A big MISS-take

But of course, the whole shebang had to be a mistake. It was from the start, when I my friend offered the gig. Being a gathering of semi-illiterate Brazilians being pushed and shoved and shouted at by a dude (not Brazilian - who knows where he was from) with self-importance issues, delegating irrelevant orders while seizing his employees shoulders like they were little gypsy children who didn't quite comprehend the robbery lesson - of course it wouldn't work. As soon as I arrived, I felt a little impulse to do a little U-turn and break free from that hellish scenario, but my inner boss told me to be cool and get through this. What a nightmare. Five hours standing up at the entrance of the place with a bitter cold wind blowing in our faces. My joints ached, but not as much as my pride for being treated like all the other airheads who had as much self-respect as they had appropriate vocabulary (and English was their native language). Don't get me started on the show itself, which I only managed to get a glimpse of. A parade of frightfully pumped-up and oiled "beauties", desperately competing for a return ticket to Brazil - or most probably a one-way ticket home, as I bet a great deal of them would not be able to afford a "return" to the UK for financial AND legal constraints.

I was peeved last night and made sure some people knew it. Determined not to go back, I sat down this morning to write an email to the organiser stating my claim (and asking for the money owed to me for such a torture), when there it was, in my inbox 9 o'clock in the morning, an email from said person: "thank you so much 4 last night i did not see u when you don any way i am going to pay you 4 lat night and i do not need you work from next week my girl friend will do the job 4 me."

So to finish it off in style, I got sacked. From a job I didn't even wanted, by a person who can't even write an email.

It made my day.

beauty contest

Since I've decided not to work for anybody else unless on a short term, temporary basis, strictly for cash, I get whatever comes my way. So tomorrow, I'll be at the door of the only tolerable Brazilian club in London as hostess for the Miss and Mister Brazil UK 2008 contest. I know. Isn't it wonderfully ironic, though? One of my bests is going to be the stage presenter, and I'll be also acting as her stylist and speech writer. Ain't I a little crackerjack. Je sais.

+

and I heard today: "why aren't you competing, darlin'?" HÁ! That was a good one. Surely the guy was out of it on champagne. Damn good foundation, that Kate Moss' one, though. Will be paying a visit soon to a Rimmel's counter at Boots to stock up.

++

ps: i'm totally pro-blogging these days, I had no idea how much I missed it. So expect tons of silly little posts like this one showing up on a screen near you.

