summing up the 12

New Year´s Eve baccalá, empty freezing square, faithful friend. The return to the city of over a million and the return of the ex who seems determined to become a non-ex but will eventually fail again. The birthday and the carnival, the little cheetah girl with the red nose, no pancakes, do it again, laugh. Hikes and love, the tick, his friends slowly becoming mine and his friends slowly fading away. “I just forget to buy you flowers”. Brother´s nuptial feast while excruciatingly detaching. The void, the black hole, finally the rage. The recovery. The rumpus dot net. Cheryl Strayed and Stephen Elliott. Tiny beautiful things (that I deserve). Motorbike with the Londoner. The 100-yrs-old-happy-birthday-nonna-party. Meet-up group, riding my bike against the pole at night ´cos the river is so nice, how can you not look at the river instead of looking at the street? Venice with the insane millionaire on the watertaxi, your friend´s hideous wife at the same freaking airport (please let me go). Summer (sort of). Tennis: the challenge. Internations and his roommate (please let me fucking go). High Summer (still sort of). The bbqs. Bonnie´s angry perversity. Poker, the German-Andalusian Antonio Banderas: explosion of admiration (too bad it´s too late, too bad it´s too much). The little Buddha, Happy Old Soul, Green Pedestrian Crossing.  Silence. Deuter on my shoulders, Oviedo (but you bought me cookies!)-Leon-Santiago. Trails, leaves, blisters, ocean, rain, sun, wind. The Camino friends. Lo Sprao. Awake your soul. It´s awake. Cabbot Cove and Murder she wrote. Finis Terrae. Commencement of a smile. We *heart* Emilia concert. Bocconotti. Non-awkward yet non-appropriate friend-love. Caregiver-chaos. The neverending Budget. Meeting, ppt-avalanche, workshop.  Infinity. The queen of presentations. The dimple-sweetie charming private taxi driver for a night, stinky mango Arbre Magique. Throw it away. Funfair and Funfriends. UN. The interview. Dear GentlemeNTS. (How can I possibly write that!) FFM, Goleador and falling crown. SIAM. Ah, you are going to fall for Bangkok! Not really. Birthday- (non properly delicious-)cocktail on the top of the sky. Delightful Omaba 2.0 (at the Cambodian border to the American who –unsolicited- started talking to “us guys”: “Congratulations, I have just learned that Obama won!!” “Uh, yeah. Thanks you.*pause before confession*. Actually I voted for the other guy”. Well, schade, North Dakota pastor, maybe next time…). The S-p-l-e-n-d-i-d Angkor Wat. G-o-r-g-e-o-u-s Bayon. Tears. Goodbye beloved nonna, I want to hug your ashes. Silk, sun, burn, helmet-free moped, island, mangroves, lagoons. Honeymoon. Orchids, plane, home. Jim Thompson. Thanks for friends and cranberry salad. Human spinning top. Psycho-date, Sweetheart-date. Concert-concentration. Pre-Raphaelite Florence, Adventslieder for my slow friends, no-go-glances. Lina tattoo. Tsunami club, my poor dead bike. Nearly stranger around my blanket. Where are you? I still want you and don´t want to want you. Le Amiche week end. Exhaustion. Delicious Brunello, we *heart* Eric and Oscar. And Werner. And the big screen. And the movies and bread and cheese. Tennis reloaded surprise: I am not that bad at all!  Christmas market, Christmas party with Rudolph and Wixer, Banksy-genius. Home sweet home, Christmas x3, virtual Gazelle on its way, away - to the mountains- we go. Nonna´s function. Five, four, three, two, one. Gone.  

Oh, happy year.

to see, to think, to feel

Last week one morning I was walking on the street and there was this wonderful sky with a hint of sunrise fighting against the dark blue and it was really beautiful, so I thought how nature is probably the only instance that never ever fails to regularly and tenaciously find ways to impress me (no, actually also human ignorance, mine first). 
I looked at the combination of the orange-pink-violet sky with the star-shaped lights of the Christmas market hanging from the trees and found it perfectly…pretty. Everyone must find such a view pretty, I thought. And then I imagined how many people would simply stop, rummage through their purse or pocket, extract their cell phone and take a (let´s face it, mostly quite unimpressive) picture. Sigh. And then probably upload it on facebook with a stupid comment like “this am on my way to work”. Double, no, triple sigh. 

