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

A Streetcar Named Shortbus... A Tube Carriage Named Desire or... Whatever

As most single people on Earth I have a hand full of affairs that never really have begun and consequently are not really going to end. Even though I never take it seriously, sometimes when I'm getting dressed to be undressed I have the uncomfortable feeling I am an humanitarian prostitute that shags not for money, but for the 'Cause'.

What is ironic about my dates is that when I'm asked out for some talk, to watch a film or to have some dinner I always end up in someone's bed, but when invited for some action I always end up talking, watching a film or having a snack with someone that has a very big mouth but has no idea whatsoever what to do with it.

Sex and silly romantic interactions had become far me more interesting to be watched than lived. If Edgar Wallace was right and 'an intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex', I'm screwed, that's official I am an intellectual. This epiphany doesn't discourage me to keep being around people that give me orgasms, but honestly sometimes the District Line tend to weaken my sexual desire.

After two beautiful hours of a miserable tube drama I arrived at one of my friends' flat, we watched 'Shortbus' (a great film that - pretty much like everything that is meaningful and brilliant - is not for everyone), we kissed, caressed each others face and for a couple of seconds I thought of telling him 'I like you', but this thought was rapidly vanished by the fear of how it would be interpreted, maybe he would think of staying with me or maybe he would think of going away. And I wanted neither of the options, I want the gray area, that's what I crave for, relationship-wise I am colorblind.

After we did what God designed us to do we fell asleep, but my thoughts kept waking me up. I felt like a person that has a blueprint of a heart replacing the organ that once existed and I sadly asked myself what had I done to the old me. Hearing just silence I turned around naked and got back to sleep.

x B

The Constant Constable

"Fashion always had and will have its day - but Truth (in all things) only will last.", this is a sentence taken from one of John Constable's letters to his friend John Dunthorne. Constable is one of the most respected landscape painters in England and I didn't have the slightest idea he had exited at all until the day Mr. Ray (a customer from my coffee shop) talked to me about him.

I went to a couple of museums to see his works and one of his portraits that can be found at the National Portrait Gallery, there you'll find him close to William Blake and J. M. W. Turner (a terrible portrait by the way, I'm not sure if he really looked like an angry eagle or if the painter did the job with his left foot). John look so attractive that when you see his wife's portrait at the Tate you just go like 'love is a funny thing', and she wasn't just not attractive, she was very annoying and took her almost a decade to accept to marry him just because he was penny less and his best friend was the local plumber.

When I finished reading 'Constable In Love' (by Martin Gayford) I felt jealousy running in my veins mixing with my blood, this man wasn't a believer he was a knower, he was cocksure that his love was worth fighting for and that his art was meant to last forever. There are a massive amount of people that have delusions of grandeur, but he wasn't delusional he was right.

If you are up to reading a non-fictional Jane Austin like book go for that one, the author tells you not just Constable's story he puts everything in its context giving you a bigger picture of the society this charming man lived in, and that's what makes this book so enjoyable.

The only downside is that reading about someone like him made me realize that I haven't been sure about anything for far more then a while, for me sureness is something I only know now in theory and it made me wonder if I will ever be blessed again with this form of lunacy.

B x

The Wanting, the Waiting and the Weighing Room

My feet ache from walking around the only three rooms that I still can be bothered to explore in my visibly damaged mind. By far the Wanting Room is the most beautifully decorated one, getting inside it gives you an almost evil sensation, it is the feeling of having every bit of your body being driven towards something seemingly essencial that a second ago you didn't have the slightest idea existed at all, it has Rosso Corsa red velvet curtains, Sangria hypnotizing arabesque wallpapers, stylish chandeliers hanging from the ceiling like a graceful pair of golden dressed trapezists, a bunch of candles with their sexy flames dancing around and every piece of furniture exhales lust and moans in pleasure, I wish my visits to that piece of hellish heaven happened more often.

