Volunteering and feeling home

I realised I have not posted anything for a while now, and maybe I should.

Big news: I am 18 now (something big I have been said). I guess I am an adult woman in control of my own destiny. As such, on my birthday afternoon, I went to the Bookshop and bought over 10 books on Sale. From Rosseau to Romantic letters from a Portuguese nun. I love it all and I will read it all (as soon as I find the time). At least now I have a small travelling library in my room =) How fancy.

I am actually volunterring in the Women's Center library now. Once a week, a couple of hours. I absolutely love it. Putting books on the shelves, cataloguing, re-arranging, organising, checking-in, out and what not. It's perfect.
I also starting to volunteer in this project called "Letters for the Inside", a sort of research service by students for prisioners that lack acess to any information. It is very thought-provoking and I think it will be very rewarding.

I needed to get involved into these things. The fact is that I miss extra-academics. I miss meetings, gorups, being the secretary, cordinator, participant and all that. I miss it, and now I fell much better because I am back on it.

I am in fact starting to feel at home here. Not in my residence though. God, I really hope my room switch works out... Yesterday was a bit too much. The guy next door decide to have a party and, honestly, it was not just noisy. IT was scary. Very drunk Canadian kids singing along to pop songs, shouting about sex and banging on the wall for fun. Decadence reached the bottom. And I had to put with it untill they moved the party somewhere else.

Oh, I think they just woke up. Yes, this is the sound of very hang-over semi-drunk people next door.

I have had very strange dreams. I am disturbed by them and it is interfering in my concentration. The recurrent one is me missing the plane, missing my flight home. I am a bit paranoid about it. It is not that I wnat to get out of here so badly, but I am looking forward to the break. To Europe. To my parents and to my fireplace.

This was a purely informative post, but my days are so full now that my only to time to reflect is eating and sleeping.

After all, there are only two ways to get unraveled. One is to sleep, the other is travel.


P.S. My new obcession: Cary Elwes (when young)

THe positive egocentric predicament.

I will be going to sleep now. But it is Sunday night and I just watched my daily fix of Twin Peaks and have my knitting stuff all around. And my body lies here so quietly, while my soul seems to dance, scream and jump to the sound of the Shins.

I don't know if I want to continue this blog. I feel it is revealing, somehow. I don't want to be revealing lately. I have paid my price for that. I still do.
I guess I keep making mistakes.

I am doing fine if you are interested in that. I am. Very happy at the moment.


Thinking of the future. A bit too much. Also of the present. Of what it means to be 17, now that I am slowly moving to the next number. I am a teenager, it is sooo true. More than ever, I am 17. There is so many things I don't know and I am trying to figure out. .. (cheeesy) At some point I belived someone would come along and help me out on that, someone to hold me and point the way. Doesn't happen. Only leads you astray. Last Spring I woke up from that fanatasy. This Winter is being a bit hard on me just because it is so real. I got real. It feels liberating to think so.

Maybe Descartes was right in the beggining of it all. There is you, only you. At least first and foremost you. I woke up to my little positive egocentric predicament.

A night of wonder, happiness and excitment seen by old grumpy woman

I appologise. This is not a well thought of post, it is not that relevant and it is not that srtuctured.

It is 8:30 a.m. I got up na hour ago. I am sick, my throat hurts and my body ackes all over. I am eating cereals with some dubious milk that I was left on my fridge. I have to work on my Philosophy assignment and I don't want to right now. I just want a nice blanket, a warm room and somebody to make me a cup of tea. When you live alone, things suck when you're sick.

I realise that I live really too alone. People next door don't know me, don't care about me. I don't care much about them either. I am trying to change somewhere where that mutual lack of concern does nit hold.

I think I know now why people say, with that 50's voice "don't you want to have a loving husband and a nice loving family?". Yeah, when you're on your own at 7:30 a.m., sick and sleepy, it sounds verrryy alluring. Problem is, the people I know that followed that ideal are also in problematic and unhappy situations. Anyhow, you can't win.

This all starts sounding grumpy.

Well, I can tell about Saturday night. I went to meet my aunt and my cousin for lunch downtown. After that I went to a coffee shop where they were playing jazz and read some school stuff. And then I went and saw a François Truffaut double-bill! I could have seen a triple but I would be late to catch the last skytrain. Started off with 400 coups de vents. Very beautiful, and has haun ting meloody to it. Then I watched Tirez sur le Pianiste. It was such a good film, full of excitment and good scenes. I loved it. When I went out I felt so happy. People must have thought me crazy, in the middle of the night running thorugh the streets, jumping and imitating ballet dancers. I was happy, and no one on those streets knew me, so I was free to make a fool of myself. I was young, I was living in a most exciting city, the world was beautiful and I was too. I was proud to be 17, not ashamed anymore, I was proud and content. All the way in the skytrain I smiled. I couldn't stop smiling. It felt like I had just kissed someone I cared about. I felt a rush of energy, a feeling I was going to explode with happiness.

And when I went to bed on Saturday night, I dreamt of being in a movie by Truffaut.

The adorable post

I am in the middle of planing my presentation for tomorrow. But I have to write, I must write. It is sort of like knitting, a therapy we all need. Because the most important thing I have learned recently is that keeping yourself together takes time and you just ahve to write it down in your timetable.

I have a problem. I have many.

Who doesn't?

Why do I feel like writing about them and not about other people's? Someone once gave me a good answer to that eternal question. My problems are more important to me because they are mine. There we go, that little pre-problem aside, we can get into the real thing.

It is about being adorable. I have been thinking. That is what many people say I look like, that I am. Adorable. I used to get along with this. But I don't anymore. Simply because I have not understood it! Why do people call me this when I make a joke or a comment? Why do people say I look lost and confused and that thus I am adorable. I don't know if I like this word anymore. It makes me feel small and slighlty clumbsy. It seems like I don't really make sense. That worries me. And I can't helped but be worried. After all, I might not be getting accross as the person I am.

And that means so much to me. I think it does to everyone. Sharing who you really are. But then, who are you? I find myself thinking that so much these days. Problem: when I am being clumbsy or childish or weak or awckward or something I don't like to be depicted as, I think of who I really am. but what if I am only that, that adorable (whatever that means) person that acts in a social setting. Because that is what I do all the times. Well, except for when I am with a person I love. That seems to be the exception: when I fall in love is because I feel different, I act like I like to act around that person and that person likes me to do so and enjoys it. That is why I don't fall in love very often, maybe?

I stay here for today. Just a little song, the best song I have hear in the last 2 days. It is beautiful, it is the most beautiful song about a three way love affair. And it sort of reassures me of what I think, what I believe in and the fact that, at some point, someone believed it too.


Because that is what life is about. Getting out of yourself by formulating sentences ending with "too".





