In Preparation

Then end of the year is close again, and I'm once again scouting the net for gingerbread recipes - something that doesn't include utterly straneg things I'll have no idea where to look at - and winter coats. Yes, I have one of my own, thank you very much, but it's already like... 3-4 years old? I want a new one, and this time, I'd really love a black one. Thus, have been scouting the net, searching in Macy's, JCPenny, but I can't seem to find what I want, not to mention that I'm afraid the coats won't be as thick as I want them to be... unless I buy, of course, a Michelin-like coat, and that I won't do. I'm seeking a solid, serious, black, wool winter coat, like the ones everybody has in Paris. Sure, if I were to pass by Paris nothing would be easier than to take a small detour into the city and buy myself the coat, but since this time there's no Paris for me, I'll have to get my coat from the Internet. This will be a new one for me.

In the meantime, also from the Internet, I must find the recipe for gingerbread and make a pilot test of it before we (yes, Kari and me, as we BOTH are going to do the baking and stuff) bake the cookies for real. We already have some cookie cutters, trees and boots and such, and my aunt I guess, can find us some more, like stars and comets and other things. The point og it is multiple. For once, we'd like to decorate our Christmas tree only with edible things, thus taking it off, means to eat all that's hanging on it and then fold the tree and store it for next year (I'm against tree-killing for Christmas, thus no natural, freshly murdered trees for me, though the fact that it's not organic, but the result of metal mining (all the wire)  and brent extraction (the plastic parts), doesn't make me all that happy). Hungarians have these candy they usually hang from the tree called "szaloncukor", which translates like "Salon Candy". These are nicely wrapped bonbons (all I've tried so far are chocolate covered something), that come with a thread, lace or piece of wire that helps you hang each of them from the branches of the tree. Thus the revolutionary thought of "eating the things that hang from trees" is already present in Hungarian Lore. ^_^

Up to this point, sure my good friend Smurf must be nauseated, thinking I've betrayed the Grinch Team, but I haven't. You see, I do not decorate or start any sort of Christmas celebration before the 24th, 23rd for earliest. I still loath Christmas Carrols, and I doubt I'll be ever caught dead singing them. I'm a Halloween Girl and that's what I like, but there are particular things I like to prepare for before hand, such as making sure the gingerbread is good. You see, last year we used an untried recipe and the cookies ended up pretty, but unedible. Not again. I want to eat my Christmas. Therefore, pilot tests are a must.

Another thing, with me, that can't be happening in December are the gifts. I've plenty of friends with whom we have this habit of giving each other a small detail, and honestly, running around in crowded stores, between hordes of shrieking families, and desperate crap-buyers isn't my idea of festive or fun. Personally, I love to hit December with a list all checked out.

The whole Christmas thing often is a Celebration of Mayhem. It's crowded stores and streets with annoying carrols pouring from every sound system, families halting the traffic - both pedestrian and auto motor - uncertainty about alleged discounts and lots of new stuff that suddenly look so crappy because everybody has touched the boxes and they are all fraying at the edges. Everything is about rushing, running, parents getting anxious and berating their annoying children in the street - children often all snotty and screaming, annoying anyone in a 2 block radius. Then, the mayhem doesn't stay in the streets and the stores and the impromptu markets in every corner, but walks everybody home, where you have to fish out from the most unaccesible part of the closet lots of mouldy boxes stuffed with decoration. Oh, not to mention that you had to spend a small fortune buying new decoration, because last years, that you thought it was so pretty and you could use this year, has lost the shine and looks like garbage (flashnews: it always was garbage). So, get the box open it, try not to die with the dust and the toxic fumes bred there, and start decoration the house.

Get the tree. Decorate it. Untagle the tangled up boas and fake snow, laces, lights and other crap that seems to have still bits of last year's tree. Put it all on, play some carrols and expectantly wait for Christmas. You might forget that Christmas is about celebrating Jesus Christ's birthday, and the meaning of all that, but hey, you have Christmas Spirit! Yeah, only to leave it on as long as you can, because when it's done, everything shall go back to the mouldy boxes, back to the unreachable spot of the closet, and you are there to face the bills.

So, maybe, just maybe, you'd like to take the advice of a Grinch Team member, and do something slightly different. You can remain your usual, merry Christmas Elf self, but still, you can be a bit more foreseeing, and a bit more rational. How about you make a list of the people you want to give a present right now and start now thinking about a good gift? Now, good gift doesn't mean expensive, it means right. take the time to think and find something that person would appreciate. Oh, and btw, most of the time edible gifts are a great success, and it doesn't matter if you give them the same thing next year, so think about it!