Obessed about the Obsessed

I used to be obsessed about obsessed people. People with obsessions, who went any lengths to do whatever it was they were obsessed about, or to be near their object of obsession. I had a special predilection for insomniacs and drunks, but not so much drug addicts and self-harmers. The first ones seemed romantic and idealists in their pain, suffering for a purpose, whereas the latter ones always looked pathetic and self-indulgent, lost and unaware of their own reasons, and I could not relate to that. In fact, my obsession with obsessed people comes from the fact that I myself was never obsessed about anything. I have certain interests and passions, but I’ve always seemed to accommodate them around my life, not the opposite. For instance, I LOVE reading and will avoid running any errands or complete any project to finish a good book, and will walk in a busy street holding an open book risking eventually running into a lamppost, and will pretend I’m sick so I can sidestep meaningless conversations and hide in my bedroom with a novel. Likewise, but in a much smaller amount, I LOVE fashion and sometimes will run a massive credit card bill that will take me months to pay in order to have that ridiculously sexy pair of shoes and that stupendously gorgeous dress (not so much these days, as I work with clothes and have them around me all the time as part of the job). And I LOVE my man, and although we shut ourselves off inside a bubble with no friends in the beginning so we could live off nothing but love, these days we're comfy and cosy and confident in our solid eight-year history, choosing instead to meet as many people as a 7-day-week allows. That’s about it really. I love certain musicians, but will go days without any music. Love films and watch repeatedly some of them until I absorb some of the lines by osmosis, but now the chances are that I’d fall asleep in the middle of, say, True Love. In fact, I sleep like a baby. Always have. I’m one of those people that sleep standing up if needed, that needs a solid eight-hour to avoid headaches and tired eyes, that feels lethargic in the middle of the morning, after lunch, at the end of the afternoon, and after dinner. I could never stay awake for anything, and there was a time that even my sex life was suffering because I would fall asleep 30 seconds after I got in bed. Passionate, I mean, obsessed people don’t sleep. They pull all-nighters in front of a computer, smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap alcohol. Which is another thing I can’t do. I do smoke and drink, a glass here and there almost on a daily basis when I’m in London, but I will never become a hard smoker and drinker because I am asthmatic and hate being hangover. Truly hate. I feel like killing myself when I have one, and I always regret and curse and stay away from any sort of alcohol for several days. That rule, in fact, applies to almost anything in my life. I’ll be bad, but just a little. Just a little bad. Just enough so I can maintain the edge, the sense of danger, to spice things up – but I’d never completely fuck up. I think I did sometimes when I was still growing up, but the guilt and the shame and the pain were too intense for my petite frame. I couldn’t bear to repeat major fuck-ups, to keep hitting my head in the wall like an amnesiac retard. I’ve always cared too much about what other people think to let them see me was a thickheaded fool (isn’t it all the people who repeatedly fuck up?). All that a result of that inner complex of inferiority, a characteristic deeply infused in my still-to-be-formed personality as a small child (but that’s material for another long post.) I could never allow myself to be obsessed because I could never allow myself to be a nuisance to others. Isn’t it all obsessed fuck-ups, insomniacs, drunks, drug addicts and self-harmers a burden to others? They are, which I discovered only after living in London. My heroes, all artists, all looked good on paper. I craved their passion. I wanted to give my blood and flesh and soul and hours of sleep to express myself too, I wanted to understand what it was to go hungry and desperate and physically sick because those were simply consequences of being passionate about something or someone. I wanted NOT to be afraid for once of those consequences, of losing everything, of being hurt. How divinely artistic and exquisitely appealing that pain seemed to me. Could I please be one of them? I couldn’t. Something, a barrier, a fence, a wall, never allowed me to go the extra mile for self-expression. Instead, the only length I ever managed to go leaded to a stupid dump called Depression (in fact, I have TONS to say about depressed people, material for another long post too).

Then, gradually, I met some of my heroes. And all I can say now is that I felt a mixture of surprise, disappointment and relief, both intertwined and tangled but absolutely comprehensible to my confused mind. My objects of obsessions, the obsessed, were flawed. Not in the romantic sense I imagined them to be; they were flawed in all the wrong ways. Egocentric, repetitive, selfish, self-indulgent, exhaustingly self-obsessed, and not so obsessed about their own art. They were marvellously human. Imagine the dimensions of the disappointment in my over-imaginative, insecure little head. Now multiply this by 100 and you have a glimpse of the dimensions of my relief. My heroes, the people that emulated my ideals, stepped down from the pedestals I’ve put them in and joined the world of humans. My world.

So, today, gradually and then suddenly, I stopped becoming obsessed about the obsessed. I was right, all along. While I remain intrigued by those who are not afraid to make a fool of themselves or loose everything, my new obsessions are the hard-workers. Those who, instead of just burdening everyone around them with their immense egos, simply shut themselves up and work hard, so hard they are nearly consumed by their own idea of perfection. Again, something I’d probably never be.

I just want to be blown away, all the time.

The new Kings of Leon

I'm listening obsessively to the new Kings of Leon album. It's heartfelt rock'n'roll, the kind that asks for big stadium gigs full of adoring singalong fans. I didn't like Kings of Leon much before, whereas J. had their previous album on repeat mode in his iPhone for a long time. Until I read this raving review in a Sunday supplement and, since I haven't listened to anything other than 80s pop these days, I decided to have a go. Apparently, this album got very mixed reviews, many of them leaning toward the thumbs down road than anything else. Who cares. These days I see music critics as irrelevant as everyone else's opinion about music : they're only purpose is to inform you of artists and their output. Their personal tastes are pointless. Music to me is about instinct: it either rocks your world or it doesn't. It either makes you feel happy, or sad, or sexy, or it doesn't. Stuff like "the track starts on the right note but it doesn't hold to the end" or any scrutinising production bollocks is only interesting for people who work with it. I just care if it makes me dance, if  it makes me cry, or if it makes me forget my own thoughts for a while. 

