The End / O Fim

There is no point in keeping this blog any longer. For a long time, this has been a discreet diary, filled with irrelevant posts about things reported by newspapers, and as the quote by this guy called Henry Channon says: "What is more dull than a discreet diary? One might as well have a discreet soul."

There is a lot going on in my life, much of it I would rather not discuss in public because, unfortunately, I'm not mature enough not to care about what other people think. At this moment, and for the past few years, I don't have the courage to describe openly my daily bureocratic problems and even less my emotional issues, which is obviously my main source of interest - rather than what is going on with every one else (unless they have similar stories to mine).

Last night, I've realised I have a lot of issues that I need to deal with, and from a young age I've dealt with them by writing journals. Since I stopped keeping this routine of analysing my own problems, I have developed many others that have gotten worse with age.

I still don't want to go to therapy, so, this is the end of blogging as I know it. From now on, I'm back to paper+pen journals, and whatever fact I want people to know about me, it will make its way thinly disguised in my creative work - be it writings or visual art.

Thanks for coming, and see you around.

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Não há mais motivo pra manter esse blog. Por muito tempo, esse tem sido um "diário discreto", cheio de posts sobre coisas irrelevantes publicadas por outros, e como disse um cara chamado Henry Channon: "Não há nada mais chato do que um diário discreto. É o mesmo que ter uma alma discreta".

Muita coisa tem acontecido na minha vida que eu prefiro não discutir em público porque, infelizmente, eu não sou madura o suficiente ainda pra não me importar com o que os outros pensam. Nesse momento, assim como nos últimos anos, eu não tenho tido coragem pra descrever abertamente meus problemas burocráticos e muito menos emocionais, o que e' obviamente meu maior motivo de interesse - aon invés de saber o que está acontecendo na vida dos outros (a não ser que eles tenham histórias parecidas).

Ontem a noite eu me dei conta de que eu tenho vários problemas que precisam ser resolvidos, e desde muito nova eu sempre tenho lidado com problemas através de diários. Desde que eu parei de manter essa rotina de analisar minhas dificuldades, eu tenho desenvolvido outras que só parecem ter piorado com a idade.

Eu ainda não estou pronta pra fazer terapia, então, isso e' o fim do blog como eu o conheço. De agora em diante, estou voltando pros diários de papel e caneta, e qualquer fato que eu queira que as pessoas saibam sobre mim, será incluído disfarçadamente em meu trabalho, seja ele em escrita ou artes visuais.

Obrigada por ter vindo, e nos vemos por aí.

Uglification of England

I've got a confusing love affair with cigarettes. For 13 years I've been smoking them, but never obssessively - almost only when i'm socialising, almost always accompanying a drink. However, since I was 12 i have had quite an eventful social life, which means I have smoked quite a lot during many, many weekends of more than half of my life. But i never became a proper smoker due to two main reasons: cigarettes out of context (social scenarios/following alcoholic drinks/night time) make my stomach turn, and also in excess make me literaly sick. I've got chronic bronquites since I was a child, which in times of crisis makes me stay FAR away from cigarettes.

But I've been thinking about cigarettes quite a lot for the past few weeks. Well, since my big stint at hospital last month, when I had a full-on ashma attack and boyfriend J. prohibited me to even look a cigarette - or he would leave me to die in hospital alone. I thought I would be alright, but then something changed: for once in my life i started craving Vogue cigarettes, the little menthol polish stick wonders. Then, I started going out again, having alcohol in quite big quantities, and the craving got worse - specially after J. decided to stop me by force if needed.

Then, the smoking ban is coming to the country in less then 2 months. I thought this was going to put a stop at my craving, but then every time I go out I think "how this is going to be without smoke"?

Now the Guardian, my favourite paper, publishes a special report on cigarretes - and most of the articles are PRO-smoking! There's all these smart people saying how they've always loved tobacco and how they will keep smoking till the bitter end. Even my hero of the moment, David Hockney, wrote today a piece on how he smokes for his mental health and how "the uglification of England is under way by people with no vision."

Am I being weak here? With all these forces pushing me in the opposite direction, I don't think my confusing love affair with cigarettes will end anytime soon.