However, now it's about the decoration. Think, my elfy-friend, about baking this year your decoration. Leave the dusty box and it's toxic spores in the closet, I'm sure in February China would be happy to buy it from you as biochemical weapon, and bake your decoration. Make cookies for the tree, or buy candy and hang it from the branches.

Gingerbread cookies give you the chance to make just about any figure out of them, so you can have your globes, your little houses, bells, stars, angels, and anything and everything you want. Add to it, usually in a baking portion you get more cookies than the ones you can hang on your tree, so it doesn't matter if you eat them off the tree because there's plenty more from what those came from. Possibilities are endless, and you save yourself from all the hassle of dealing with the mouldy box.

Of course, if you live in some place crowded with bugs, where leaving a breadcrust on the table means to wake up with ants, cockroaches and mice, you may not be able to apply these hassle-free, fun-full advises, but if you are bug-mice free, try it out! It's gonna be fun!

Perfectionism

In an article by Penelope Trunk (got to me via Central America Data), she claims that Perfectionism is a Disease and that it should be fought. It surprised me. It actually horrified me even more when the line "Accept that it’s okay to do a mediocre job on a certain percentage of your work" was so casually dropped in the middle of it. Is it me or that sounds like a perfectly good excuse to be mediocre? Yes, because "a certain percent of your work" could go from 0% to 100%, as both of them are, indeed, a certain percent. The allegations, well, lets not go there, but it crassly overlooked the fact that "perfectionism" doesn't necessarily means work short sightedness. From the way in which Ms. Trunk describes perfectionism I believe she really means "detail obsession", as a true perfectionist looks not only at the detail but also at the big picture. A detail obsessed person, on the other hand, looks only at the small things and forgets about the big picture.

Through my working life, I have met people - a real nightmare to work with - who can't get anything done because they can't see the whole matter, and overwhelmed by the size of the task - no matter the size at all - they choose to focus on one small part, regardless of how it interacts with the rest and tries to fix only that, and then goes to another and thus things get out of their hands.

Let me explain you this another way: imagine the work at hand to be a Rubik Cube. A mediocre would say the work of unscrambling the cube is finished when there are some blocks of the same color together on the same side, but none of the sides would be finished. A detail obsessed will tackle each side one by one, and if you have played with the Rubik cube you know that tactic will get you nowhere. The detail obsessed will realize that the work isn't done, but wouldn't know how to get it done, but at least would finish one side. The Perfectionist would take the cube, study it, take its time, and start woking on it, with a method, managing to unscramble it, not stoping until it is unscrambled and then will turn it around to make sure all sides are perfectly finished.

The article above mentioned, however, seems to say that the Rubik Cube can't be unscrambled and simply any level of playing around with it shall sufice.

If you've been working in a company for a while now, and you have a solid work ethic base, you surely have realized that there are more and more people, and an alarmingly growing tendency towards mediocrity. It appears with things like someone telling you that "only because you are hardworking and dedicated, you can't expct others to do the same" ( I was actually told by a boss that just because I'm intelligent and do an excelent work, I can't expect others to do the same. I was floored since I am really, really an average person with a very average 126 IQ). Continues with "it's okay to do this or that half assed because it's not like anyone will notice", and then some "it's okay to prepare a document all by copy-pasting old documents and Internet documents because nobody will read it anyway" to "I don't have time to check it, sure everybody did its job so it must be fine". In my line of work I have had the dubious pleasure of facing some abhorrent papers and mistakes that had climbed this far only by being patronized by Saint Medi Ocre. Crass mistakes that a bit of care, a bit of thinking, a tad of simple common sense would have fixed.

This satanized "perfectionism" - but the real one, the one that solves the cube - wasn't questioned back in the day. It used to be perfectly clear that when you did something you would do it well. Remember that saying? "Do it well or don't do ir at all". Then again, back in the old days all jobs had a clear vision of the long term, of the future. A project was supposed to be out there and function for an extended period of time, and you were expected to respond for it. Perfectionism, then simply known as being thorough or careful, was a natural, expected step into ensuring your responsability over something. Today, however, people seem to hop around in their jobs like detached and irresponsable. They don't care all day about anything but looking for escape goats. Why to move a finger doing something of good quality, when you can do nothing and pin it on someone else? Or why to do something well, when you can do less than the bare minimum and reply that being a "perfectionist" is a sick thing and thus you rather work with a "certain percentage of mediocrity"?

I imagine that these people would also consider a lie or a simple fairy tale the proverb "For want a Nail, the Kingdom was Lost". However, truth is that if we allow mediocre work, it will build up, accumulate, until you have a lot of people paid doing a lot of useless, misguiding, misleading, mistaken stuff. A doctor or a nurse, allowing some mediocrity into its work, could kill the patient (just look at Jamie Merrett in England), an engineer who allows mediocrity could kill lots and lots of people who use their designed and built buildings, infratructure, machinery, etc. Mediocre planning in factories could produce dangerous toys that could kill children, or poisoned food.