TRIAD
by David Crosby
Performed on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album "4 Way Street"

You want to know how it will be
Me and her or you and me
You both sit there with your long hair flowing
Your eyes alive, your minds are still growing
Saying to me what can we do now that we
Both love you -- I love you too
But I don't really see, why can't we go on as three

You are afraid, embarrased too, no one has ever in your sweet short life child
Said such a thing to you
Your mother's ghost stands at you shoulder
Got a face like ice -- just a little colder
Saying you can not do that it breaks all the rules
You learned in school
But I don't really see, why can't we go on as three

You know we love each other, it's plain to see
There's just one answer comes to me
Sister lovers -- some of you must know about water brothers
And in time maybe others
So you see what we can do
Is to try something new - that is if you're crazy too
But I don't really see, why can't we go on as three

A song for all of us

This is the song that echoes my thoughts in the Fall. It' s for everyone who just doesn't seem to follow the socially excepted seasonal trends.
Because there is nothing better than romance in the middle of a rainy winter =)

I Didn't Have a Summer Romance by Simone White

They're always writing songs
about a summer love
that never seems to last
beyond the fall
but i've a different reason
for crying this season
a reason that can hurt you
most of all

I didn't have any summer romance
nobody bothered
to break my heart in two.
While others were fooled
by the sweet words
someone vowed,
I was the one who made
company a crowd.
I didn't walk down the beach
in a trance
or listened to little white lies
that sounded true,
and no one could be as blue
as I was in the fall
'cause I didn't have any
summer romance at all

And no one could be
as blue as I was in the fall
'cause I didn't have any
summer romance at all.

Black and White - on old School cinema

I was here knitting and thinking about the movie I saw last night - " A street Car Named Desire".

I watched (rather accidentaly) a "Walk to Remember" and got so sick (physically, mentally, spiritually) by the Nicholas Sparks distinct mark of lack of quality.... I was laughing at the most tragic moments, I skiped like 20 minutes simply because they were too dull.

So, I need to watch something of sublime quality to compensate. And there we go. You get a good play by Tenesse Williams, a superb director like Elia Kazan and you add Vivian Leigh's old school charm and Brando's classical quality. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Life should be directed by Kazan... With Brando or Dean or Newman going around...

There is a dramatism, an irreal, yet very human, dramatism to the whole thing that makes it magically vibrating, exhilarating, you run out of breath from watching those scenes! Those 50's movies... "The Wild One" , "East of Eden", so many others... No special effects, just acting, a lot of good shots and a good story. At that point, if a book was made into a movie it didn't almost automatically mean it was going to be ruined.

Besides, watching movies in those days is something I would kill for. No laptops, no popcorn commercial cinema places. Small leather seats, a big attentive audience, images striking the big screen like lightning.

I miss it.

Sex and the City: Why Carrie got it wrong

I have seen too much of it. I hate it. I hate it. I profoundly despise "Sex and the City".

I once read an article called "You can be a feminist and still like Sex and the City!".
I tell what you cannot be: a healthy, self-loving 17 year old that whatches Sex and the City!!!!!

Carrie and her friends are part of the 40 year old American woman imaginary that doesn't have much to do anyhow. Let me list the reasons for all this remarks against mainstream.

1- Their concepts are old fashioned. They think of marriage as a goal. The only who doesn't is Samantha, who seems to constantly be depicted as vulgar and rather dumb and superficial. Today I heard a shocking line in which she says that women are not supposed to be human for men and that one of her boyfriends borke up with her because she missed a bikini wax. I am the only one who thinks this is ridiculous talking about mature adult people?

I know, I know. here is Filipa listening to Velvet Underground and completely alienated from the world. Let us continue.

2- Carrie. She is sucessful? They are the sucessful women of our day? Excuse me? Carrie writes a column in a newspaper (which gives her apparently looooads of money somehow). They don't have major carrer expectations, tehy don't have idological interests. They don't have a critical eye on their society. THey are well within the framework of feminine normality of American society. I wonder, what is the value of this success.

3- Shoes, clothes and other assorted things. It is not a bad thing. I love clothes. But why should a life revolve around it? Why is everything about shoes and make up? If you count the number of sequences in which that is a main theme in the background... it ammounts to a lot.

And now, my favourite reason to dislike SAC.

4- they are in their 30's, 40's. I am 17. Now, what does this tell us? A gap, huge one. Yet, many girls my age identify with them. What happened to us? Did we leap 20 years?? I do not believe so. Why then are we trying to be so adult, so grown-up? They are not better. There was actually once a time when being young was great by itself. We did not need to compare. Teenage sexuality was something of its own. Why do we now not want to have a space for ourselves, a generational space?

And, again, it is not because they are women talking about sex that makes it a forward-minded show. They play in the system, they are not critical. That makes it conformist and establishment defending. It is the way you talk about it. For all I know I can be having a 6 hour converstaion about sex and be a totally alienated and oppressed female member of society. It does not matter.


Once, I read Jim Morrison's quote about sex. one of them. He said something along the lines that, if we were to truly open up to all the sensory festival that is sex, we could be having some incredible mystical experiences. But people get entangled in rules, in lies. I think we might be doing just that. We might be defining what our life should be like and neglecting living itself.


It is my belief that, if human beings truly embraced sexual experiences independently of social restrains and subtle institutional control, revolution would be on the way.

What keeps consumer capitalist society stable is just the fact we do not feel. We do not respond and we do not want to respond.


And yet, we walk around so sexually liberated...Or do we?

A nice day and some nice things - positively critical post

It was a sunny morning today. I slept in a bit and spent about an hour in bed turning and thinking, dreaming and considering. Somewhere between reality and myself.

I had that yogurt in my fridge which was expiring today. I decided to do logic. But got stuck... again.

So, I decided to go and buy a couple of things I needed at the Cornerstone. On the way, I went through the sunnier paths, to get my hair dry. There was snow on the mountains, for the first time. And the bag pipe players were rehearsing. Thanks-giving made the campus empty, peaceful. It has been a beautiful morning.

Yesterday, I went to the knitting club, knitted and chatted. It was lovely, lots of interesting people, yarn and laughs. It was great specially because I have been so tired and overloaded with work lately. That also explains my lack of communication with most people.

I decide I would make Thanks-giving my catch up day with everyone around the world: I will write letters, send that postcard to my grandma and reply to all the e-mails. Because it is this web of people scattered all over the globe that gievs a context to my life. When I read their blogs, their messages, hear their voice again, read about how they feel, I feel warm and comfortable. I feel I am home. They are my home.

In Vancouver, I am having a great time. I didn't go to see the nice movies of the International Film Festival, too busy. I went to a couple of "Philosopher's Cafés" lately and sometimes I just walk around 'cause it's fun and unpredictable. I can say I now understand why I came here. I like it here.

