Reality (check)

It sounded like a movie I saw - there is this girl sitting at Café Europa in a remote Czech town who notices that this guy on the next table is reading Borges. They meet each day in town and do stupid stuff such as signing up for a beauty pageant or starting a race to the top of a Gothic church. Damn poetic.

It was not intentional, it was talk-over-sushi with the kiddo, the only current person I know that is still up to be amazed.

So I came home feeling like doing a reality check. Too many things that might well belong to a sitcom/movie/Kafka book/Venezuelan telenovela have happened to me and I keep them as small memories that make me smile, but I do not realise often that they sound... weird.

I love making lists, so here's my first share of 'life is like a movie':

• Once in an airplane, I sat by the side of a Serbian DJ who stole his friend's grandma sleeping pills to knock himself out through the 11-hour flight.
• I have been in an ambulance, going full-speed against traffic in one of Mexico's main streets.
• I met a Brazilian girl with the only 30 cms tattoo that I consider tasteful (it was the silhouette of Matahari).
• I have been inside of a 'Chaika' for some minutes (the Chaika is the big 50s car used by the Communist big shots during the Cold War).
• I saw the head of a camel in a market of Casablanca hanging upside-down.
• My great-grandfather had the gun of Sandino. It was a gift.
• A Danish soldier took me and Alicia to 'number eight', a members-only underground club in Copenhagen. I was completely out of posh-ness... and out of place.
• On December 2006, I sat on my party dress at the bridge in Christiania (hippie commune) and drank an elephant beer. It was 5 a.m. That was the day when I actually met Mike.
• Lynda and I used to have lunch by the sea. Just like that. Have a sandwich and go back to the real world.
• Buddha Bar in Beirut. Still dreaming on that night.
• I was in Swaziland just one week after the birthday of the king - he had just picked a new wife (damn!).
• The best gin and tonic of my life was made with local tonic water (quinine included). It was in Malawi right before Madonna put it on the map.

I wonder which amazing things will the next 'season' bring... eyes wide open, heart ready to believe.

Venus as a Boy

I realised that I say 'I realised' a lot. Two things are on my mind today - memories and the nonexistence of destiny.

Let's tackle the first item - memories. I tried to research brain usage percentages and ended up shutting down my whole right brain and the computer; too much contradictory info. So I better wandered around the realms of imagination and figured out there is this archive room somewhere with all kinds of stuff - there are languages we only use when needed, birthdays of people we see sporadically, the key to the hula-hoop domination, recipes we swore to remember while watching cooking shows on the telly, the exact location of Pierre Marcolini, and, of course, a lot of good smells.

There is also a box called 'handle with care' that... well, we all know what it contains.

The usage of the brain can then be compared to a librarian with thick-framed Prada glasses and tattoos all over (yet none of them visible). The librarian makes sure that we do not go where we don't want to and that with the years and the practice we manage to remember the good things and smile at the bads because they have already passed. There are times when the librarian falls asleep and BANG! there is 'Venus as a Boy' and you remember everything about ArtBoy, flavour of the tears included.

I really don't know how it works. A month ago I was very close to an amazing gal and it was so sad to see her go to Panama that I put her in the 'handle with care' box and now I have troubles remembering why was she so important. Amazing how one's brain can surprise one-self.

So in conclusion, I use 50% of my brain to go around without hitting stuff or dropping things (that clumsy I am), 20% to earn a living, and 30% is the punk librarian who decides what moves my heart and what doesn't.

And here's my diatribe on destiny - it is bullocks. We build the path by walking on it.

Ugly pictures

Yesterday I attended a talk with Daniel Aguilar, a photo-journalist from Reuters. Besides from being barely able to breathe when that handsome guy talked straight to where I was sitting (yeah, yeah, perhaps there was Giselle Bündchen right on the row behind me...), he got my undivided attention when he opened his lecture by saying: 'I don't do pretty pictures. I don't expect people to hang them on their living rooms. My job is to denounce what is wrong and make noticeable what is right.'

