Don't Trust What I Say

Writing is one of my passions. I think it's because I love the way words try to mime the abstract.

But at some point we have to face the hard question: aren't words just symbols?

If feels like the most they can do is awaking memories of very particular feelings in each person. There's no way to know if what was explained by words was truly comprehended by the listener/reader as words are inert.

However, we can't deny they can be very powerful. After all, if they weren't, we wouldn't be touched by books and music lyrics, but we are. They make us laugh, cry and connect to one's own experiences. They even make us feel like they can give us life.

But I'm afraid they're still just portraits of feelings and realities. Words do not guarantee veracity. They can be empty. They can be shaped. They can be embellished. They can be exaggerated.

Take saying I love you, for example. It's so silly!

Ok, maybe not completely silly, but I have faith in my opinion that Love and other feelings shouldn't be stated by words, but by actions instead.

A loving look is worth much more than a thousand statements of the phrase written with blood on the wall.

I believe that the need to take care of someone and manifest a feeling actively must be bigger than the impulse of projecting the feeling with a mere phrase. Especially because the word(symbol) Love is very vague and unclear. We have all loved in different ways and in distinct intensities in various periods of our lives. Therefore, what is the difference between the "I Love You" you hear from me and the "I Love You" you hear from a drunken bum on the street? No difference. The difference is that you Think you know what both people mean and you Think you understand the intensity of their feelings and their reasons, but you don't really know for sure, do you?

So that's why I say that the difference is in the actions behind the statement. It's in the person's eyes. In their touch.

If you think about it, saying I Love You is not highly necessary as actions confirm the feeling in a much more coherent way than symbols ever will.

In fact, from this day on, whenever someone tells me they love me and I'm not able to see it in their eyes, feel it in their touch and hear it in their voice, my reaction shall be a nice and fat "prove it.".

Instead of worrying about thinking of what to say back and analyse if I love the person or not, I'll do my best to make her feel all the feelings I have for her.

Feelings that are unspeakable, undefinable and uncontainable, therefore, true.

And if that person possesses the mental clarity to understand I'm not in search of plain words, but instead, of intense feelings that don't need to be named, then I'll know I'll have found someone worthy of my consideration.

After that I could open myself to the possibility that the person really loves me.

It sounds a bit complicated, but it's quite simple.

In fact, this will be my way of avoiding that this symbol becomes too trivial and at the same time, to stop me from giving it a large amount of credit.

The best thing is that any person who understands how Love has become increasingly tainted will have to agree that the true expression of the feeling should take much more than the courage(or cowardice) to say these three little words.

After all, we have all been through enough and we should have already learnt that words are just words.

Gynecologists and the History of Literature

My soul was exhausted, my face gloomy and my body miserable, I was sure I was close to my emotional death. I spent most of my free time by myself reading and crying. My extremely kind friends attempted to cheer me up over and over again without success. I had dug a quite deep well for myself and no one could rescue me.

Hoping to get a diagnosis of a fatal disease I went to the doctor, maybe they could tell me I had just a couple of months to live, so that feeling that was consuming me wouldn't last longer. After all the crying, talking and some exams I was told I was simply suffering from PMS. This means that all the cool stuff I wrote, all the sadness, melancholy and depth are gone now that I'm being treated.

I honestly don't miss the misery and desolation, but I already miss the creativity that came along with the illness, now I understand why most of the touching artistic material I came across in my life was made by people that was depressed and in chronic misery.

The sensation that you just don't fit in anywhere gives you some sort of distance from the ordinary and ordered world everyone lives in, consequently you are capable of deconstructing everything that surrounds you as if it was a Lego Land. But there's a last question that crossed my mind, what would have happened to the history of Literature if Jane Austin, Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector had had a good gynecologist?

B x

(Loads of) Beer + (Very) Dim light = (Fairly) Sexy People

I never liked Clubs or Bars in general, the main reason is that I never got male attention through my looks, if I've ever gotten some was because of the amount of insanity I have always been able to come up with. But one day I had a Machiavellian plan and a Bar would be the perfect mean to my sexual end.

I fancied a guy so much that I thought I was going to die if I didn't find a way to drag him to my bed. It was Xmas time and our group of friends arranged a night out in a Brazilian Club. We all went there and I managed to get him (and myself) so very drunk we couldn't find the bus stop when we left the place together. We cleverly enough realised we needed a cab and after fighting with my memory for a while I luckily remembered my address, so I could say to the cab driver where we were going.

When we got to my flat he spread himself in my bed, seeing that made feel so happy I could cry of joy and the sense of accomplishment overwhelmed me, I was a winner! I was a predator! I know I was actually a desperate loser, but how cares? He was there and we were going to have sex!

From the moment I got close to him to the goodbye kiss I have no idea what happened at all. When we met in the following morning I put a very tender smile on my face and I looked at him as if I had had the most beautiful night of my life. Throughout the day I kept trying to fill up all the gaps I had from our assumed intercourse however unfortunately all the booze I had had erased my memory.