But, yet, so many things remain problematic. The issue is that now I feel terrible when I encounter people, we talk about ourselves and I tell them I lived in Norway. There I go, with no intention of showing-off whatsoever, talk about my last two years, my international school, my life in Portugal, my travelling around Europe. It kills me when people say to me: yep, I have always been around here, Vancouver. In their eyes I can see I have done things they wanted to do and couldn't. It makes me think about how much luck I have and why do I have it. Not many reasons come up in that list.
It gets worst when we talk about academics. Some people get scared when I say I have studied two years of Philosophy and they ask how smart am I and stuff like that. I explain, it's the IB, I am not special. They still don't get it.
As you can imagine, this is a problem, because even if I try (believe me, I have been trying), I end up making people feel bad about themselves and telling me how boring they think their lives are. Practical problem arising from this: it scares off guys. Terribly. I have noticed. Not that I have been hiting on Vancouverites or into flirting, dating or whatever people do here. I have been sort of avoiding it, 'cause I don't have time right now. But, whenever situation arises, it is enough to talk about me travelling around and having a scholarship here. They back off. And sometimes I wish I had a more simple life. That is two seconds before I re-state I love my life again and pieces fall into places.

And now for somehting completely different,

This week I started wearing two pieces I had not worn before. I particularly proud of them, one because it is my work, the other my luck and slight craziness. So, here is a little photo (amateurish, with terrible light, but, again, I nevr claimed to be good at this) of my Norwegian woll bolero that I knitted during the summer and my black fury cloak which I found and mended from a vintage shop.



















Well, I should get going.
'Cause If you don't run fast, life will catch up.

Some words on rock studios and more movies

I'm listening to "Sea of Love" by Cat Power. The song from the end of Juno when she had the baby and she is crying in her bed and Blekker hugs her and lies by her side. It is the end of the day. Unsatisfying, post-blue times when this seems like a wasted Sunday.

Today, I sat in my chair thinking about stuff for about 30 minutes. I started to cry after a while and thought of getting back to work. It sounds like a cliché, but some memories are indeed too painful. They are way better forgotten.

Yesterday I went to practice my violin to a studio that I rented for an hour. Well, I had never been to that part of town before. It was an industrial warehouse place. When I came in I realised I was slightly out of place. The manager confirmed it by looking at me quite strangely and making funny faces at the fact that I was Portuguese that I played the violin, that I was going to reharse by myself and only for one hour. Yeah, I was a character... I went to the dimly illuminated room got the dust out of a stand and started tunning and playing. Good thing about that place - you can make as much noise as you want. As far as I understood it is mainly for hard rock bands. It was an experience to play a baroque piece and have a dark metal band just on the side. I am going back next week.

On the way to the skytrain station it started pouring down. Me and my violin had to run fast but could not escape getting soaked. So, there I was, my hair wet and all over, my face red and exhausted, catching my breath while preparing to run another blog with my violin in my hand, and my coat floating after me in an empty street. Seriously, why is there no one to capture this moments in film?

I am making an Irish shawl, that's new. I am feeling better about the present, worst about the past.

Films I have seen.
Dead Poet's Society - lived up to expectations. And don't forget.... seize the day!
The Long hot Summer - old school Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward... careful, it makes you melt.


School's out miss Clara. The night has fallen, nobody here to see if you make a mistake. You put them things down miss Clara, because I am gonna kiss you. I am gonna show you how simple it is, you please me and I please you.

Golden times

Another amazing sunset can be seen from my window today.

Well, it could be more amazing. The fact is that today I fell quite unsatisfied with my work. With the inexistence of it really. I needed to read thsi novel for Monday and I just hate it so it is probably not going to happen. ANyways, I wish I had some real motivation to do something.

The hours that anteceded this afternoon laziness are worth dropping a line about. Yesterday, in the aftrenoon, I went with Maria and Isabell to Commercial Drive - one of the most awesome places in Vanocuver. We went around some shops and I bought a warm and nice black cape in a shop called Retro Rock Vintage Clothing. We talked to the guy there who was this hyper nice Irish who had lived in Berlin... it was great. Later we went to this "Eat Healthy" festival in the Croatian Cultural Center (?...). It was very interesting, being the kind of meat eater prejudiced traditionalist I can be. I came out with some new ideas and an overwhelming feeling that there is nothing like living in Portugal in terms of food.

After that we went to a Nepali restaurant where I had probably the most spicy food in my life. But all in all it was delicious. At that point I said out loud: this is why I cmae to Vancouver! Really! Where at home could I buy the awesome vintage clothing and eat Nepali food? I love multicultural places =).

Change of subject.

Today, Paul Newman, aged 83, died of Cancer in Connecticut.

I just wanted to take a moment here to express my admiration for the great actor that was Paul Newman. AS a part of my childhood I cherished him as some of my favourite characters. He will eternally be Eddie, by the pool table. The words to Clara, at night during The Long Hot Summer will always be there. His piercing blue eyes and the confident smile rest in our memories for ever.


Well, the guy playing the loud guitar by the hall hasn't stopped and my motivation is not back. Who cares anyways.
'Cause when the sun is out, we will all shine like gold in the air of Summer.

-Sanity is visiting! - Staying for dinner, honey?

After the last slightly hyper post, something more pondered. Soundtrack: Funeral the album by Arcade Fire. Simply because this is the stuff I hear all the time in my Mp3 player whenever I take a bus to Lisbon and the airport. It always means some good times are on the way, that I went to meet someone, to be adventurous for a day somewhere away.

That is exactly what I fell like these days: be adventurous. explore this whole freaking continent that lies beyond the mountains of Vancouver. And yet, here I am buying tickets to go on Winter holiday home. First I fell bad since I know so many people cannot go and spend their holidays with their families and I have the priviledge of doing so and being "unsure" about it. I realise how spoiled I am really. Second, I would really love to stay, get on a bus and go around Canada. Problem: with whom? I plan to go alone if needed to San Francisco, but that is in the summer: biiig difference. So, I am a 17 old little girl scared of getting frozen alone somewhere. That is the thing I hate about myself at the moment.

A second note.
I am officialy sort of disappointed with University. I know, I know. This setence probably worries the people who might read this and care about me. It is not I am depressed in my room and hating everything around me. No. I guess, I just thought it would be different. I thought about loads of very ineteresting people,with true intellectual commitment. I thought of agitation, alternative stuff, of revolutionary ideas, questioning the status quo. Well, I guess I was thinking Paris 1968 or Berkely 67 or something of that sort, with Woodstock mixed in it. No, it is not like that here. It is not like people will take a van and go and travel to California in the summer.There is no big subversive stuff going on. No idealistic groups, anarchic movements or pacifist activism. nope... Things are a bit milder, more politically correct, I guess. More normal.