Shame on you, Mr. Zuckerberg. Mr. Jobs, Mr. (who invented digital cameras?!). No, I mean, thank you all of you for incredible inventions. But shame on you for taking us away the capacity of just looking and feeling.

If you think of it, it is a very human and somehow noble desire that of sharing what moves us with people we love, like or care about. It´s not even only a prerogative of the human species, now that I think of it, for many times my cats terrified my mother by bringing her as a trophy half-dead birds clutched in their mouth: it was a beautiful conquer for them and they wanted to share it with us.

Sharing is a nice, friendly, lovely and even instructive act. 

Compulsively sharing is the plague of our time.    

We don´t watch our children anymore: we photograph them and show them to whomever we come across that goes beyond a simple “hello”, whether they might be interested or not . 

We don´t taste our food anymore: we take pictures upload them while the dish is getting cold and afterwards even give grades to what we just ingested. 

We don´t melt thinking how wonderful our partner is and how lucky we feel to have him/her: we cover the world wide web with close-ups of us kissing until we break-up and then we reluctantly unfriend the ex and change our facebook status to “single” and everyone is “ooohhhing” us and saying how sorry they are for us. 

We don´t enjoy the view of a temple, flower, animal, person: we try to capture it with our digital eye before it´s too late, otherwise we will forget the moment and it´s going to be lost forever.

Yet, what we forget is that the strongest memories are those of the moments which made it into our soul, which we allowed to touch us in depth. For that, we need to give ourselves a little time, a little peace, a little calm. 

Let´s use phones for what they were invented for: to telephone.

Let´s use our eyes for what they were made for: to look

Let´s use our mind for what we exist for: to reflect.

Let´s use our soul for what we need: to feel.

Stranger in the night

(ecoute moi)

It was two and a half years ago, late at night, late August, late in so many ways.
I was sitting in the train, the very last seat of the cart, facing the wall, so that I had the illusion of being able to hide myself from the rest of the passengers. I was filled with desperation and sorrow, because I was trying  to accept the the idea that I had just seen for the last time in my life the man I was so ravingly in love with (I was very wrong, but could not know it then). And I could not stop the tears pouring down my cheeks.
I was listening to some mushy music on my I-Pod and honestly thought that nobody in the train would see me, hear me or bother about me.
And yet, while I was trying unsuccesfully to dry my mucus, tears and desperation with my sleeve, a young man, whose face I did not even see, just before getting off the train came close to me for a few seconds and simply said "Der Mann, der dich zum Weinen bringt, ist es meistens nicht wert".

It was such a filmic image. So poetic and pure and free because spoken out of mere compassion and empathy.

It was in fact not the last time I saw the man who I was so ravingly in love with, though I couldn´t know, back then. The man "der es nicht wert war" made me pour thousands of tears more until one day, suddenly, I realized that the stranger on the train was simply right.

It has been more than two years since that damp August night and today, after a very pleasant Christmas party, while serenely walking home with a light heart and no more drama in my life, I found myself thinking about the stranger in the train who was offering me a simple and true answer to my pain.

The man who brings you to tears is mostly not worth it.

Dear stranger, whoever, wherever you are, you are coming to bed with me tonight.
 


  

shining stars tonight

Tonight, this lady and me.

Thank you, Des!

I beg your pardon?

I live in a city of over a million, very densely populated and with loads of buildings, apartments, lofts, houses, abodes, lodgings, accommodations. Hotels, yes, also a multitude of hotels. And hostels! And couch surfers! Millions of beds to rest at the end of the day!

Now, how is it in heaven possible that the Australian guy who crossed the hemisphere to move here just  two months ago, who I met last week and went on a date with last night, how is it for heaven´s sake possible that of all the apartments in this city of over a million he happens to live in the one right above my ex?!

His bedroom exactly above my ex´s ??!! Not even, like, one on the 1^st floor and the other on the 4^th, nop! Same street, same building, same staircase, one on the 2^nd floor, the other on the 3^rd.

Statistically…how many chances, really?!

It´s clear that someone, somewhere, has a great sense of humor (including me, because each time I think of it, I have to laugh).

Oh boy. 

Yesterday, all my toubles are so far away

Yesterday I had an important job-interview, one of those occasions that can really change your life. It will take a few months to learn if my life is in fact going to change or not but, regardless of the outcome, I was happy. Because I had a chance to present myself to such an important organization and because I realized that so many people are with me in so many ways. 