And I'm not going to feel silly for that.

Having it All

The other day I came across an article in a fashion magazine about that old feminine ideal of having it all. The myth that we, the fragile sex, can have a successful career, a family, a stable relationship and money while still managing to be pretty, sexy, fashionable and intelligent. Note that I say myth, and not concept, because that what it is, and will always be, if you, stressed out folks out there, haven't realised yet: being good at everything is nothing more, nothing less than pure utopia. It is a phony ideal of life. And more to the point, it's utterly unfair to women. Men don't go through this kind of dilemma - or at least, not the ones that I know. Most of the men around me (the non-gay ones) are either focused in 1)Make money, 2) Have sex, 3)Be recognized for whatever they do so they can have numbers 1 and 2, and 4)Have a good time after and while they're working at numbers 1,2 and 3, which includes drinking, drugs, bungee jumping, gambling in Vegas, or whatever takes their fancy. The ones with kids and relationships are either 1)Bored, 2)Too busy fucking around to care, 3)Thinking they're too hot to be having sex with just one bird, so they better get out of it ASAP. Some of them care about their looks or think about clothes, but never more than once a week, and even them it takes a right pickle for them to do anything about it (say, a girl that looks horrified at the sight of their naked beer gut, or a pair of torn jeans that exposes their disproportional god-given male qualities). So I suppose, with few exceptions, men in general don't go about fretting that they can't have it all, simply because they don't want to.

Now, in my case, the have-it-all ideal assumes an entirely new proportion. On top of wanting all of those things that make up the myth, each category is divided into several sub-categories, making the whole thing sound, well, decidedly AMBITIOUS.

I'll give an example (the most obvious of the other obvious ones): career. I don't want to have just ONE career, for many reasons, the strongest of them being that 1) I have way too many interests, 2) Which makes me want to be able to explore at least some of them at lenght and 3) Which also scares the monkeys out of me to be defined by any single one of them.

I'll translate: right at this moment I'd very much like to write a novel and short stories, colaborate with magazines, create an ethical fashion label, learn to knit, sew and draw properly, take street fashion pictures on a weekly basis, and become an assistant of someone with an established career in any of these creative areas. In my little deluded head, I believe I am perfectly able to do all of the above at the same time, so I've written a weekly schedule in which I dedicate a few hours everyday to each task/project, carefully designating special slots for exercising and socialising on a regular basis.

BUT - and there's always a but - on top of everything I also need to find time to run a small (tiny) business in which I buy, style, photograph, edit, update, promote and send vintage clothes to remote corners of the world, and all on my own.

The result: a frustrated, overly disquieted version of me at the end of every single day because OBVIOUSLY I cannot complete 25% of my meticulously drawn daily schedule.

It goes without saying that each and every aspect of my life suffers too. I skip daily runs and yoga sessions because I'm already late to finish whatever I'm working on, I neglect friends and boyfriend because I always think I could be carrying out a project instead of engaging in meaningless chit-chat, and when I am around other people I struggle to pay attention to what they say because my mind is racing with things I ought to be doing.

The relationship part, I don't even want to go there. My other half favourite choice of words is "What did I just say?", because he knows I'm endlessly pretending to listen to him. Not to mention (the shame!) my nightly predilection for books or another episode of Six Feet Under instead of sex.

God. My neck hurts.

So how on earth I'm gonna manage to have children and a house and (oh, I forgot), enough money to support this insane lifestyle, that's what I can't even think about thinking.

And there are still women out there who say we can have it all. I'd kill whoever invented that.

Impressions from an Italian holiday

Last weekend we went for a road trip around the north of Italy and it turned out to be one of the most fantastic trips I've ever been to. This time, we hadn't planned absolutely anything, and I was almost certain things were going to go wrong - last time we went for a road trip (around the UK), we ended up in obscure, cold towns, getting car-sick and bored to our hearts' content.

Amazingly, this time everything rolled smoothly. We simply picked up a car in Milan, looked at the map, and someone pointed a finger randomly at the map, saying "Let's go there." After six hours driving through stunning landscapes we arrived at a tiny touristic town called Levanto near Cinque Terre and the Italian Riviera.  