Still in search for that ideal of University, I went to the Women's Centre. HeY! I am a feminist. There should be something I liked, some people I could identify with. 'Cause I was going down in my room, so I need to "get involved" and meet others. After all, it couldn't be all Christian or Asian (or both in one) groups! There should be something for me besides knitting (I am seriously questioning why did I sign up for that again...). So I go in and I talk to some people (girls), get some books, fill out a volunteering paper. But still, I don't have a great feeling about it. It is the exclusivity, the fear, the "womanly" side of it that bothers me, strangely enough. They have a lounge, just for self-identified women there. People nap there and bake. They have self-defense classes and "knitiing and bitching" sessions.
....?
I don't like the way the whole thing sounds, at least for now.
I know this is not "Flekke buble" and that this kinds of organistations have to go thourgh a lot. Still, I think there is too much politicla correctness and orthodoxy on the ways of seeing the feminist issue here, too little exploration of various approaches. Nto that I possess that, but I was expecting it to be found on a Univeristy level institution (again the intelectual community thing...). I also reject the idea that women ought to have a "fortress" (menaing exlcusive space) on campus. It is based on the assumption that women fell better among women. That was not so great when me and two of my friends wanted to bake cookies - one of them was a guy... Besides, the self-defense classes, as a main activity of teh center. While I acknowledge their value and the fact there is a significant rate of violence against women, I also think they perpetuate a climate of fear and of constant threat: women MUST be worried, more worried than men or any common citizen.
It all comes down to a core issue: to strive towards equality requires that we feel equality. Self-identification, sense of automatic entitlement is the basis for change of social attitude. The feeling that women are marginalised in the every-day dealings of an action group like this is important, but cannot take over. Because, remeber, that is exactly what we are trying to go against.
Male involvement is also a problem. They are described as "male allies". Allies misses the point, in my opinion. Men are directly involved as citizens in the feminist issue. The idea that oppressed groups should stand alone for ever is self-contradictory if we have equality in mind. Men must be a part of this struggle if we are to make effective change towards the idea that gender should not determine and limit a citizen's life and real opportunities.
I must say I was quite put off from my feminist ideas. But then, I remebered "Gender and Sexuality" in the college. And I realised what an honour it was to be part of that, how great it was! The discussion of concepts, of mind sets and of so many issues that we engaged in there was of a great quality.

In the end, I ended up filling out the volunteering paper. Who knows? At least they have a great library.


And someone in a window accross mine will yawn and I will stare...

P.S. On Saturday Night Fever

Seriously, what did anyone ever see of great in that movie? I was shocked by how dislikable it was.
Just had to share it. Please, if you feell strongly about the matter, leave a note on the subject and enlight my confuse soul.

An updateful update

Ok, ok, it is almost nine o'clock and I have not done any of teh nice studying or reading I was supposed to. Therefore, this post must be extremely useful, extremely updateful (do not question my invented words, just forgive) on the whole situation. No more of that blog garbage on how beautiful the little birds are, the light comes in and there, how depressed I am because I don't know often what I am doing here... WHATEVER! Now, real events, stuff that has happened to me.

....

....
... (still thinking)

Ok, I know!

Let us start with that party I went to on Friday night. It was at the house of my 3rd/4th year from Lebanon. I got to meet him there actually. I got to know about the party while shopping with Isabell and Talia on the most frustrating shopping mall in the world : Metrotown - if you do not like reading maps, do not go there. So, the party was themed ABC - anything but clothes. After improvising a nice dress out of an IKEA bag and a pillowcase, there I join the whole gorup and take the bus to the place. Mission accomplished: I had tones of fun. I danced, I talked with people, some of them I don't exactly remember who they were though. I talked to this guy a long time and found out tere are interesting people around here. I met him randomly the other day and exchanged facebooks - honestly the world is way smaller than I thought, even in the big SFU in big Vancouver. Curious.

Next day, I went to have dinner with my aunt, my uncle and their friends. It was fun, restaurant was very nice in a Canadian way and conversations very lively. I learned a couple of things about Canada, I must say. Only thing I disliked: frequent references to apparently me being very smart. Exageration makes me feel uncomfortable. I wish I was very smart - I wouldn't ahve to work as I do then! Oh, funny thing: I got asked again about having a TV and a car. Yes, I a m odd, not watching TV and thinking I am a bit too young to drive. The skytrain is nicer, of course. I took it home around 10:30. I arrived at the bus stop to the University and realised it was cold and I was wearing a summer skirt and knee-high Summer socks. Let us just say those were very long 15 minutes....

Sunday I realised that I had readings to do on Monday. Yes I did. And so, whole day reading was my terrible final fate. Yes, I did not go to the Cinemateque! They had awesome filsm from a French Director that I really wanted to watch... Later in life, if I ever decide to commit to a stable monogamous relationship, my other "half" must be totally into going to this kind of things. Otherwise, not worth even trying.

About me and stable monogamous relationships. The other day, I was having dinner with a friend and two other guys she knew. For some reason I was asked if I would ever marry a German guy. I said : No. Accused of racism and discrimination against poor German boys, I ahd to explain my intentions of not marrying, the fact that I do not see myself as a mother. Without even a stop, in about 30 seconds both of them were pronouncing me a hearthless person who did not want to "share my love" and would end up living wiht cats. They said: I looked like a cat lady. Now, let us be serious here. Why? WHy? Why? I am nice..... Why do I come out as a man-hater bitch instead of a normal 17 year old who does not want to give birth in the near future and does not see the point of a piece of paper (except for tax reduction) as a confirmation of my atheistic love for another person. When will such encounters end...?

Wow, this got long. If anyone ever read all of this, let me know. Anyways, if you know me I probably miss you. So send me an e.mail, a comment, a wall post, a postcard ( I checked my mail everyday and I get realllly happy when I get stuff!).
I love you all and I appologise for any mistakes in the previous text. I am just typing very fast. Everything is ver fast...

I am just sugar high on maple syrup.



But one thing she made clear
There was no coming on to her
There was no way
That she could respect
If it couldn't see
That the girl just wants to be
Left alone with Marx and Engels for a while
She's writing in the style
Of any riot girl

"The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a revolutionary part to all feudal, idyllic relationships.
It has resolved personal worth and in place of freedom is exploitation for profit alone.
There is a spectre of the past in my bold assertion.
We could learn much from the past."

It's Friday night, and I am drinking cheap tea... - Thoughts at the end of the Summer

Yes, it is Friday night. I am drinking cheap tea. I am alone in my room and it is dark outside.

I have my gender studies book open in my desk with some pages left for me to read. But reading about sex and gender and all that gets you tired after a while.

I have a letter that I have written but need to copy into nicer paper and handwriting. I do not have the address to send it yet. No point in doing it now then.

