purple rain

collections and recollections

I have a friend who is a deltiologist. If you are of average intelligence like me, you probably don´t know what a deltiologist is, like I did until a few weeks ago, when a definition question came up during the Monday Pub Quiz and this incredibly smart and cultivated man, being one, obviously knew the answer: “How do you call someone who collects postcards?” 

A deltiologist.

Though the vision of any kind of collection gives me a sense of smothering and I doubt I´ll ever start one, I find the idea of boxes and boxes of postcards (as long as in someone else´s home) romantic and enthralling. It surely has to do with the “object of desire” itself, for I am one of the few remaining people that loves to send and receive real letters and who still sends postcards who are actually physically carried by a mailman. Quite sad – though somehow understandable – that the new technologies are killing older epistolary traditions but indeed I had to acknowledge that “times they are a-changin´” when in a post office in a southern European country, last year, I had to wait over 15 minutes for the clerk to go dig, in some dusty back office, some postcard-suitable stamps. Had I asked him to please bring me some tea and Parisian macarons, it would have been easier, I reckon.

Finding out that this friend of mine is a passionate deltiologist was for me delightful, for it gave me a chance to…send postcards! And not only once or twice a year from some exotic holiday venue to some friends who would open their mailbox and look at this rectangular piece of paper with baffled surprise, No no! I could send nearly every week a postcard to a man who would open his mailbox, smile his little oh-so-mannered British smile and then climb the stairs to his flat wondering in what box my postcard would better fit.

I don´t always send the best postcards, and sometimes I play the ninny by sending the most kitschy postcards I can find. One of my favorites was from a former military and now low-cost airport in the middle of nowhere. The layout, the graphic and the picture were so appalling, that I was almost ashamed as I handed it to the cashier to pay. The postcard was so ugly, it literally made me laugh.

Today´s postcard to my deltiologist friend is an old one which has been sitting, lonely and bored, in a drawer for years. It´s a postcard depicting a glass door of the Casa Battló in Barcelona. I have been to that splendid city only once and only for a handful of days. I remember I was happy. I remember strolling down the Ramblas with a light heart. I remember standing in front of the Sagrada Familia with unexpected and overwhelming bewilderment. I remember secret codes, cheerful nights, carefree days, full of energy and hope. I remember walking on the top of the Casa Battló and thinking “I am in a fairy tale and this roof is a benevolent dragon!”. I remember leafing through the guest book and reading, with a full heart, “we are here, and we are in love”.

I would have never imagined that deltiology would indirectly carry me to sunny, lively Catalan streets on a dreary September afternoon. Pleasant surprise indeed. 

savoir baiser

Some time ago I kissed a boy. To me, he was really just a boy though, in fact, for the society, a full grown up man. What can I say? Every male who is more than 4 years younger than me, to me, is a boy.

The boy and I inhabit different planets: he belongs to the skaters sub-culture, dropped out of college because “he makes his videos anyway, what could they possibly teach him at school?” and we have so little in common that it´s for me still quite inexplicable that we reciprocally found us funny and kind of liked each other. 

Fact is that the boy is, in a very uncommon way, sweet and pretty fascinating in his slightly arrogant yet somehow low key self-confidence. He loves to flirt and he seems to have a natural talent for that. 

Doubtlessly, he has a talent for  kissing. So, a late summer evening some weeks ago, this silly red fruit inexplicably found herself in a park, with the sun setting, kissing this boy.

For hours.

Nothing more and nothing less.

One beautiful and somehow forgotten pleasure; it was like being 14 again, blissfully enjoying the moment without thinking of any potential evolution of the situation. Since there wasn´t any possible evolution of the situation. 

Today I was thinking of the Synagogue in my town and I remembered that it was in front of that building that I met the boy the first time. And it made me think of the evening at the park. Though I will quite probably never see the boy again, the recollection made me smile, like a dreamy teenie. 

So, boys and men of the planet, I have a little suggestion: never, ever ever ever underevaluate the importance of the tiny, dazzling, simple things in life. 

And the importance of learning thoroughly - and never unlearn - to kiss well.  

the art of writing

I stole this picture from the web. It was in an article about an abandoned, decaying mental hospital around NY.

I fell in love with the shot, the shape and light balance, the soft, dusty colors; it´s almost as if I could reach out my hand and scratch the peeling walls, breathing in the dump air of the solitary place and hearing the echo of the clicking typewriters.

So sorry not to be able to give credit to the author of this picture. But thank you, for your art.

Visual Poetry

When aesthetic pervades, even the most unfamiliar topic becomes incredibly fascinating. 
Thanks Wong Kar Wai, for a beautiful evening. 

   

“Remember when I told you that there is nothing to regret in life? 

It's all bullshit. If life had no regrets it would be really boring”.

“No news is news”.

Letters to Milena

"I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful"

Franz Kafka - Letters to Milena 

Bauchgefühl, are you real or just a crazy bitch?

Sometimes I wish I could hit the fast-forward button. Obviously if I could then press the rewind button shortly after: I am not eager to become old instantly or dying to see how I will look in my 50s, 60s or 80s (if I ever get there, after all it´s not guaranteed). I am just sometimes puzzled by my feelings about other people´s choices and would love to see, without having to wait a decade or two, if my “Bauchgefühl” is right or if it´s totally messed up, which could even lead to make me look like I am being a jealous moralist spinster instead.

