m not sure, but I think I was waiting for my dad. I was probably excited. Going to the airport was something I enjoyed doing at that age, I was probably fascinated with airplanes as all kids are. Anyway, I can clearly see my arms around that relatively big teddy bear. We sat for a while, maybe to have something to drink and/or eat, and I put Geroncio (that was his name, I remember) on a chair right in front of me. I can still see his round, dark, unexpressive eyes starring at me.

The fact is I forgot my teddy bear on that chair, at that airport. When I realized my arms where missing something, we came back but it was too late. Someone else has taken him away.

I felt sad. And guilty. How could I have forgotten my teddy bear? How can we forget things that are so damn important, so dear to us? And I did it not only once, many times. That was my first. The first time I´ve lost something dear to me.

I´ve lost books, and for a person who loves reading and writing, losing books is very bad. I´ve lost Decameron inside a bus when I was going to the beach for my summer vacation. And the book wasn´t even mine. I´ve lost another one, about the Russian Revolution at an airport in Michigan. And I realized, while I was writting this post, how much I still regret those losses. I realized how much I hate losing things I love and care about.

And the losses kept on happening. I started to lose not only things, but also living things that we basically lose to death; first it was my dog, then, years later, family members: granparents, aunts, uncles... And as much as I know that that´s the way life is, I never stopped missing them, and hating the fact that they were taken away from me.

I´ve also lost friends. I believe most of them are doing well, living their lives the best way they can, but we lost contact. It wouldn´t be difficult to find out about some of them if I really wanted to. However, I have this feeling that I shouldn´t. People change, I´ve changed. And maybe what we once shared has vanished as well, so getting together could be a huge mistake. Either way, thinking about those lost friends make me feel deeply sorry.

For the last few days, I´ve been feeling gloomy and I could not tell why. This is very strange to me, because I usually know what is bothering me or hurting me very well, that was never a problem I had, not knowing what was wrong. So, when I started feeling this way, I begun to think, trying to find out what was the problem. And then I thought about losses. The small and the big ones, so I think that was it.  I feel sorry for things I´ve lost, for people I´ve once loved, and that are gone forever. Knowing that didn´t make the feeling go away. But that was never the reason why I kept on thinking. I just wanted to understand. And now I do.         

Baby Teeth

Baby Teeth

Babies have no teeth when they are born, only rosy gums full of promisses and a strong tongue.
Baby teeth are also known as milk teeth, and milk is what babies should have before having any teeth showing up on their gums. For sucking milk from their mothers, they only need a strong tongue.
When babies reach four to six months, the first incisors, two, erupt from their gums.
Children usually have twenty baby teeth that will occasioanlly fall, giving place to the permanent ones.
I´ve seen the eruption of 40 baby teeth, 20 per child.
Last week, I pulled two baby teeth, one per child.
I´ve pulled more teeth than I dare to count.
I wish I didn´t have to pull their teeth, but I have to.
My children do not believe in the Tooth Fairy anymore.
Will they remember I had to pull their teeth when they´re grown?
Will they remember I was their Tooth Fairy when I´m gone?

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.    

.