So, that is what I told my aunt whom I called an hour ago. She was very surprised. She said teenagers here in Canada go out and get drunk on Friday nights, they wait all week for it, actually. I was about to tell I could use some cherry licour but I did not.

Yes, I know it all seems boring. Tedious. Outrageously still. Yet, I fell this end of summer days as moments of perfect harmony and beauty. Of thoughts that come to inhabit my head during the soemtimes lonely days. And of visions of details of shocking beauty.

When I was coming from the bank, I heard somehting. A bagpipe, playing somewhere. It was a beautiful song, much like the ones of the Portuguese bagpipe players. So I looked through the last rays of sun, and searched in vain for a player . No sign of man, woman, or any other soul on the lawns around. For about 30 minutes I stood there. Sometimes I felt like I was seeing something, but it was not the player. The music seemed to come from the forest beyond the lawn, up the mountain. It seemed as if it was being played from someone hidding in trees. Maybe it was.

Earlier today, I went to the library and fetched a copy of the Motorcycle Diaries. I must see it. While going out, after a very nice old lady checked my DVD's , I saw the magazine of the Pacific Cinematheque and saw they had a whole cycle dedicated to Truffaut! I almost jumped. In that moment I decided I would go and see all the movies I could at the Cinematheque.

Inspired by this resolution, I went online and checked the programme for the Lisbon Cinemateca. It was beautiful... I wish I was there. I wish I worked there. How beautiful it could be... to work in the Cinemateca. To let yourself drift among the movies everyday. Not to live a fantasy, no. But to live multiple realities. And feel no guilt or shame at all.

And among thoughts such as this I wonder, among the paperwork and the cheap tea, where I am. What is this place I live in and what is my future here. Whatever it might be, it begins with these floatting last summer days.

On Eurovision songs and independent adults

So,

I am writing out of urge today. Yes, it is a craving. Something like the ones you get for chocolate, sex or computer games. And it has been with me the entire day. Tension release to the sound of instrumental Bossa-Nova Brazilian music:


Things have been going much better in my mind for the last few days. Yes, classes are still not perfect (and I started having problems in French!), and people don't reply to my "hi's"... But I go to know really great people.

More than that, at the end of the day, I am becoming exactly what I wanted to be: a strong independent adult (...on the way to?) person.
Each time I come to my messy room and drop my keys on the table, a sense of comfort fills my soul. The only thing it can compare is probably the beautiful sunsets on the top of the Univerisity mountain. I love staring alone at the mountains here.... When I let the last sunrays collide with my body, that is when I feel most free.

I know I expressed very romantic states of mind a couple of posts ago. And, you, dear friends that migth ever acidentally run into this blog, ask: how does this all combine? The strong independent woman and the little girl watching surfers?

As an answer, and initiation of a general comment about human nature, let us take my obsession today with the winner of the 1965 Eurovision competition.

(wait... this might make sense, I promise..)

Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, a song sang by a yé-yé blonde France Gall. About how she is only a doll, how she is totally controllable and how her songs show her being like a mirror, how she is afraid of boys and all that... Why, I ask, am I obssessed with it and, at the same time, absolutely hate everything about patronising?

Part of what is like being a human is being creative, seeing the future, imagining another present. And I would like to think that the attraction for the irrational, the conlficting desires we have within us are part of that. We choose to let them be as fantas exactly beacuse they make sus bee alive as human beinmgs.

Being ifascinated by tunexperienceed danger is healthmy, I guess. So is being fascinsated by comfort. I sometimes deeply want to be a Manhattan socialite, with loads of money, random relationships and loads of shoes. I don't know how, but this keeps me going. Not because I will ever get it, not because it makes me be more realistic. Simply, and purely, because it does not make any sense in my life's context!

Being a dreamer and living in fantasy worlds is far from being iddle. It is being more human than anyone else.

The Canadian Dream

Here I am, in my room in SfU, Vancouver, Canada. It is a nice place, I cannot deny that.


I am listening to a CD a nice girl downstairs lent me. It sounds great.

Life if perfect....., or is it?

I arrived in this continent about a week ago. I attended Orientation and had my first class yesterday. I say to everyone at home it has been going perfect but it is not. Maybe it will get better, but this week was not that great.

University here is not exactly what I imagined and I woke up today with the thought that I might have made a mistake...

It is the yelling, the over-exicitment, the "high-school" movie like situations, the obsession with sex and alchool, the conversations I simply cannot get...
I have met some really nice people, but it is so hard to connect with them. I feel like a stranger, a sort of misplaced element. Just like when I was back in Portugal.

And so, as I sitt in my bed, alone in my room, I look out the window. From here I can see around 20 other rooms, in a very voyeuristc way, I must say. I look at all of them and I wonder: will I ever belong here?

This was never a big question, because I never belonged anywhere before my Norwegian chapter. But suddenly, I want to belong, to feel good where I live, comfortable and happy. I want to be able to wake up with a smile and feel therw would be no other place to be than where I am.

I went to my French class yesterday. The teacher was wonderful, a friendly lady from Vietnam with a true passion for her profession. I understood all she said. The students, on the other hand, were sooo hard to get (American acent...). But more than pronunciation, I really felt very odd. I was probably the youngest there, one of the few first years. I was the only international. Well, I know this does not sound like a reason to worry. Probably in another week it will be much better. Meanwhile, the sounf of European French makes me feel good and comforts my soul.

And yet, I spend my mornings in my room, looking out and wondering how cold it is. When I get out for lunch I get lost in the crowd and wonder silently to my room. This routine is broken by the fortunate encounters and meetings with some great people.

And yet, I am unsatisfied. Am I too impacient? Am I so hard to please?

Maybe.

Accross the Ocean.... the unkown land

Finally I got some time to post something... Last couple of days have been hectic, chaotic, etc (continue with adjectives nearing to panic decription). The thing is: after coming back from Madrid, from a peaceful, art-filled weekend in Madrid, I had to get moving! I was leaving in 1 week! Leaving, as in, packing up all my things in a suitcase and not knowing exactly when I would be back to see my family again.

Yes, I have been doing some posts where I let my alter-egos go on (the surfers one) or analyse books and movies, or just write non-sense ( or what doens't seem non-sense at the time but afterwards does). Now, I am quite serious: this is what is happening to me.

I packed all my clothes yesterday. I needed my Mom to help me, and my sister. I thought I would panic a bit about that: overweight and all unfortunate events related to suitcases. That was untill I saw, on the Internet, this:

________________
THINGS TO BRING ( SFU Residence)

What you will need:

A telephone • - even if you plan to use your cell phone you will
need a phone to access security and, in many residences, to
buzz people into your building.