Beth Ditto as Agony Aunt

The Coolest Rock Chic today, the overweight, outspoken, and in-your-face feminist lead-singer of the Gossip Beth Ditto, now has an advice column in the Guardian. I think it's great, although in her first column she sounds too mature and coherent, like any agony aunt in any women's mag. I was expecting a little bit of her the colorful, spontaneous irony, but i guess she is just testing the grounds. Still, It could only be someone with her confidence to give people advice - she probably needed one whenever she wanted to do something.

Club Land - The Return

Now, The Good News: London is going through a clubbing renascence. "What you mean?", you ask me, "it has never died, in the first place." I say, you could be right, but for me, in the last 4 or 5 years, the club scene was as boring and predictable as my grandma's daily routine. 'Same old, same old' became the motto of most dance floors not only around the world, but also in London's vast clubland. Until, that is, the indie rock sphere infiltrated into the tired rave bubble. Say what you want, but since that colourful trio called the Klaxons decided to go on stage wearing fluor jumpers and playing rock tunes tinted with acid house flavours, I caught a glimpse of an enlightened future. Since then, fashion has gone through an amazing reinvention of the classic 80s/90s club gear, and every proud East London club kid made the decision to have the most absurd fun with their wardrobes, and consequently, with their nights out. Now, clubbers dance to indie rock, old pop, post-punk, dirty electro, funk carioca, justin timberlake, whatever makes you laugh and shake that size zero arse. Shoreditch, thank god, is home to some of the most exciting (and exclusive - tell me about it) parties in the whole of the city: BoomBox, Trailer Trash, Modular, are just some of the tons of small but unperfectly formed parties that together compose the so called "New Rave" scene. It's all about dressing up and showing off the eccentricity and idisincrasy inside us all. Call it what you like, I'm just glad the fun is back.

R.I.P. Isabella Blow

I know, it's a bit of a drag to come back to this blog with sad news. But I was quite shocked to find out today that Isabella Blow has died at the tender age of 48. How come? Cancer, some sources say. For fashion insiders, or simply fans like myself, this is an awful surprise. Two months ago I was still in awe of her stylishness, after reading what must have been her last article for British Vogue about our dependency of technology today.

I think what shocks me most it's the fact that life is so fragile. It might sound like a cliche', but this is another reminder that our clock is always ticking like a time-bomb, and we should make the most of this very moment. That said, what's the point of devoting an entire life to fabulous hats and frocks if they won't go anywhere with you after your last breath?

God. I'm sick and tired of this weight on shoulders. Time sucks.

A bit of a Fright

Well, well. As it turns out, that awfully cheerful mood could not last long, could it? Life has its funny little tricks to throw at you whenever you are at your most distracted. Or should I say, blissfully happy? So it happens that at the end of that beautiful day, which was suppose to have finished after a nicely cozy dinner cooked by our flatmate A. to celebrate the Jewish Passover - don't ask, I still don't really understand what it means - I suddenly had an Ashma Attack. Yes, that calamitous A.A. I never gave much importance to it, since the last time it happened was well 4 years ago, but this time the boyfriend even got scared at the possibility of my stop breathing. I, then, had no choice but to end in the A&E section of the Big Royal Hospital in Whitechapel.

Rubbing shoulders with drunks, stabbed gangsters, and old people with low blood pressure, I arrived around 11pm, not expecting to stay long or even be attended to. HOWEVER, I was very mistaken, as occurred. Amazingly, I ended up staying nearly 4 long hours, having being seen by 4 nurses, done two nebulazations, a blood test and a X-Ray. Why, I have no idea. In the end, the coolest doctor in the world appeared to give his final verdict, and the way he spoke to me, I felt like a little girl in a pediatrician's practice. I almost asked for my lollipop.

I went home a bit confused, but the whole episode was not too upsetting. I guess I have to thank London's Public Health system for that.

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself

This must be the most beautiful monday of 2007, so far. After many, many dreadful and gloomy beginnings of weeks, in which I would not see a reason to wake-up earlier than 11am, dragging myself upstairs to put the kettle on, and cursing my fate in this cheerless island, suddenly everything seemed to have taken a different colour. Today I woke up at 8:30, full of energy, and went out to buy supplies for a very non-brazilian breakfast (eggs, bacon and orange juice). The air was so light and the sun so radiant, that on the way I decided to buy flowers to brighten up the house. The only misfortune is that the flower stalls around Woolwich's high street are not award winning types, to say the least, and in the end I had to resort to M&S for a small bunch of orange roses, modest but cheerful. When I came back home, it was nearly 10am, and I made a pot of the most fragrant Brazilian coffee I found the other day in this little shop off Oxford Street (Pilão), woke the boyfriend, and he cooked us brunch (already to late for breakfast). He left half-hour later to his weekly golf class (on a monday - not many people can afford this), and I sat down on my little desk in front of the window, watching the sun lighten the old warehouse buidlings and the Thames, to write this short but jolly account of my morning.