And our luck did not finish there: after knocking on some people's doors asking for a hotel room, we managed to rent this superb three bedroom flat 2 minutes from the beach. I was in heaven.

We spent 2 days soaking in the sun in Levanto and Buonnasola (another beautiful beach 10 minutes away), had dinner in Vernazze, an even tinier village with one of the most fantastic sunsets on Earth (the other one being my Dad's hometown, Campo Grande, in Brazil), watched shooting stars lying on the rocks (I had never seen one before, until my new friend C. told me to keep looking at the same point in the sky for 10 minutes. I screamed when I realized it was true.), and ended the trip with late drinks in a medieval city called Lucca and the best risotto in a restaurant in Milan with a view to the Duomo.

Now. The fun part: (Before any Italians read this, please note I am totally generalizing).

1- Tanning is SERIOUS BUSINESS for Italians. They surely don't give a rat's ass to that whole nonsense of sunbathing before 11am and after 4pm, or using SPF 30, or things like wrinkles  and, uh, CANCER. Why, if they can turn into a 70% dark chocolate version of themselves? I've never seen anything like that shade of tan. They were all something like this: 

(That's the only picture google came up with when I typed "super tan". And that picture is probably from someone's granny in the 60s - which gives us an idea of how crazy must be these days to go this dark :).

Everywhere there were ladies toasting away midday, with a cigarette in one hand and baby oil spray on the other. And their faces MATCHED their bodies. Damn, I don't think I've come across anyone that, uhm, ruthless since the 80s. 

2- Young men in Lucca ALL have long hair scraped back in a (yes) BUN. I'm not making this up. We went into the town center at night for drinks and we encountered this corner full of boys and young people standing in front of pizzarias and gelaterias (apparently their saturday night hangout of choice). And a whole group of them had their hair UP, loosely tied with the ends sticking out. Something like this:

I've seen men wearing their hair this way occasionally, but I never thought this was a MAJOR trend anywhere since the... what, early 90s? Oh, and all of them also wore knitted jumpers tied around their shoulders in a preppy sort of vibe, even though it was 35ºC outside and there wasn't any remote possibility of temperatures falling.

3- Italians can be quite scary sometimes. Everything seems to be "private" or "exclusive", and you have to pay to have to privilege to be at this places. Every beach has a private area with sun loungers (30 euros a day), and we were kicked out of all of them. You cannot order an espresso at the bar and take it to a table without someone screaming at you that you need to pay a fee to sit down, and don't even try to use their toilets or (the heresy!) throw a can of coke in their rubbish bins if you haven't bought it there. 

4- Italians like their buildings to be grand and embellished, but it seems that around the riviera and Cinque Terre they don't want to spend too much money on sculpted ornaments. Instead, they paint extra windows, balcony columns, adornments and bricks on the walls in 3D style, so from a distance it's like you're looking at carefully built antique architecture. Marvelously kitschy. Something like this: 

That's all I can remember now. But I'll never see Italians in the same light after this trip. They surely are peculiar people.

The Raconteurs advice

Everything's OK
As long as you're inside my blue veins.

Elephant's Memory

Since we moved to the loft/studio/live-n-work unit, things have changed for the better ... and some for the worse. I can't remember if I said that before, but after 6 years living abroad, this is the first time we're on our own. Just me and him and the cats. I don't want to dare say it's anything other than wonderful, because that's all it has been for most of the time. But reality always warms her way into one's lives eventually, and now there are no flatmates to blame for the unfairness and arduousness of it all.

In one sentence: when shit hits the fan, sometimes I just feel like killing him.

Don't get me wrong, though. I am doing nothing more than venting here, because almost 8 years down the road, in terms of relationships I can honestly declare that I am NOT a quitter. Just because in times of trouble, when the clothes rail breaks for the second time and everything is gathering dust on the floor, when the Ikea cupboard is faulty once again and we have to return it, when the washing machine is leaking, the ceiling is leaking, the shower is leaking, the bloody London sky is leaking!, it doesn't mean I don't want to be with him anymore. Being - as in the act of existing - without him is a condition I have no intention of pursuing ever again. This is one of the major changes I've gone through since I started seeing him, because my original nature (if I can put it this way - surely one's nature changes along the way?) is one of a quitter. It's in my genes. For most of my teen and early adulthood years, when there was a remote possibility, a looming idea that things might go wrong, I would simply jump in and out like a frog who jumps inside a boiling pan. That is a classic example of immaturity: someone who just doesn't want to deal with too much pain. It's okay to get slightly injured, hurt and cry for a couple of days, but then life is too short to stir away in a pool of sorrow. Bring fresh blood in, please.