Linens and pillows • (your mattress is provided.)
_________________

A telephone.
As a background to this, let me just say that this week I found out about American plugs (yes, I am Europocentric, not by choice, by circunstance) and how they were connected to a voltage. That means, have to buy everything new there, except for my laptop and camera. Ok, Fine with that. A telephone? I come from a country where we don't even buy telephones! you buy t with phone company subscription! A telephone? Ok, I guess I will have to find that.

your mattress is provided
Thank you, at least... And a pillow, no? Oh, well, they are taking us shopping for essentials in the first day - hopefully I won't need to sleep on my coat.


Now for the rest...
_________
Thing you may want to bring:

(...)
Cleaning supplies • ?
Clothes hangers •???
(...)
Desk lamp •?????????????????
(...)
Laundry detergent •?????????? (As if paying for the laundry machines was not enough!)
(...)
_______________________

These are just a few examples of my astonishment. I know this is pherhaps a regular Univeristy thing. But the fact is: it wasn't like this in Norway. Residence at the college was designed for people getting there from huge distances with very little stuff with them. THIS is designed for people who are dropped and helped by their own parents in big american cars. I can do it on my own, but still... I can't carry all this things! And knowing I don't have a whole house packed in my suitcase, makes me feel unsure about my first times there.

I am not exactly scared. I think I might even be OK with the classes. I am just realising that, besides having to cross the Ocean and get to the right places on time, I will have to get myself together and live all alone in a very strange place, for a while, untill I learn my way around. No roomies, no House Mentor, no Clothing Store, no Uncle Tom's Cabin, no Cleaning Day or changing bed linen. Now it sounds like I am scared. but it is just me realising how well taken care of we were in that college. How easy and nice it was.

Well, on a positive note. That is the challenge. Key word in fact. I will be doing this on my own ,and enjoying it I bet. It is the kind of trip that puts butterflies in my stomach (yes, like the ones you get when you are in love). I have everything planed, what can go wrong? Not much, really. With all the intense socialising plan they have for the first week... the "living alone" thing won't be that lonely.

I'm young and alive - watch out American Continent, here I go!

Surfer boys - A Romantic Manifesto

To the soundtrack of "Virgin Suicides" by Air


Last week I went to Spain.

One night, we decided to camp near a town called Ferrol, in a camping site by the coast. It was next to a beach, very remote. On the side of the camping where my parents choose to stay there were a few tents, it was closer ot the beach. And,while I helped with our own tent and sleeping bags, I saw them. Some 4 or 5 Spanish surfers, about my own age. They came in their wet suits with long curly hair and laughing of some joke. On the right, there was a French family, in a van with painted flowers. And they had three sons and they all came back from surfing, with long blonde hair and blue eyes. One of them passed by my tent and said "Hola", with a French accent.

For no reason at all, I felt disturbed. Well, there must be a reason, I just don't know what it is. What is this about surfers? I have listened to too many Jean and Dean records? What do they evoque that I want so badly?

It could be the freedom, the adventure. But, I have that. I got to a point where I am satisfied with the uncertainty of my future, I am free in that way. What is it then?

I can't really tell, but I would say it has something to do with their boyish face and the curly hair. It was not about the surf, it was about a sense of purity in the air, whenever they were around. A feeling that any look we could exchange could be nothing but true and clumbsy.

This summer I felt tired of all I ever lived in relationships. Of being pragmatic, of being cheated on, of pity-love, of unsaid love, of not talking, not being romantic, of wanting always to be with someone else, of being content with left-overs. I don't know how I got this way, but I did. I know many people did, and I see it everyday. What happen to us? We, that cried so truly in the cinema, we, who promised to count the stars once we had someone to help out, we, who wanted to hold on to a leather jacket cruising across America?

I call for a reclaim. We, who have the right to a proper highschool love, like the ones the movies promised. We, who will not give up on that summer night walk. We want it and we will fight for it, simply because it is worth it. Let us never again get fooled, never again compromise. From now on, true romance, like we wished for. No white weedings, but true, genuine romance. And in that case, it won't matter if you have spot on your face or you feel that the shoes don't match.

Because, there is one thing I know, there is one thing that is true.

The first time I saw snow

I had written a huge post about Politics and my frustration about it. Long and deep. And I read it and I deleted it, two seconds ago. Because I am tired of complaining. What I want to say is not that, not just complaints. I want to talk about little miracles of life. Like the ones from yesterday.

Yesterday, I saw the old pictures of the picture box I have in my house. I saw pictures of me as a baby, as an infant and as a child. I saw pictures of my parents and of their friends. And I wondered: isn't anythig more magic than discovering what went on before you remember?

My parents had this very interesting life before, many friends and many dinners at our place. I saw this picture where they are walking with some friends in some kind of vast field, somewhere South, it seemed, They have funny clothes, all of them, and they look very different. Those were in a dusty envelope in the bottom of the box. There was one picture of my great-great-great grandparents. I think it is the only one from them. Then, there was a little pack of postacards. I opened it and saw my name.

Someone wrote me postcards and letters rom 90 to 93, from all over Europe. Belgium, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin... All for me, when I was a baby. They were from a friend of my parents, a really nice one, she lives South in a farm she rebuild. My favourite was from Warsaw. It was a picture she had taken from her window. It showed a big concrete Soviet looking neighbourhood covered with snow. On the back she said:

"My building is like the other ones you see in front. There is snow on the ground. See the snow Filipa, isn't it beautiful?"

I thought my first snowy sight was 2 years ago in Norway. Now I know. The first time I saw snow was in Warsaw in 1992.

Trás-os -Montes : a weekend up the country

So,
After last week's laziness, problems and so on, what else to do but to be going up the country, as old Canned Heat would say?

I did. I went to vist my grandma and rest of relatives up north, near Spain, 3 hours away from here (that is a very long time in Portuguese trips, by the way). It is a land of celtic traditions, dry, sometimes looking like some Western-spaghetti setting. It is the most beautiful landscape ever, the poorest region as well. Some houses are still made of stone and the little villages seem to be caught up in the too fast pace of progress, in a paradox of modern time. In the 60's and 70's many went to France, Switzerland and now everyone has some relatives there (like me). They come back sometimes and build the few very rich châteaux you see absurdly among the small houses on the dirt roads. After that, the youth went away to be the first to study in the big cities. Now, they are ghost villages, almost, where little old ladies sit outside and look at the few cars that pass by each day, as if they had never seen one. People grew up with no light or water and they tell you stories of when all the babies in the village died because of a rough winter. People treat freezers with reverence and are extremely proud of having one person in the family with a University degree. Knowing how to read and write well, 50 years ago, was a great rare thing.

For me, all this is such a distant reality. It leaves me out of place, feeling strange and uneasy. I cannot talk about myself as I do normally. I don't know how to do it really. I guess this is the big Portuguese generation gap. Our grandparents did not go to school and now we go on to do university. Rock music did not reach this place, nor did any sexual revolution. It was a medieval society 40 years ago, with landlords and servants, with no connection to the outside world but the travelling salesman. Now, they have a small heliport.