So photo-journalism... definitely not my branch. Mr Aguilar said that nowadays 'everybody' has a camera, but although there are lucky punches, a good picture does not come out solely from luck. He knows what to pack depending on the event: you cannot wear jeans while waiting for a hurricane to strike, and a bullet-proof vest among students can draw unnecessary attention. You have to know if in a demonstration the police is for or against press. You have to read about what you are gonna photograph, and think before shooting. You have to pack different lenses if you are gonna report the beginning or the end of the football season. You have to bring along two cameras if things are gonna get rough. You have to know that the lighting is everything.

Daniel Aguilar's pictures are far from pretty but many of them are beautiful. If each image tells a story, I'm up for being told what is going on in the world.

Corazón atómico

Justo el día en el que deje de asombrarme, mi corazón seguramente va a explotar o implotar o no sé cómo funcione esto porque nunca me he dejado de asombrar.

I just don't wanna ever stop being amazed; I concluded with the kiddo today that weird things happen to weird people, and that is why we should take in life the road away from the beaten path.

So when you say more happy b-days to your friends in Facebook than in person, there should be some life out there waiting to happen.

Let's go out, let's dance, let's kiss, let's make life simpler. Isn't it the most stupid idea and yet the best?

So Willemoesgade 17, 4.TH is for sale

What about ditching everything today and going back to the place where prices on restaurants did not matter, we made barbecues at the beach, the aussies were soccer-fighting the japanese and our parties required to wear a hat?

Guess it doesn't work that way. There should be a travel agency where you could pick the best of your life and spend vacations (say, a week) in a happy memory.

I miss that sunny piece of life. I miss sausages with mustard, the Godfather, and specially your at-work picnic basket. I miss you sweetheart!

'It is a film. Everything's constructed. Still it hurts'

So this is my shot at having an opinion on 'Reconstruction', one of the most abstract (yet beautiful) love movies I've ever seen.

See, we are used to follow the chick-flick formula: boy meets girl, love fights all the obstacles, they have very nice, sinchronized sex (on the first try), and in the end background music leads us to them laughing with their first born or, if life sucked, to their last 'I will be fine' statement.

'Reconstruction' (Christoffer Boe, 2003) is nothing like it. It is weird, twisted, visually delicious, and shows the real Copenhagen without changing names or adding extras. So in this love story they decide in a second that they are up to give away their cozy lives for a gut feeling. Alex asks 'Why me?' and Aimée answers: 'Because I am your dream'. So apart from that and trying to ignore the WHY, WHY, WHY? questions that nobody will answer (i.e. why everybody seems to have forgotten Alex, why is it all a game that changes parties when he makes choices, why things were not working between Aimée and August), the crude definition of 'love' is quite visible:

Love is a decision for women, and a surprise for men.
Love is understanding that one glance can switch your path for good.
Love is a moment that will never come back.
Love is living in the border between reality and hallucinations.
Love makes you run and chase, forgetting about everything you left behind.
Love is unpredictible. And violent. And has no time frame.

Ah, kaerlighed... Up to what extent would we want to 'reconstruct' our lives to make stories as we want to remember them? I do that a lot, precisely when I think about my life and how it all started. Everything's constructed. Still it hurts.

Insomnia

There is one fly of stairs and around five meters to the shower and my body wants to be here, writing, instead of being under that private piece of rain. I suffer from voluntary sleep deprivation and was thinking - why am I doing this to me? Why do I want to jump from one night out to another? Why not just watching at the ceiling, lying on the floor?

Well, there is the thrill of living. And also that particular way of looking at the world by not sleeping enough; the border between dreams and reality gets slimmer. Now, for example, I wonder how stupid I am for not realising before that I have a crush on the most cynic guy I know, and that I am done dealing with my friend, the drama queen. There. Reality gets simpler and honest; when you are tired you just don't have any energy left to wander around perhaps.

So why are we, humble little Mexicans so afraid of simple, honest feelings? I have found in one single day that a waiter got offended when I said that I really didn't like his service and that the kiddo thought I was too aggressive for saying how nice it would be to give him one kiss (or to kiss the whole crowd at the P-Lounge, for that matter - damn you Smirnoff!). Ask for what you want when you want it? Not really.

Dude, I think I was born in the wrong latitude... take me back to the land of Hansen Is.