While on the train to the prestigious organization, I played with the pearls necklace my mother used to wear every day at college and which she gave to me as a present last Christmas. In our library at home, there´s a black and white picture of her holding me as a baby, wearing that necklace.

While mentally going through possible answers to possible questions, I started to nervously turning the ring I was wearing around my finger: a bulky silver spiral inspired by a staircase of one of Gaudi´s buildings in Barcelona, one of the many presents my lovely aunt brought me back from one of her many travels around the world.  

Pinned to my navy blue coat was the twin-cats-brooch my father got me a few years ago. He loves cats, as I do, and I could picture him taking a nap on the couch with our two feline family members cozily resting on his belly as two big furry doughnuts.

Already at 7 am I got a text from my personal cheerleader, my good friend who sometimes believes in me more than I do, and later a funny email from my good London mate, one of the very few who knew about the interview.

Another friend from my home country sent me an email wishing me a good time during my upcoming Asian weeks. He ignored that I had another focus prior to my departure, so I just asked him to send me good vibes. He asked at what time. I said between 9 and 12. He sent me an email at 10 reading “Thinking of you and concentrating for you”.

Later on, between one assessment phase and the other, to kill time while still trying to look professional, I started reading through my planner and realized how many great experiences I have made this year. How many beautiful people I have in my life. How incredibly better I am doing compared to this time last year. How very grateful I should be and I am.

To me, things are not important for their intrinsic value, but for the love, memory and affective worth they carry.

Yesterday I suddenly remembered that (dream job or not) I am a multi-zillioner.

crispy + fun

how I love shuffling my feet through autumn leaves!

Groupy

We are bold. We are shy. We are loud and vulnerable. Irritable, mediocre, achievers. We are straight to the point, with our mind in the clouds, we are passionate and don´t give a damn, we are hurt and full of ourselves. We ask questions.  We stay silent. We whisper, we are gossipy. We look into people´s eyes and lose our thoughts; we are foolish, eager to learn and put up a show.  We are emotional, we are filled up with the future, we are unconventional and sweet, detached, from another planet. We are delivering, we are doubting; we are questioning, eagerly looking for a balance. We are laughing. We are always looking for an answer. 

We are a group. We are individuals.

 

happy baby

While on the train heading back home, tonight, I was reading Stephen Elliot´s Daily Rumpus email, one of these little pleasures that you are given day by day and that you sometimes stupidly tend to ignore or take for granted. I got home, cooked some pasta (I very rarely do that) and ended up doing something I know it´s not good for your senses, digestion, soul and whatever else: I ate in front of my laptop, watching Stephen Elliott giving an interview about Adderall addiction. I thought that I really like the name Elliot and that, in case I end up having a child, one day, I would like to have a baby Elliot. After all, the name in some country is equally good for girls and boys which is very practical. Unfortunately in my country it would be exotic anyway, so my hypothetical child would end up having one of this tacky names that don´t hook up with any of the cultures I am directly connected to. But whatever: no child in sight, at the moment, so I can let my imagination run riot. After that and a sip of good red wine I thought that I like the simplicity, honesty and integrity with which Elliott writes. For sure it´s not Saul Bellow or Bertrand Russell, but this guy has the ability to grab your attention, tickle you with his words and just keep you there. Even when he talks about his girlfriend coming to the city and beating him up. I doubt I´ll ever be into the things he enjoys, but he puts things in a way that you just think...well...ok! 

And then I listen to this and the evening is just...ahhhhhh!  

“On a side note you can’t love without risk. Sometimes love is a terrible idea, except that it’s not an idea. Sometimes love leaves suddenly and it’s as if you were lying to the other person all this time, or they were lying to you. Sometimes you love someone and they don’t love you back the way you want to be loved back and you think if they’ll just hear your case, if you present the evidence before them as if in a court of law, they will concede to your argument and love you the way you love them, forever even, and then you both get to be happy. But that’s not how it works. You jump from the plane and hope your parachute opens. The other person is that parachute. If you can, jump over water, and from not too great a height. But what am I saying here? As if you had a choice; as if love was a conscious decision. As if, “But it will never work” was some kind of valid argument. I was just thinking about a girl I liked and so I thought I’d say that. I’m stupid with my affection.”

"You think you can't fix anything until you fix yourselves. Well, let me be the first to tell you, you will never fix yourself"

"She said does this make you happy. And I said, is that really the question? Drugs make me happy. I haven´t done ecstasy in 5 years or acid since high school. Does happiness really justify anything?"  

Stephen Elliott - chapeau to you.