It is somehow fascinating to have my origins in this place. At the same time, I fell it is not my place at all. 3 days living there makes me depressed, bored or simply feeling restless: you see no one, you have no internet, you are not taken into consideration (young women talking in adult converstaion? nope..). Life is so different... I guess that is the thing: where you are from is not always where you belong.

The Loss of Inocence

Yesterday I went to meet my Mormon friends.
They are the two missionaries I met by chance, two nice talkative interesting girls. We have been meeting regularly for a month and we have talked about many things. Many times about Philosophy and other about their travelling memories, and mine. they have showed me a bit of what they do in their church. I though: regular and normal. Nice, wasn't it?

Well, yesterday they wanted to talk to me about Christ and the Holy Ghost, an Baptism. They started saying so many good things about it.. . They even got me to pray with them. Now, for those of you who know me, this is terribly uncommon, me being a quite convinct atheist. But, what are gonna do? I got excited, it was meant to get me that way!

Of course I got back to normal in a couple of hours. I started re-examining my feelings, my believes and understood the manipulation. I got angry.

SERIOUSLY?! I am a friendly, rational Philosophy student, sure of myself and with a great spirit of tolerance, not a fool and certainly not a person to be brain washed. I thought, let's make some friends, learn about other religions, exchange some arguments and ... BAMM! I get a "Why no to baptise?" conversation. Seriously, the world is a shameless place, even in the holy aspects of it.

After a small release of anger I am going back to adoring my own divinities, by my own rules 8I have a very strong porblem with obeying hierachies), with absolutely no guilt in me. I don't need to be purified, 'cause life is to be lived with stained shirts.

Now I am going up North to my grandmother's and I wonder : when will being who I am safe? Why do we have to loose faith in there being genuinely nice people coming along in your life? I used to believe, no in a God, but always in people, in dialogue and co-existence.What happened to dialogue and co-existence? Is this what people have become? Is this what people are?

Filipa, a desilusionned one

P.S. no offense to any religious people reading this: I still think being religious is very admirable and genuinely interesting
PPS. in the last post: "love in my room in Vancouver" is actually "live in". Just a correction.

On Bohemia and an inner Paradox

After going to Czech Republic for a week and having another week and some days of pure writing laziness I decided not to give up. I am resuming the whole writing : blogs, diaries, essays and shopping lists, cooking recipes, all included.

The setting:
My place, wearing pijamas, listening to one of my favourites, " Good Day" by the Dresden Dolls.

I have been doing very well the last couple of days. But this morning I just got the blues, I guess. Waking up and feeling incredibly cold, even though it is some 34ºC or more... what can one do about it....

A lot of religious stuff has been on my mind. I am planning to write some small thing about God and romantic love. I will post it if I ever make it to the end.

Meetings

I guess I have to tell about when I came back from Markéta's place. guess what? I managed to miss the plane. No, I was not stuck in the airport, I just came a day late! So, I am in Prague airport, missed my flight by one day. Managed to get home in the same day by spending all the money I could have used in my little solitary july trip around Spain - which is not happening. Then, after all this misery, I get into the plane and I meet, no more no less, than this guy who was Vasco's best friend. He remembered me from last summer when was down there for, actually, his birthday party! Interestingly, he said my necklace was the same but I was much taller and a bit different. Well, we travelled together and talked all afternoon, had a beer in Frankfurth. It was great, he is studying Medicine in Prague and loads of very inetresting ideas about many things.

While talking, for reasons which are not of much importance now, I told myself something I had realised long time ago. I really need to go and love in that room in Vancouver, to decorate it with all my stuff, to lay down in bed and have the room covered with papers, to invite poeple in and out and feell that is exclusively my responsability. In short, I don't think I could live with my parents again. The holidays are ok, but not more than that. I love them and love being with them, they take me seriously and are supportive and we have the best talks. But I guess I just need a bit of adventure, a bit of space. I tasted it at UWC and now I want more. It is not that strange a thing to feel completely alive.

The Paradox

Another thing has been on my mind since I visited some of my parent's friends this weekend. I was a bit upset when going home, 'cause as usual, nobody inquired about me, nor seemed to care about me studying in Vancouver or the Norway. It is the usual stuff, really, I am used to it and ask for no more. But, even though I understand there are no good reasons for them to care or to listen to me or to even take me serious in conversations when I try to say something important, I somehow have difficulty in accepting it. It is difficult to be a person you are not - to be the invisible little child, silent. And this becomes a bigger identity problem in this way: I don't want to be a pseudo-intellectual ellite, I want to get along with the people I grew up around, simple as they may be. However, when I am around them, I die a little inside and I dislike them. i want to love my country, my people, but they are not mine nor I am theirs. One of the great paradoxes of life. Living is finding ways to cope, I guess.

Bohemia

On a more positive tone, Czech Republic was a great week. Truly great. Markéta was the most adorable and fantastic person as usual and we had loads of fun going around her region. Once we were in her city and these Czech guys with a camera, about our age, came up to us to interview us. First question was : do you think that Elvis Presley, the king of Rock'n'roll is dead? You can imagine it was quite hilarious... Anyhow, beautiful country, nice people and verrry good food! We went to thsi Jazz club in Praha which was really nice, with great musicians and a very good-looking guy on the piano. Loads of stupid American tourists though spoiling the whole picture. Just need to be ignored while you appreciate the Cathedral.

Books

Wel, I am almost in love with Kerouac. I am reading "on the Road" and I just wished I had read it earlier. It is beautiful, poetic and makes me travel at night to beautiful sunny plains in America, hitch hiking in some stranger's car and talking about what really matters. When I get old I will buy myself a little trailer and live driving around the whole North America, with rose coloured sunglasses and long white monlight shaded hair.

Films

I have seen a lot of them lately. I have become a regular at the local film club, so you can imagine. I saw "Lady in the Water" and loved it, one of those movies that makes you cry with excitment in my opinion. Then yesterday I had the Tv on and it was 12:30 p.m. A portuguese movie started, called "Evil". I saw 20 minutes and went away - typical Portuguese bad stuff. It is a movie that does not make sense, even though it has a very clear social and intellectual intention. So, what happens is that you think that it is you who can't get it... well, you got to be living in Portugal to understand this... anyhow, Portuguese cinema is a decaying institution with no past glories.




"- If you don't want to be a laywer... what do you want to do?
- ....I want to dance!"

The Classics

During the last two years, I have had more interesting and truly intelligent conversations than in the years previous to that all together, believe me...
Over that period of time, I come to realise, to have those converstaions with those people, to study Philosophy and Literatue and all, you got to have seen, heard and watched the classics.