Fours years have passed and I still try to remember something from that (maybe great) night, but to be honest what really matters is the lesson I've learnt, that getting someone shit-faced to take advantage of them is awful, wrong and can really work.

x B

Another Ordinary Year - Version 2

Life as everything else can be approached in thousands of different ways, and what really matters is how these universe of possibilities can affect you. The film 'Another Year' (by Mike Leigh) shows life, aging, friendship in a very honest and lovely way that has the power to reach you in whichever age you are. There's a chance it's going to bring you down a bit, but ignoring the uncomfortable bits that are part of our existence won't make them cease to exist. Some people told me the film is quite sloooow, but to be honest what I most liked about it was its pace, that suits the life I want to live.

We all feel some sort of social pressure to be busy, to do things and even to have fun. Your pictures on facebook show how active your social life is or is not, so does our mobile ringing constantly. A life full of commitments and virtual connections grant you the image of being friendly and fun to others and also to yourself.

Where others see buzz and excitement I see the fear of the quietness that brings reflexion and maybe questions. But as my friend said in one of our long conversations "If I just realise that I don't want to live the life I've chosen, what am going to do with my shoes?"

x B

It Happened Inside My Mind in Black and White

"You can't be hungry and scared both at the same time... If you're scared, it scares the hunger out of ya." This line is one of my favourites from all the conversations I've witnessed on the big screen, it was said by Peter Warne (Clark Gable) - the sweetest piggy backer one could possibly find - in the film 'It Happend One Night' (1934). The wit, sharpness and quite often dry humour always give me the feeling I would be happier without Technicolor.

This is one of the films I've learned to love through my brother's adoration for B&W cinema, I grew up sharing my late at night hours in the living room with him and that is a period of my life I very much miss. 'It's a Wonderful Life', 'Casablanca', Maltese Falcon', 'City Lights','Some Like it Hot' and other titles evoke in me a beautiful sense of nostalgia that I treasure. They depict a period when the daily routine was different, or seemed to me to be different, a period where life was apparently less virtual and urgent.

My life feel's like Newton's irritating first Law of Motion... Inertia. Do I dream of a life that walks in a different pace just because I don't feel like doing much? Am I just a lethargic person that is trying to decorate her laziness with wallpapers of philosophy? Do I romanticize about the past just because it's easier to place yourself in a period you reinvented in your mind? So many questions to ask, so many revealing answers to ignore.

Films, books and music built up a fantasie world that often overshadows my reality. My mind is full of scenes and sounds and my hability to question is fruitfull, I just keep wondering until when I'll be able to keep Clark Gable, my sanity, and my mind in the same room.

x B

100 Lives in 100 Weeks

From the 1st of December 2010 I'll start reading one biography (autobiography, memoir or diary) from inspiring, shameless or just interesting people every week and I'll do it for 100 weeks. But I need your help to find the must-read books I'm going to devour.

Please feel free to text, email or facebook me with your suggestion and it would be really nice if you could tell me what in the book makes it special for you.

I'll write about them here and I'm sure this little personal project is just going to work if I have my friends support, otherwise it's just going to be quite boring.

I bought my first 4 books today and they are:

Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Charles Chaplin - My Autobiography
Running With Scissors - Memoir by Augusten Burroughs

Tks for your attention and lots of love! =)

x B

Touched by Fryderyk

'Should I go to Paris?... Should I come back (home)? Should I stay here? Should I kill myself? Should I stop writing letters to you? You tell me what to do!' This passage was extracted from the book 'Chopin - Prince of the Romantics (by Adam Zamoyski), it is one of the letter's that the twenty-year-old Chopin sent to his friend Matuszynki.

He was meant to be one of the greatest masters of Romantic music, people like him make our mundanity glow in pitch black endless dark and just like (maybe you and quite like) me he was lost. The words of the young composer just gave me the free hand I needed to feel less pathetic. And my relationship with him has now changed forever.

That's what I like about biographies, they give you the chance to see yourself in others people's lives. Isn't it an overwhelming feeling the idea of holding in your hands the syntheses of someone's whole life? You can see the highlights of their existence, a hand full of their thoughts, a list of their affairs and their inevitable end. It makes me think what would be the highlights of my own life and all the things that are yet to happen. And it is such a great feeling! That's the excitement that only the unknown could bring.

I honestly find Life in the pages I touch and I believe that sometimes I'm so into it that people around me definitely think I should date someone or go to the psychologist. Nevertheless you know that when we are in love we feel things nobody can really understand and we can just feel sorry for them.

I, without a drop of shame, fall in love with books. And you can think that the trouble with that is that they don't love me back, but neither people do, so I'm quite used to it. And anyway is a not corresponded love less important than one that is? I honestly don't think so.

Tks for reading,

x B