When we observe the lives of people around us we have a somehow privileged viewpoint: we are somehow detached (or at least generally more detached than them) not carried away by the incontrollable stream of passion (it´s not our life, chill out, no big deal!) and we spot right away the nice little hints that reveal the real “underground” motivations of those choices, which sometimes are not that healthy and could lead to a sudden crash. Much later, obviously, but still. They are the same little hints that we so very skillfully “oversee” (aka totally ignore) when it´s us, that we are talking about.

Lately I cannot help but being, if not disappointed (that sounds way too hard, doesn´t it?) at least a little puzzled about some choices of good friends of mine. There seems to be a sort of magical planetary influence, lately, because big changes are taking place in my circle of friends and, when they drop those news-bombs, I really, really have to control my facial muscles as to not let that eyebrow immediately rise in an explosion of pure, unfiltered skepticism.

In the past years I have been told several times that it´s good to trust your gut feeling, your “sixth sense”. Though thinking that it was a splendid suggestion, I first had the proof that it was also one to follow when I went out with a guy that I had met at a party and had already seemed to me a little weird. I had felt that there was something odd, yet as the guy sent me an email that night (through a group-website of which we both were members: I had not given my address to him directly) asking in the most mannered way if I wanted to have a drink with him, instead of listening to that little voice that kept saying “no, no, find an excuse, say no” I mentally scolded myself with a snappy “now, don´t be bitchy. He might be a little strange but he is also kind, he asked you out, what´s the problem?!”. The problem was that the guy is mentally disturbed, as it later turned out. And though I was lucky enough to get back home in one piece that night (for a few seconds I had doubts about that) I did end up experiencing one of the most unpleasant nights of my life. Ignoring my instinct was not smart, now I know. Yet back then it was somehow hard to believe that my stomach had superpowers that my brains did not have. Learning by doing, I then decided to tattoo the claim “Listen to your Bauchgefühl!” on my cerebral cortex.

Now, what does a bad date have to do with my friends’ life choices? Nothing, for sure. Only I am wondering if my sixth sense is merely auto referential or if it works also with those decisions of thirds which make me feel strange, which I find a little…hazardous. 

I remember being doubtful about a pregnancy in a shaky marriage. The child was not even 2 when the marriage imploded. I had a pretty strange feeling at a wedding where I nevertheless was moved to tears and that also turned into a very complicated and pretty unhappy situation shortly after.

Now I witness a friend perpetrating her well known scheme of long-distance-high-complex-factor relationship, a second one conducting her life as a driving learner at her first lesson with a stoned teacher sitting beside just laughing hysterically (foot on the accelerator pedal – down on the brake – panic - oh, speed is actually nice - foot heavy on the accelerator again - but maybe it´s scary - full brake again - no no, accelerator, now and 1000 miles per hours, whatever!!) and a third couple with a remarkable age difference exchanging unofficial vows of eternal love only a few weeks into their new-born lovestory.

I honestly still don´t understand if I am just being jealous of their happiness or if I just want to protect my friends from situations that in the rational corner of my brain are banging loudly on the bell with the big red sign “d-a-n-g-e-r!”.

But in the end, what do I know? I live in such a perpetual status-quo that maybe my “third party Bauchgefühl” comes only from my fear of changes. And who am I to judge, who am I to know? Nobody. I don´t know anything, in the end.

Time will tell, and since there´s no fast forward button (thankfully), we all just have to wait and see.

radical generosity

Stories: the only thing we’ve got, the arbiters of this human process of rocketing between hope and despair, and it’s why every person’s is vitally important. It’s why it doesn’t matter if you’re a mess, or put together, or even a success according to arbitrary standards; what matters is that you are conscious of the world around you, in all of its terrible beauty.

[…]

The world can be a horrible place at times, but we don’t have to participate in this, we don’t have to harden our hearts as we’re taught and told to do, in order to survive or be sexy or attractive lovers or perfect parents or interesting people. We do not have to make ourselves into mysterious gifts, waiting to be chosen or read or understood by those who will earn us, unwrap our secrets, and then what? We can be something more authentic, and speak from a different place, a different planet. This is why I like being a writer, because what it demands is both simple and incredibly hard. To be a human being. Does anyone even know what that means anymore? Why don’t we allow for mess? Why are we so afraid of it? What do we expect from the veils we pull down over our eyes, our minds, our hearts? How can we possibly connect if we never let people see what we truly are and what it would take to make us free? Now, when I can’t fake a single emotion I don’t feel (or at least not for long), I wonder how I’ve lived this long being any other way. Maybe it’s that I haven’t really been living, and that now I am like Adam, like Eve, my feet still wet from being newly created, awkwardly learning how to walk on dry land.

[…]

What does it mean to be human, at this time, in this country? I believe it means practicing a radical generosity and empathy, especially when it’s a struggle. You must look around in the soft darkness of your waking life, which is the partner of your dream life. You must understand that accompanying you always is your animal, primal, complicated, desire-driven, calm but desperate, brutal and brilliant self, blinking and breathing gently in the dark, waiting for you to let it into the light.

Beautiful words by Emily Rapp

thank you

"the moment I let go of it, was the moment I got more than I could handle

the moment I jumped off of it, was the moment I touched down"

All Good