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.