Then, I met him, and when it comes to loved ones, he is not a quitter. He just doesn't switch off his phone and disappear when jealousy and bitterness and anxiety broke all at once. He doesn't run off to someone else's arms, someone else's smell to forget the frustration. He was the first person to smile straight in the middle of a row and say "ok, I'm sorry, lets start all over again".
He says, "Even better, let's just forget everything", because he probably knows quitters like me have elephant's memory and tend to build a wall around themselves against eventual threats.
So gradually, brick by brick, he razed my wall down and taught me that love is about sticking together, specially in times of hardship.

On the other hand, I'm convinced that I was not the only one who learnt important lessons throughout our almost eight years together. I, with my extreme tendencies to over-analyse stuff, have always needed to talk things through, specially when I'm not putting them down as rantings in a journal or blog. Which means that whenever he would hold me by the collar to not run away, I would sit there and say "Okay then, let's NOT start all over again. I wanna talk about it." The quintessencial, old-school "Let's discuss our relationship." I like to believe he is not like the stereotypical man who avoids this kind of situation. Instead, he simply was, years ago, unfamiliar with this habit. It certainly became a habit. And because of these two rules (1. do not avoid problems, and 2. confront and talk them through), established steadily by both, we managed to change our "original natures" - at least, a little.

Today, when life comes crashing in with bills to be paid, cats to feed, cleaning to be done, things to get fixed, projects to be carried out, all accompanied by the ghosts of failure and frustration, we try to stick together.

And talk it through.

Penelope Fitzgerald's writing advice

Today, in the Guardian:

"I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken."

In this light, I should have had TONS of inspiration. At least for the novel part.

A Novel's Help

These days, it is not very often that I come across a book that simply sweeps me off my feet, that makes me want to read it slowly and carefully, underling sentences and writing comments on the margins. Recently, I really enjoyed the The Glass Castle, a memoir which I bought at the airport in São Paulo and read the whole thing in Portuguese on the plane to London, from the American journalist Jeannette Walls (in this YouTube clip her idiosyncratic and often irritatingly free-spirited mother appears, while she happily summarises her story to the camera like an E! presenter. I found that annoying.)

But for the past 2 weeks I've been completely engrossed in Siri Hustvedt's novel What I Loved. It is beautifully written in a sort of careful, elaborate narrative that forces you to decelarate and enjoy the language and the comprehensive pondering of the characters' emotional behaviours. Until I finished the novel today and started combing the internet for people's impressions and opinions, I was also amazed at Hustvedt's imaginary capacity to create such a complex plot (the book explores 25 years of two New York 'art' couples), but then I found a couple of articles that mentioned the similarity of several sections of the book to Hustvedt and her husband Paul Auster's lives, and then my awe faded a little. Apparently, both authors are well-known in the literary world for "dressing" facts from their own lives, as a journalist wrote, and incorporate them into their work.

That said, knowing this doesn't affect my infatuation with this book. In this little audio clip, she says that if you look at people sitting around the table of a dinner party, you could bet that every single one has stories about love and loss, and how both have been largely influential on how those people turned out. She says "I'm interested in why people become what they become. When my daughter was 3, I was giving her a bath, and she asked me: 'Mom, when I grow up, will I still be Sophie?' That was a very dramatic question about human life, and this novel is about those ideas, the role of culture in shaping people's character."

I just loved that. In my own troubled relationship with my family and friends, I've often tried to put breaks on my own judgement of them and simply tried to understand what was behind their acts and behaviour. It made things easier, at least for me, and opened space for forgiveness. Reading this novel and hearing that comment clarified a lot what I have - often unconsciously - tried to do, and shone a light into a practice that needs to be exercised by anyone who wants to be some kind of writer/artist.

I'm looking forward to read her other novels.

The Written Word

Talking about not recognising my former self.