The Talented Mr Mehta

It was personal. I decided to go buy tickets to see Zubin Mehta and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Israel and got rather crossed when I saw on the ticket the name of some other director. Pure stupidity - Mehta is the ARTISTIC director. So what's the big deal?

Zubin Mehta is a living legend. Classical music, for those uneducated earthlings like me, is a matter of feeling the notes, and by listening so much, you get to catch violins out of tempo, or different speeds of interpretation. So I've heard Mehta since the performance at Caracalla's Baths (Guinness Record for most copies sold of a classical music CD) and would love to see how that passion fills up a room.

Will report back.

Public Display

Cannot help it JB, you are all over the intellectual me that I keep for sunny days. Just read your mail on NatFilm and wonder why the fuck you do not become a public man of opinion who actually makes others think and dream, just as you make me think and dream. Burning karmas apart, I feel you as near as when I used to put my hand in your arm, or your pocket, while I got to see Copenhagen from the back door.

Jeg savner dig... and you are not bloody making it any easier ; ).

Mientras esperamos

Cuando trataba de llamarte de regreso (sin mucho éxito), el aire estaba lleno de Jack Johnson.

Y mira qué acertado déjà-vu...

It feels right
It feels wrong
It feels like when you have it, then it's gone
I want more
More and more

And if you steal the fire
Give me some
Cause the sun
Disobeys while it waits for a friend to arrive from the past

What holds us around, and around
While we wait

-Jack Johnson, While we wait

Ikea boy

'Self improvement is masturbation, now, self destruction...'

-Tyler Durden, The Fight Club.

Transgresiones

"Transgresiones" es una exposición de foto periodística que encontré sin buscar. El título me ha hecho pensar... y esta vez fuera de la regadera (que es donde nacen y mueren todas mis buenas ideas).

Vivimos en un mundo transgredido, antes de salir a la calle nos vemos en el espejo en dos dimensiones; nuestro mundo, nuestros sueños, nuestras preocupaciones, son parte de esa imagen que nos ponemos para salir a trabajar. Y al instante de cerrar la puerta el mundo nos transgrede, las personas nos ven y evalúan, consideran, opinan... de acuerdo a muchos estudios menos de lo que pensamos, pero ahí se queda nuestra indefensa tercera dimensión.

Hay también otro tipo de transgresión que me ocupa - la voluntaria. Te dije ayer tantas cosas que hoy quiero otra vez el silencio, el anonimato, la vida donde nadie sabe que me despertaba llorando y que ahora mi vida se volvió un asombro detrás del anterior. Pero aún así esta transgresión viene de lo mejor de mí. Ahora sabes que detrás de tanta seguridad hay sólo un par de manos vacías y una cabeza llena de sueños. Eso es lo que te quiero dar (a veces, a tu tiempo) sin que nos vendamos simulacros.

What else is there?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2VxjnpxTR0

Words misunderstood

'Physical love is unthinkable without violence.'

-Milan Kundera, The unbearable lightness of being.

I have a dream... and am not Martin Luther King

So in the sleepless night I had the other day I dreamt about Rasmusmyex, his mom, his sister, and everything that was really painful to remember - the really good things. In my dream we got tired, and thirsty, and hungry, were happy in general, and okay in particular.

I reached the conclusion that when you see the past as something to smile upon it is when you give it weight, when you make it real and understand how much you grew up from the good and the bad.

Seems I can finally move on.

Tomas Hirschhorn

Trouble travels fast when you're specially designed for crash testing.

Seems I am.

I though about Tomas Hirshchorn today while trying to figure out - again- what am I doing here, what the fuck am I doing here, like the guy of 'I (love) Huckabees.' So I like Jack Johnson. And walking. I hate lies and Dalí. I love my job. I've been to India three times and haven't found my zen, just half-naked kids with the sadness of a grown up in their eyes. I hate putting up with guys who gossip and gals who indulge in drama. I love dark chocolate and white roses. I admire philanthropy and my favourite causes are the Red Cross and Amnesty International. I love kids, specially talking to them. I am concerned about Mexico and the mediocrity that makes us take just the burnt toast, the leftovers of what we really deserve. I dislike foreigners that are rude to 'less educated' locals. My favourite building is Bellas Artes. Dadá Siegt! I am reading philosophy, and get kinda bored but learn a lot. I dream with a good calligrapher who is a bad lover, or with a good lover who doesn't give a damn for calligraphy. I dated a sailor for a wee bit, and he said about Avedon: 'Why do you buy a book with such ugly people portrayed?!'. But I almost marry a MENSA member who wouldn't get Avedon either, hence he wouldn't get me. I have been deeply in love and failed miserably, yet I am up to be that stupid again.