This moment, right now, is my favourite. Life seems suddenly full of possibilities.

Obviously it's a combination of several elements that made this day, of all days, to become what it is. Spring has arrived and I've got an entire week off work for myself and for everything that really matters - the act of creation. Life is only worth living if it's shared with others through creativity.

It was today, walking the ugly streets of Woolwich, that I realised: it's been nearly ten years that I've got this thought under my skin. That I can only die in peace once I've created something that can be passed on to others, a glimpse of my own understanding of life. A piece of myself, transformed into something solid and visible.

And so it is that today, of all days, I've decided once again to record fragments of my existence in this modest online journal.

Becoming an Atheist and other big decisions, part II

Then, the other day, i had to make another big decision. It was - don’t laugh - to get a gym membership. Alright, you can say “that’s not even a big one, it’s the most obvious of all, you fell for the NY-Resolution trap as all the other, blah blah blah”, but no. Once again, it’s a consequence of another of those extreme episodes. The other day I hurt my back. Which is not such big news, because I’ve got scoliosis for ages now, and since my years as a ballet and jazz dancer (that’s almost ten years ago), I’ve lived with constant back pain. I used to happily jump around wearing those thin, no-impact-protection ballet slippers, and completely ignore the shuddering pang on the small of my back. Well, it turns out that years later I can’t count all the things that I stopped enjoying because of what became a stupid condition: shopping, dancing, going to clubs and raves, travelling - it all became a little more difficult than it probably is for the average person with a healthy back.

Not that I’m not able to do those things, it’s not that serious. It’s just that I can’t do them for more than a few hours or I get the prestigious arrival of THE PAIN. It sucks. So the past week I started feeling THE PAIN once again during work hours. You know, high heels, standing up, making abrupt movements, all of this doesn’t help. But even with THE PAIN growing steadily every day, I kept on working, telling myself she would eventually disappear, as she always does. By the end of the week I couldn’t move or sleep anymore without painkillers. The muscles around my spine got strained to the point that I had to take a week off.

So I was lying in bed the other day, cursing my bad luck, and thought about how this is going to get worse in the future. How I would need to lay in bed for months whenever I get pregnant because of the pain, and how, afterwards I wouldn’t be able to carry my kids around like a normal mother. Or how I wouldn’t be able to get any proper job, with normal work hours, because I’d need to throw a sickie every week. The way things were going, in a near future, I’d be claiming disability benefits.

But hey, I’m no Frida Kahlo. I decided that I simply don’t need to be disabled, this is not a condition imposed on me, it's my own fault. So I decided to slap myself in the face and drag my sedentary ass to the small gym on the reception of my condominium. Exactly: I've got a gym 1 minute away from my front door and I never made the effort to step inside before. Two small but well-equipped rooms set up for the residents, with a flat screen and sound system available. What else could I ask for? No more resting or painkillers. All I’ve needed is exercise.

I've been there twice since the big decision, and it might sound like a cliche', but I feel great already. But no, I won't become one of those Brazilian gym addicts "bombados", who make their lives revolve around their fat-free muscle-toned slender bodies, which they show every morning at the beach. I don't even have a beach to show anything. It's snowing outside. This is a purely health-based decision. It’s definitely more carefully considered than the red meat one, but it’s a consequence of an unplanned episode.

(to be continued....)

Becoming an Atheist and other big decisions

I’ve made some big decisions this year. This year, of all the years, has started like this: my first decision would be not to make any New Year Resolutions. I would not fall for this trap over and over again. Even hamsters, the symbols of repetitive routines, are less prone to make the same mistakes, in the manner that human beings are used to. When something goes wrong, their instinct tells them not to go there again. “Don’t delude yourself, if you try the same strategy, it won’t work.” And it’s always the same resolutions: lose weight, get a gym membership, stop smoking, and so on. So, for me, I just decided not to give a single thought to it. I would simply not make plans.