Just the other day I've realised that although I'm somewhat more comfortable with who I am at the moment, there's also a shadowy side to this recent moment of enlightenment.

I still think I should be doing more.

6 years ago I saw myself as someone who saw intellectuality, the workings of the mind, as a goal, as a way of life, something to aspire to. My heros always have been writers, people who spent most of their days thinking and translating conclusions, deliberations and observations into words who would be read by others. At the same time, I've always loved fashion, and always thought of it as a way to show the world, albeit in a superficial way, one's own ideas. It was my way to single myself out from the crowd, to challenge conventional patterns of behaviour and beauty, capturing attention of people who would be willing to trade similar ideas with me, and repel conformists.

But for me it has always been far from dignifying to spend one's day thinking about shoes, for instance. Or thinking about how to coordinate outfits. Or thinking about how to find a ridiculous amount of money to spend in a piece of (brilliantly designed, I must say) fabric. It's not how anyone with a brain should choose to spend a life in.

Then the other day I suddenly registered that that is exactly what I've doing most of my days.
Since I left the world of jobs to try and make it on my own, all I think about is shopping, seasons, celebrities, shoes, pouring over endless cuttings from Vogue and i-D and Elle, gradually assimilating 7 decades of fashion (I just reinvented myself as a vintage fashion "dealer"/ stylist). I love it. It gives me a lot of pleasure to stumble upon a gem, and it thrills me to suddenly understand what works for whom, and how to bring the coolest side of someone. But this is all TOO visual.

All my life I've trained myself to use WORDS to express myself. WRITTEN words. I don't sing, or play any instrument, I'm a horrible drawer/painter, and although I have been an above average dancer, I could never make a career out of it - or any sport, for that matter. But the written word is my instrument, is where I feel more at ease, is my hometown, my motherland, my native language. And if I spend too long away from it, with time I start feeling very, very pointless.

I might not be a very good writer, and maybe I'll never make it into fiction like I've always thought I would, someday. But it gives me pleasure to be alone in a silent room with only the tic-tic of the keyboard for soundtrack, to elaborate sentences that are not important for anybody else but me, to create passages of stories that never connect to each other, that never see a beginning or and end (that's my main ability).

To me, this is how you turn a pointless day into a rewarding one. No pair of shoes can give anyone the same joy.

Home from Home

For the past two weeks, all I've been doing is looking for a new place to live, my 7th in London. Looking is an understatement: you've gotta get all geared up and go to war for that, because apparently every Londoner favourite pastime is to scour the city for a suitable dwelling. And boy, these people are ruthless. Properties with simple requirements such as normal-sized windows (so you can have a tiny bit of rare daylight coming in and not spend all your ages in electricity bills) and rooms slightly bigger than shoeboxes (so you can actually move around without tripping on your already sparse furniture) are snapped up faster than Louboutins on sale. In one of the hottest, most thriving property markets in the world there's a a horrible shortage of decent accommodation, and worst of all (and probably because it is what it is), what you will pay for a bedsit in a hot area would probably get you a mansion with sea views anywhere else in the world.
(except in Balneário Camboriú, the city I come from in Brazil, where the property speculation is as ridiculous as in London).

But one zillion phone calls and dozens frustrated viewings later, I've finally managed to find the perfect place to move all the piles of shoes, books, and magazines I've accumulated in almost 5 years of living in London. And this time, unbeliavably for the first time in this city, it's just me, my junk, and him. And my two fur balls, Nick and Quincas.

I can't barely remember the last time it was just us. The two of us. I remember back in Brazil, when we were in the height of passion and barely out of our teens. We were 19, and we had these beautiful and spacious 2 bedroom wonder at the chicest neighbourhood in town, a brand new car, and all our lives in front of us. But I wasn't happy. I was small and spoilt and scared, and I wanted to know what other surprises life had under her sleeve. It didn't matter that I would have to leave all the glitter behind and start from scratch in a dirty, obscure corner of New York City - the unknown seemed so much more exciting.