So Tomas Hirshhorn is like putting all of the above in walls. His 'installation' (does he call it that way?) are three rooms with the walls full of ideas, just like being inside of some one's brain. Then furniture is fixed to the walls and covered with tape. There are also very aggressive carton cylinders full with morbid pictures of war. I had to look away. Why putting that in the middle of his 'brain'? Touching, moving, real, yet frankly unbearable. I think he meant that we cannot have art without understanding beauty is a temporary impression and out there are cold-blooded murders as commonly as the rising of the sun.

The only corner I liked was this bunch of giant pills (or soap bars) reading 'you, you, you, you, you...' I though about obsession and how one might have a whole world built up and then somebody reaches every corner without us even being conscious to do something about it.

Let's see where I manage to crash again.

Je me réveillée en me sentant fatiguée...

Je n'ai pas d'excuse,
C'est inexplicable,
Même inexorable,
C'est pas pour l'extase, c'est que l'existence,
Sans un peu d'extrême, est inacceptable...

Je suis excessive,
J'aime quand ça désaxe,
Quand tout accélère,
Moi je reste relaxe...

Je suis excessive,
Quand tout explose,
Quand la vie s'exhibe,
C'est une transe exquise

Y'en a que ça excède, d'autres que ça vexe,
Y'en a qui exigent que je revienne dans l'axe,
Y'en a qui s'exclament que c'est un complexe,
Y'en a qui s'excitent avec tous ces "X" dans le texte

-Carla Bruni, 'L'excessive'

Carpe bloody diem

So I did it JB, I told you what the 'shaman' said about you and me.

Say one word and I trade this reality... what about a life where the cosmic voices lead the way?

(Peace though. Forsee tons of Rops-and-Baudelaire-alike discussions to come rather than living in a house/a very big house in the country/watching afternoon repeats/and the food he eats in the country.)

Something old, something blue...

This is something old because I wrote it a long time ago.
This is something borrowed because who knows what was true in that cold Dutch winter - it could well be the story of the friend of a friend.
This is something blue because is a tale of dreams and goodbyes.

Love (the making of)

Guy meets girl and they see each other each day of each month of a year. Their lives never touch; reality builds parallel ways.

Girl meets guy again right after she stopped dreaming. They find out that it is extremely easy to speak their lives out, to switch from reality to the place of their hearts where all the fears are. They talk about how it hurts and where it hurts, about hope (not together, but hope) and feel this world is not meant for people who do not believe.

And then sex becomes a bedtime story. They both knew that searching the other’s body was just an excuse to sleep with the weight of an arm on his shoulder or her feet sheltered between the warmth of his legs.

Time went fast that week.

Then we talked again and I couldn’t avoid telling you my life, from the big to the small, from the certain to the relative. You let your heart feel, and dared to tell your friends that sometimes the weight of loneliness is too heavy for you to bare it alone.

After the night when you drove South and I borrowed your world, love happened as life. I cannot really explain how from talking we switched to listening, from kissing to holding, from staring to believing. Perhaps it was the music (my music, which ran into your head as a universe you’d never met), perhaps your fingers running slowly across my back, or your lips that knew the exact place where I keep the dreams.

But that day we made love. It was not only about our bodies that happen to fit as if they had only that purpose. It was not on the space we filled with patience and time, or in our scared hearts happy to find some rest.

Love happened when we realised that there was not an ‘after’, but there was a before, and struggled to freeze that moment and to make the last caress stay for the lonely nights ahead.

Girl left guy next morning, when reality hit and there was a plane to catch. They keep telling each other their fears and send kisses that sometimes mean the world and sometimes fade on the notion that there is no perhaps. Yet perhaps.