Ironically, though, since the year began, three weeks ago, my life has taken directions that I would not specifically choose to initiate, you know, in the beginning of a new year. Or for that matter, decisions that I would not haven taken prior to serious and careful consideration over a number of months, or maybe years. For instance, take the first one: giving up red meat.

I’ve always loved red meat in its numerous forms. Be it barbecue, hamburguer, sausage, salami, or beef – if it’s bleeding I’m eating. Or was. Until one night I got really drunk on JD and Coke and after getting home, my boyfriend cooked half a kilo of steak. Sounds surreal, but we were very hungry, the kind of hunger that comes when you’ve drunk like a pig for 5 hours, and all you want to slide down your throat is the greasiest and heaviest food available. So he took this big chunky piece of ‘contra-filé’ out of the friezer, and sliced it, and fried so we could eat it with ‘bacon farofa’. Half a kilo. That’s 500 grams of cholesterol, fat, and blood down your throat. I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the meat or the two of them combined in my stomach, but I felt REALLY sick right after I chewed the last piece of animal flesh. It was a classic scene: me running to the bathroom and regurgitating everything back down the toilet.

Well, it turns out that after that I can’t even think about looking at a steak. I was actually hoping that the alcohol would blurry my memory and I would forget the episode the day after, but in the end all I got was a robust hangover and an irreversible repulsion to bloody red meat.

I didn’t think my aversion would extend itself towards other kinds of red meat such as ham and chourizo – and in fact, it hasn’t so much as become an uneasiness when faced with them. I get sick so easily this days since that episode that I just decided not to risk throwing up on the station’s platform or onto a customer in the bar. I even took a pregnancy test to check if that was the reason behind my sickness, but no, I’m not expecting. I guess I’ll have to live with it for a while until I find out why – meanwhile, no more red meat pour moi.

(to be continued…)

Em 2007...

fuck
journalism.
Daddy,
i'm
gonna
become
an
artist.

Water's wisdom

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Plath's wisdom

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. "

Jornalismo Brilhante

"Ano-Novo Terá Muito Branco e Brilho."

"Um mexicano se pendurou por ganchos para protestar contra a discriminação de pessoas tatuadas e com piercings. O manifestante não se feriu em sua apresentação."

"Saiba como fazer deliciosos carinhos nos seios."(com fotos e legendas).

"Cantora cubana posa de calcinha fio dental para revista."

ai ai. Ler o site de notícias do terra ás vezes é mais divertido do que assistir Little Britain .

Rock'n'Roll

Saí triste e eufórica da excelente peça "Rock'n'Roll", de Tom Stoppard, hoje a noite. Me fez ainda mais consciente do tempo passando rápido, voando, e do quanto esses anos, os meus 20 e poucos, 20 e tantos, são e serão os anos que eu vou lembrar o resto da vida com nostalgia. Desde os 17 anos, desde quando eu começei a ter sonhos de uma vida menos ordinária, eu tenho consciência da passagem do tempo. De que o momento é agora, que ser jovem significa isso tudo, e que passa num piscar de olhos. For fuck's sake, isso foi a 7 anos atrás. Foi a 4 anos atrás que eu resolvi jogar pro alto minha vidinha confortável em Curitiba a procura de liberdade e criatividade. E no entanto, só agora, 24 anos depois, é que estou finalmente experimentando liberadade criativa. SÓ AGORA, nesse período em que eu parei de fazer planos, estou descobrindo e desenvolvendo uma identidade própria. Sem a mídia, sem a família, sem os amigos, sem a nacionalidade, sem a cultura, sem NADA nem NINGUÉM me ditando o que fazer da minha vida. Eu não me identifico com a cultura brasileira, nem a americana, nem a inglesa, nem nenhuma, e não me importo com isso. Eu não sei mais o que meus amigos, o que a minha família, o que os meus chefes, pensam de mim, e não me importo com isso. A alguns anos atrás eu comecei a aprender do que eu não gosto. Esse ano eu comecei a aprender o que eu gosto. E não tem sensação melhor do que essa.

E voltando a peça, que fala sobre o rock como instrumento de reação política, da invasão da Checoslovákia nos anos 60/70, do gênio de Syd Barret e dos intelectuais de Cambridge, do eterno debate entre o valor da razão e do coração, eu pensei em como nossos tempos são outros. São fúteis e superficiais e efêmeros. Naquela época, nos anos 60 e 70, a música era um porto seguro, um muro de lamentações, uma parede onde se segurar e se proteger da opressão da sociedade. Política e cultura andava de mãos dadas, uma alimentava a outra. Hoje... hoje, nada. Hoje bandas não tem valor, fama é um questão de sorte do que a consequência de um propósito, música está em todo lugar e não tem impacto nenhum. Isso me deixa triste. Mas saber que eu estou aqui, no meio do turbilhão criativo, tendo a oportunidade de, talvez, fazer alguma diferença, me deixa feliz.