It was - and it wasn't. There's no amount of warning that can prepare you for life in the big city, even less if this is a foreign city. I remember my first day in NYC, without knowing a single soul, feeling all the despair slowly creeping up inside me after being literally dumped with two enormous suitcases by the taxi driver in a smelly, grubby street of the Spanish Harlem, under a 38ºC sun. The room I misguidedly took for a "vibrant accomodation with views to the Central Park", found via a "findaroomate.com" sort of website, was on the 3rd floor of a disintegrating building with no elevators (and no views to the Park, except maybe from the firescape) and my new roomie, a Chinese-American woman who supposedly had a job at Morgan Stanley in Wall Street, wasn't coming down to help me. It took me 25 minutes and two buckets of my own sweat to negotiate those horrible stairs, and it didn't get any better once I was in my new flat. My room, that cost $500 a month, was no bigger than a broom cupboard and as "vibrant" as only the inside of a pre-heated oven could be. On top of that, the Chinese woman seemed not to have a single cleaning gene in her DNA, for the whole place was covered in dust, and she had a charming habit of hanging her washed granny panties in the middle of the living room. Aparently, they dried faster when in full view of street passer-bys.

I, being the good Brazilian middle-class child of the 90s I was, comfortably wrapped-up most of my life in a cozy blanket of daily cleaners, meals cooked from stratch and airy, bright, spacious apartments, was appalled. Horrified. Shocked, dismayed. So much that when, right after I arrived, I decided to go out to find a payphone to call home (and plead to go back), I ended up walking from the 111th to the 32nd street - 79 blocks in aproximatelly 5 hours, almost non-stop. I don't really know why I did that, but what happened during that walk changed me forever. It wasn't that I was stalked by a black guy for 5 blocks, or that I cried uncontrollably for another five when I couldn't get the calling cards to work, or even that magic moment when I turned on 42nd street and found the bright lights of Times Square for the first time, followed by the amazing Public Library later in the day. It was simply that in my exhausted, overwhelmed mind, I knew I could never go back to my old life, because it would never be the same again.

I lasted exactly 45 days in that fetid Harlem flat, and moved to several other over-priced, decaying, hideous other flats in Boston, Cambridge and then London, most of them populated by normal looking people that almost always revealed themselves to be mischevous, wacky creatures with several unhygienic habits and a penchant for self-deception.

But two countries, eleven homes and countless obscure neighbourhoods later, I look back and I don't recongnize that young girl that dreamt of leading a sitcom life in the big city. She was anxious, worried, and self-conscious in way that I aknowledge, but find it impossible to identify with. I had all the stability in the world and was never comfortable in my own skin. Today, 6 years later, my world is much more vulnerable than it ever was, full of risks and unpredictability, but I never felt more confident, more assured that now I am leading the life I was wanted to lead. Better still, in a place, a possible home, that reflects exactly who I always wanted to be and didn't know.

It's a life not as similar as in those American sitcoms I used to dream about, but the feel-good factor is pretty close.


(more about the new home in the next post).

Things that are still wrong in my life

- I don't write enough about the most important people in my life.

- I don't write enough about the (extra)ordinary stuff that happens in my life.

- I'm still unable to fully demonstrate how much I love some people. Specially my mum.

- I'm still unable to cook a simple meal, other than grilled chicken and steamed veggies. 

- I'm still unable to be myself,  completely, fully and entirely. 

- I don't write enough.

Another Inspiration

"[...] The most subversive thing: to be out in the mainstream and get away with it"

Terry Richardson.

Restless

I get restless.

I always do, when I come here.

I forget who I am, what I like, what I carefully built along the years. My idiosyncrasies, my personality traits, my odd but remarkable history. All irrelevant, like they belong to someone else. Someone I’m not interested in.

I can get no satisfaction.

Instead, I become who I used to be. An insecure, ugly little girl, desperate to please, to be noticed, to be one of them. Obsessed with everything that doesn’t matter, that is not important to anyone but still rules everyone’s lives. Everything that made me run away, until I found a place where I could be myself in peace.

Somewhere I could be proud. Of myself.

Like that saying ,“It’s never too late to become who you really are,” or something along those lines. I travelled far, mastered the languages, the crowds, the overwhelming rhythm. I proved not to anyone, but to myself, that I AM strong and smart and beautiful and endlessly interesting.

But I’m nothing here. In the smallest of universes, I feel like a curious creature, an oddball, no more. Something to be looked at from afar, to be distanced from.