The Waiting Room is where you go to perish, suffer, cry, choke and feel you don't worth a penny. The walls are covered in clocks, some of them are big, others tiny, some of them are melting away when others are just staring at you. The walls are pale and it has in its essence a very perceptible limbo's touch. It's a room that makes you hate yourself for having chosen to became a slave of the tics and tacs that sometimes would make you so confuse you wouldn't even know what a hell you were waiting for.

And the beloved Weighting Room is where you racionalize if the velvet euphoria matchs the grey and plain concrete, that's the place where you weigh up every sensation, touch and taste you have savoured. I have a theory that most of the time, in this room we realise that it doesn't matter how amazing an experience is, comparing to the world we built in our minds all that surrond us is no more interesting than a Playboy from the 80s compared to a pole dance by Liz Hurley followed by a blow job.

I know I'm sounding a little bit too weird but making no sense was always one of my strengths and I'm effortlessly getting better every day.

Tip for a very confusing week, watch 'Waking Life' after reading 'A Theory of Everything' by Ken Wilber. You'll feel your world being turned inside out, then upside down and you'll have a very authentic epiphany that only a Blog could save you.

Good night you bunch of nice friends,

B x

‎"I used to want to change the world...

...now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity", this piece of thought by Lotus Weinstock says a lot about losing hope in lots of things as the time goes by, I naively believed that this feeling would strike me like a fulminating bloody thunder around my fiftieth birthday, but nope, things don't really happen like that. I will soon be thirty and I already feel like vacating the premises taking the French leave.

So if you just like me feel bad and want desperately to feel even worse about yourself, life and everything else please go for 'Atomased' by Michel Houellebecq, this book was meant, I humbly believe, to hit us straight in the face so hard that our skull would be smashed. It makes you feel miserably human, this amazing author manages to squeeze all the divinity out of our actions and reactions and reading it felt like a sweet trip on acid when you finally understand everything.

I gave a tip for the cool and miserable ones with a keenness for reading, now a tip for those that are not less cool, far less miserable, a bit busier and that honestly believe that they can get famous, rich and be recognized for their undiscovered (maybe nonexistent) talents. So you sweet piece of honey pie try to find this week's ShortList (Issue 149/28 October 2010) and read the article 'Don't Stop Believing' by Andrew Hankinson, he will most definitely pump you up with his rather positive piece about the possibility of making our dreams come true through hard work, persistence and an unquestionable motivation that comes mainly from the fact we can not face living a life without the idea of glamour and fame that would place us in a special land, metaphorically far from all those people that surrounds us and we all feel are far less special than ourselves.

Enjoy the reading and don't forget that 'hope dies last' but eventually dies.

B x

Prince Albert... Not Just my Favourite Pub

Sometimes you go to places, and you have no idea why that street or that museum have the name they do. Have you ever thought who on earth was the Earl of Whatever? I know you kind of have a life to live so you don't think about this sort of stuff, thinking about the next IPhone or the biggest sale you can find maybe sounds more interesting. But anyway I will tell you something, if you live in London do yourself a favour, google as much as you can to know the history behind things. You wouldn't believe how lovely and amazingly rich this City is. It somehow might sound a bit silly to say, however I doubt that people in general pay real attention to London.

I will give you just two examples, one of them is about a monument that is just outside the National Portrait Gallery, it's a statue of Edith Cavell, an extremely interesting character, she was a nurse that was put down for saving people during the First World War, her biography is delightful, inspiring and deserves to be read, it's a shame people don't know about her.

The second example involves Prince Albert, that is not just my favourite pub in Notting Hill it's as well the name of the coolest prince I've ever heard about. Do you know what a Prince Albert Pierce is? Now I do and so will you, it is one of the most common male genital piercings and it was named after this lovely gentleman just because he carried one himself. Can you imagine that? It's the bloody 19th century and the Queen's husband is some sort of a pervert, I just love it! So it's very easy to guess which book will read next, it will have to be undoubtedly something about him and his cousin, wife and quite naughty Queen Victoria.

So if you want to get your golden star from Mrs. Black, google about London and let me know what you have found, I would most definitely love to hear from someone just because talking to myself is getting rather boring.