This is a self evident truth. But that is the beauty of it: realising the obvious.

Anyways, I found out I had not read the stuff everyone had. I had barely heard of some. In my school we never had to read anything, especially foreign books. I was mad, at my upbringing and my shcooling, even at my previous friends. But, moving on, I realised I would just have to catch up.

That is what I am presently doing. Reading Orwell's 1984.

I am 3/4 done with it and I already have some 5 pages marked as potential Philosophy material. The best part is about Epistemology. It used to be the most boring thing, but I have come to discover it matters more to me than I thought.

A particular question is posed that I will really develop. If you alone hold a believe, if it cannot be empirically veriefied or inter-subjectively confirmed, how cna you know it is truth? Can it then never be knowledge?

In my recent encounters with missionaries, priests and the like I have learned something about my own idea of religious knowledge. I used to consider that this was a case in which knowledge has special characteristics of individuality and privacy that made it possible at a purely isolated subjective level. However, people tend to organise themselves in churchs, to build mythologies, describe signs of confirmation fo their faith, etc. Tendentially, people are not content in just believing alone.

Does this say something, as a test case, about purely subjective believes. We tend to try to expand them into the world, to make them supported by others, by evidence, etc.

This might be the beggining of something. that is it, tomorrow I will take time and write a proper small essay.

thanks for helping me stop procrastinating. Sorry for any bad spelling, I just didn't fell like re-reading.

good night, I'll see u tomorrow

Underfined limbo post

Vaida spent the last week and couple of days around here. We had so much fun and did so many things that I did not write on this blog - an evident good sign of recovery.


Anyways, there are a couple of items on the agenda of this post.

1. Harassement and cultural issues

I need to expand on this one. Later, pherhaps. It is long, complicated and unberably annoying. basically it is the reflection on spending one week walking around with another young girl in Portugal, being subject to comments shouted out of any nearby café that we approached by any group of middle aged men. People say it is a cultural thing. I am moving to Vancouver.

2. The Mormons and all the others

In a couple of hours I will be meeting this girl I first met with Vaida on a train. nothing unusual: she heard us speak English and she was an American. Thing was that she was also a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, known as the Mormons.
We talked about many things, decided to talk some more today. Vaida was very skeptical, so was my family. They fear me listening to a Mormon and I don't really see why.
I went to a Mass in a Catholic Church just thsi weekend. I find it all inetresting. i continue to be an atheist. I doubt that will ever change ( unless I get spoken to be God, as some have promised me will happen soon) . But I want to know more about other people's belives, to the extent I cna understand them. Besides, Mormon's stories are not more far fetched than Catholic ones...
I will see how this goes this afternoon.

3. Belle & Sebastian

It's the soundtrack in my mind. "The State that I am in". Sounds good on your head in the mornings, when you wake up at 11 a.m. and still feel like sleeping.
No i'm not partying. I just read till one or two in the morning. Some say is much more exhausting.

Going to go eat and change my clothes... Livin' is easy..

on being homeless and taking a bus to Lisbon

Re-reading my last post I realised the ammount of anger release and even the tip of teenage angst there... Not my intention, I swear.

It just is difficult to live as a foreigner in your own country. That is who I am and I accept it now. I have different dress norms, I tolerate heat differently, I listen to different music, talk to my friends in a different language, dedicate myself to activities descredited by the community (like Philosophy or knitting) and am generally not comfortable with what is described as a regular conversation. The other day i shouted out "But it is my country!". Yes, I was born and raised here, but it doesn't matter. As someone told me, it would be the same as going to a place like a rural village in Afeghanistan and wear a bikini. It works exactly in the same way, even though this ougth to be my culture, my people.

Culture is what gives you a feeling of being "at home", familiarity and comfort. In some sense, I am homeless for now.

To get away from this potentially angsty discourse, I am moving on and taking a bus to Lisbon. that's it. When you feel bad just go a couple of days to a very big city. Somehow it helps.
I am meeting Vaida today at the airport. Very much looking to it right now.
Well, I 'll go get ready, the bus leaves in a couple of hours and i still ahev to fill up my MP3 player with new stuff.

The Look on the bus

In Flekke, the tiny little place I lived in for two years, people complained. There was no privacy, people talked about you, there was gossip, etc, etc. With all the due truth in that, there is no way to compare it to this.

Imagine a medium sized town. Around 90 000 people. Has a big University and is well known for its cultural life (which I have been searching for, but fail to find most of the times).
In a normal place, you would think: cosmopolitan, anomimous, diverse.

Forget it. It is Portugal we are talking about.
And in Portugal... there is the look.

The Look

The act of staring at someone, evaluating their physical appearance in an obvious and unpleasant manner. It is not meant to be discreet or curious, it is meant to be what could be considered in other parts of the earth, rude. It tries to vex you, to separate you as if you were a threat (becuase you kind of are). Moreover it reveals intuitively a sort of intellectual work inside the looker that is obviously trying to classify and explain you as if you were a strange species of animal.

Welcome to, what a wise man once called, "the culture of the look".

When you sit on a bus, open a book and whenever you look up you see the same people staring at you, it starts being creepy. Everyone notices it, but if you ask about it, they will just say is normal society and adult-like behaviour.

Sartre used to talk about "the look" as a way to try to capture the other's freedom, to transform them in a "en-soi" rather than a "pour-soi" like our selves. It is as if, in the consumer's society, we need our social environment to be a super-market shelve and everyone a product, with some very understandable big letters labelling it. Otherwise, you will just have to stare to see if you understand it and can avoid asking for help to the shop assistant.

I don't want to be understood.

In the beginning... there was a bright pink neon light...

So, I am starting a blog.
I must confess I am new to genre and the concept. I once had a photoblog, which is way easier to keep : post a photo and a very vague comment of maximum 2 lines and you have a post.

Well, a blog like this should be interesting to read (not just look in a glance), which makes it much harder to write. Specially when you don't know why you are writing it. Is it because other people I admire or relate to do? Partially, perhaps. And partially because of circumstances, and in the end because of nothing you can really name. That is why I called it a flight at 5 a.m. Because I know the times when I wonder "What on earth am I doing?" are when I catch flights in the middle of the night. There is when the non-sense comes out, the uncontrolled emotions, the pseudo-philosophical reflections burst out in a sleepy tone. It is that fine dimension that you enter once you have been sleep deprived enough, where airports seem endless and timezones melt together.
So, I guess that is what anyone can expect: a weird sequence of remarks.

I decided that, if this is to last a while, I should write in English. Right now Portuguese feels too distant (even though it is my native language, i.e. I am reaallly lost..), even though English gets me to do way more mistakes, for which I appologise from this very beginning.

Well, at least I will keep busy during the holidays.