I cheated myself
Like I knew I would
I told you I was trouble
You know that I’m no good.

I was weak, and selfish, and silly. I wake up 6 o’clock in the morning, breathe hard, walk from room to room, read the same paragraphs over and over, check obsessively the same websites. Can’t stop thinking.

This time, I was careful enough not to share the details with anyone. I don’t want anyone but the mirror to see the shameful restlessness in my eyes.

And now,

All I need is a glimpse of reciprocity. A spontaneous evidence of the same. Then maybe, I could go back to sleep.

Living twice

When I look back at my life, I feel that if I really wanted, I could be a good blogger. My world turns upside down in a incredibly speedy rate, enough to entertain the most hardcore of Big Brother fans - but I hesitate. I keep asking myself, "What's the point of telling the world what I'm going through? Why would I give them the freedom to build on judgment and prejudice and whatever negative feelings people feel towards other people, based on what I choose to write about or photograph? Am I an exhibitionist? Am I expecting people's approval? Why do I need it anyway?"

Since I chose to write a blog back in 2001, I walk around carrying those questions on my shoulders like a heavy block of stone. I generally forget the answers, until I find a quote in a book or a website that reminds me why humans in general need to document life. As Isabel Allende, that blessed Chilean writer, said, it is because it helps us remember what happened. Because memories are the thread that keeps the flimsy, stubborn fabric of our souls together, and if we can't remember things it is as if they've never happened. Writing (photographing, painting, creating) helps us remember, and through remembering the events of our life, we are able to live twice.

Also: through writing and art we find a way to arrange the pieces of a giant puzzle in a way that we can understand, that makes sense to us. Life becomes easier.

I'm not saying writing a blog is a form of art, but, just the same, it bears all those qualities attached to nobler forms of writing like novels and memoirs. It helps me build memories, it helps me remember, it helps me make sense and understand. And most of all, it helps me live twice under the watchful eyes of the world.

Just a Reminder

"why tackle a memoir? Because I need to remember. What I don't write it, I forget, and then it is as if it never happened; by writing about my life I can live twice. "

Isabelle Allende, reminding me why I should keep on writing a blog. At least that.

Pills

The doctor, an English blonde woman, gave me two choices: I could take the super new drugs, with virtually no side effects, for 3 months, until I felt stable enough to get on with my life. Or I could try therapy and "reeducate the way I see life and the world." Or, if necessary, I could have both. All free of charge, a gift from the enlightened British government. I said, Can I think about it? She said, Call me in a week's time.

I don't think I'll be going back there anytime soon.

The big D

Right. 

So after all my optimistic little phase, I went to my GP for the first time in five years today, and her diagnosis was "mild depression." Well, well. No shit, Einstein. If anyone read my blogs' archives from back in 2002, all the clues would probably lead to the same conclusion. Mild depression. What does that mean, anyway? Being a little sad for long periods of time? Or feel very down, hit rock bottom, for a couple of weeks? Or maybe have short bouts of paralysing anxiety in crucial moments of your life, followed by months of light but piercing self-deprecation after the anxious episode made you totally screw up? Does it mean feeling powerless when you can't go back in time and changes things? Or feeling worn-out when you look ahead because certain things will never change?

I always thought people with depression would wear pajamas all day, and have dark circles around their eyes, and sleep during the day after long nights crying their eyes out. They would not go to Yoga classes like I do, or eat their vegetables and grilled chicken like I do. They wouldn't call their friends and make jokes about their own stuck-up situation like I do, or put on make-up before leaving the house like I do. They wouldn't make love before falling asleep, or take the cats to the garden in the morning with a mug of hot tea just so they can all catch a tiny bit of sunshine like I do.

I thought depression was something a like a permanent heavy weight on your shoulder, not that quiet desperation that hits you when you're not trying to get busy with anything, so you'll stop thinking. I thought it was something that stopped you from doing anything else, like a barrier that stops an overflowing river, instead of just silently following you like a weightless shadow while you try to get on with your life. 

I thought depression was as clear and easy to identify like a broken mirror, not a set of puzzle pieces scattered over 10 years. That's how long it took for me to realise that maybe something was up. And it took 10 minutes for my GP to say what it was.