B x

Love and its Masks

I've been to the Victoria & Albert Museum a couple of times but today I spent most of my time at the Asian  section, I read every single label I could and I stared at all the items that were being exhibited, I saw exquisite tobacco pipes, 19th century kimonos, ceramics (habitat-like) made more than hundreds of years ago, breathtaking wooden chests, extremely beautiful Samurai swords and armours and so on, but the only item I connect with was a mask of a character from a No play.

The mask was made approximately on the 17th century and pictured the face of a enraged woman, she was Hashihime, a lady that after being rejected ended up becoming a demon, hard not to relate to. It's ridiculous how silly we are, love (obsession and its variations) all ended up catching our eyes... how typical.

B x

My Dear Mr. Huxley

Once I read in one of Huxley's books that "we live together, we act on and we react to one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves", and I feel now the weight of this words more than ever in my life. And there's nothing particularly wrong with it, apart from the fact that I'm quite lost professionallywise, but it happens to pretty much everyone so I just would like to know where I can find the roots of that feeling then I could chop them off and carry on living happy as a bean.

Anyway 'The Doors of Perception' is a great book to read if you have had any hallucinogenic experience and if you don't like reading very long books,  and I honestly believe you will search for other books from Aldous when you finish that one, but please start with 'The Island', just because it is going to fill up your heart with lovely visions of a fairer and less suffocating society. 

This evening I'll visit him at the National Portrait Gallery*, which has amongst dozens of pieces I'm tottally crazy about one of Huxley's portrait painted by Vanessa Bell in the early 30's. I know it will definitely sound quite weird by staring at this art work makes me feel better about myself and it also makes me wonder if I could one day have the same effect on people.


B x

* = The NPG has late shifts on Thurdays and Fridays, check their website for more info. 

The Glamour of Living with a Drug Dealer

Being an outlaw was, is and will always be glamours, and the Cinema is one of their greatest fans. So if you are in the mood for a Robin Hood like drug dealer that actually doesn't give anything to the poor but at least doesn't burn people alive inside a pile of tires (that's my country style) go for Mr. Nice a film with terrible chroma key effects but with Rhys Ifans doing a very good job as the charismatic Howard Marks.

My motivation to see this film in particular was the fact I knew Marks from a couple of tales I was told by someone that was 'dealing' back in the 80's and met him in one of his parties. Believe me, bed time stories can be interesting.

Be good!

Mrs. B

Dandy in The Underworld by Sebastian Horsley

I was going through my friend's correspondence (for reasons I prefer not to talk about) and I found the invitation for Sebastian Horsley funeral that happened on July 1, 2010. His outlandish way of dressing is just sad... however he did get some attention through it, and that made me think that I might not get anywhere if I keep my blue/black/grey wardrobe, but that's a subject for another post.

I just read half of his book and my favourite chapter so far is 'I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way', the way it was written is highly entertaining and deliciously filthy, just perfect for an empty and lonely Wednesday afternoon when the boiler stops working and the fireplace decides to prove that I wasn't designed to create fire... anywhere.

Black kisses

Last Tango in Paris

I don't know how dirty it may sound, but it's hard not to feel like masturbating when Brando 'butters' the young Maria Schneider. Who hasn't ever wished to be part of a very twisted relationship?
If you want to taste some insanity applied to a quite surreal human interaction please try 'Last Tango in Paris', it will leave you with the sensation that even the most strange of your dates were very reasonable.

Today I bought boxers to sleep with... Maybe I'm missing some masculinity in my life.


PS: I'm still sleeping under the wing.

The Winter Sleepers

If I was a character in this Tom Tyskwer's feature I quite possibly would share Rene's waredrobe, but I most of the time feel like the 'green girl'. If you are up to something highly interesting, very atypical but not too crazy go for 'The Winter Sleepers', a film about human relations and invisible interactions that I watched last night under the duvet hugging my (favourite) naked non-lover.

I'm writing this first post under an aeroplane wing inside a friends flat... This crazy home is sort of inspiring.

Good dreams.

Mrs. Black