E assim sigo, triste, feliz, triste, feliz, triste, feliz......

Xmas wishes

Doll Parts

I want to be the girl with the most cake,
I fake it so real, I am beyond fake,
And someday you will ache like I ache.

So long

Lá se vai mais uma. Eu definitivamente não sirvo pra ter amizades femininas. Elas nunca duram muito tempo.

6 anos depois, a gente viu londres de cima

Letargia

Definitions of lethargy on the Web:

- a state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness)
- inanition: weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy
- languor: inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy; "the general appearance of sluggishness alarmed his friends"


ok, here's the deal. Faz quase 5 meses que eu me formei e parece que isso aconteceu décadas atrás, de tão desconectada eu estou daquela época. Parece que foi um sonho longo e ruim, daqueles que grudam na memória quando deveriam mesmo é ter se desmaterializado e esquecido no momento que se acorda. Assim tem sido os últimos 5 meses de 2006: não sei se finalmente levei um beliscão e acordei de um sonho ruim, ou se finalmente tomei uma pancada na cabeça e fui colocada pra dormir. Porque por mais que os dias andam passando rápido, eu me movimento em slow motion. Quando eu penso na tese que eu escrevi lá longe em abril, eu mal consigo acreditar que fui eu que escrevi aquelas 50 páginas. Eu mal lembro como escrever textos acadêmicos, mesmo que tudo o que eu tenha escrito nos últimos 5 anos foram os malditos textos acadêmicos. Minha paisagem cerebral (mental landscape?) reduziu de velocidade. Tenho lido pouquíssimo, mas mesmo assim, esse pouquíssimo tem sido absurdamente inspirador. The Master & Margarita me tomou uns belos 3 meses e meio, mas as imagens das criaturas infernais beijando o joelho de Margarita durante o baile estão vivíssimas na minha cabeça. The Bell Jar da Sylvia Plath tem descido em doses remediais, mas cada capítulo parece estar espelhando a minha própria experiência pós-sonho-ruim, mesmo que tenha sido escrito a quase 50 anos atrás. Eu sou a Esther, sentada embaixo da figueira, vendo cada um dos figos encorpados e suculentos, recheados de possibilidades, caírem no chão e apodrecerem. É quase desesperador, e ao mesmo tempo letárgico. Por outro lado, desde que eu acordei, ou fui dormir, eu estou tomando meu próprio tempo pra absorver as coisas. Antes eu vivia com pressa: lia um livro por semana, via um filme atrás do outro, nunca ouvia mais de uma vez os zilhões de discos copiados no Ipod, me matriculava em um curso mais errado que o outro - e não sentia o impacto verdadeiro de nada. Sempre com pressa, tentando processar cada vez mais informação, sem ter efeito nenhum. Deve ser por isso que aos 24 anos eu estou exausta.

Deve ser por isso que faz quase meio ano que eu estou vagando, algo em torno de 140 dias respondendo a perguntas como: "e aí, o que você vai fazer da vida?" com: "não sei, e você?", sem realmente prestar atenção na resposta seguinte. Minhas maiores façanhas até agora tem sido empilhar revistas fashion no chão do quarto e acumular pontos no Dance Mat, aqueles tapetes com quadrados e setas coloridas que você liga no Playstation e fica saltitando em cima seguindo a rotina de passinhos. Meu passatempo favorito tem sido passar tardes inteiras assistindo as special features dos DVDs, onde diretores e roteiristas explicam como foi o processo de criação de suas devidas obras.

Ando de saco cheio de seguir regras. Tudo o que eu procuro agora é inspiração.

Quentin Tarantino knows it

Nos comentários do DVD "True Romance", um dos meus filmes que estão sempre rodando no background enquanto eu tento fazer com que minha vida tenha algum sentido, Quentin Tarantino diz que "as a writer, when you finish a piece of work, you should almost feel embarassed by it a little bit, because you're just revealing yourself. People who read it are gonna know too much about you."

Então tem mais gente que se sente assim.