Okay, you may say here that these are "special circumstances". Well, lets go to the administrative sphere, where mediocre work seem to cause less damage. Truth is that it does not, but it can spread worse. As a matter of fact, mediocre planning in the Government could bring serious shortage problems, resources sent to areas that don't need it, while others that do need it remain unatended. Imagine scholarships for priviledged kids, instead of those same scholarships for underpriviledged children. Imagine health care aids for patients of common flu, or vanity-driven, unnecesary plastic surgery, instead of that same aid aimed at cancer patients, AIDS patients and other high risk populations. Perhaps your Internet or your phone services could be better, cheaper if the people in charge of that would do the work they are supposed to instead of sitting in a meeting room making up figures. Maybe there wouldn't be so many foreclosures if the people at the banks would really look at the figures, would pay attention before granting a loan, instead of hanging on the phone talking to the other end of the planet and racing each other of a number.

And what can you tell me about your gas? Maybe it could be cheaper, and less destructive if they would care for the proper training fo the workers, if they would lay down the right infrastructure, as it should be done, thus avoid spillings and accidents, and then, perhaps, taking a moment to look at real figures, real data and not speculate about the figures they want to see in the future and then fix all numbers to fit that forecast.

One thing is to make mistakes, we are all human, and that's why we double check, but another thing is to swap everything under the rug shielded by the right to be mediocre.

Maybe it works for people like Ms. Trunk, and others, maybe they rather do a half assed work (and the picturing of the perfectionist does show she pledges to what she preaches) than take their time and make sure everything is fine. Okay, but then they should also take the responsability for the part they wouldn't do. No excuses. If you choose mediocrity, take it then like a man/woman, and shoulder the consequences. And as part of that believe, well, the next time you have a bad customer experience because someone wouldn't do their job, or wouldn't do it as it should be done, all complaining rights are revoked. After all, really, you can't request from others what you are not willing to give. Am I right?

Stories in Cellulose

First of all, hurray! Go Colts! Yesterday's game was exciting to say the least, and though it was disappointing and really stupid to watch Peyton Manning so evidently doubt his game and his strategy and change it haphazardly - was that like looking at a rookie or what? - some of the interceptions and catches were simply WOW. It was a suffered 27 to 24, where the Redskins gave a worthy fight, matc hing touchdown to touchdown.

After having finished "The Brothers Bishop" book, I'm left with "Moll Flanders" as only read right now. I decided to stick to one book, as usual, instead of the two simultaneous ones, mainly because this novel by Daniel Defoe requires somewhat more concentration due to the language it uses, and it's written in a more fluid, united way. Separation from the pages for too long may get you to lose the thread of the story. It is tempting, though, to tackle another book, particularly now when so many interesting books are piling around me. It's like being in a cakeshop surrounded by the most succulent pies and cakes you can think of. Key lime pie, cherry cheesecake, Black Forest, cherry pie... In this case, witchcraft, angels, noir crime, conspirancy, secrets to be unveiled. It's not as easy as pies and cakes, though, because once you start these books, you don't want to put them down until you've finished them.

A lot of people, nowadays, don't like to read. They find it boring, something that requieres a very big effort, or a sort of imposition. The thicker the book, the bigger the task. Then again, if you think of reading as a task, then you shouldn't do it, or you'll ruin many good stories for yourself. Reading then, requieres something that's less and less common in today's world: concentration. For instance, take a moment to look at your Internet window. How many pages do you have on? And how often do you check them? See what I mean?

Books have many, many advantages over other means of entertainment. For instance, you can read them whenever you want, and as long as you want. You don't have to wait for next week or next season to know what happened (unless you are reading sequence books). You don't need electrical power to enjoy them (unless you subscribe to e-books), they are portable, so you don't have to wait to get to a given place to enjoy them, but you can carry them in your pocket or your bag and pull them out any time. Then, there are so many books around, so many stories, so many genres, so many plots... it's a source you can tap forever!

Recently I discovered that the new owner of Doc Brown's is an avid reader, and we started swapping titles between each other. Thus, books can pull you closer to new friends. Books, are something that remain quite unchanged through the centuries, and so, if it has been effective all these many years, why would it stop now?

Books are awesome. Perhaps you should try them out too. And if you know them and enjoy them, what are you waiting for? Spread the good word!

On Words and Meanings

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE BOOK "THE BROTHERS BISHOP" BY BART YATES. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO READ SPOILERS, SKIP THIS POST.

Around 10 pm yesterday, I finished reading "The Brothers Bishop", a novel by Bart Yates about two gay brothers, Nathan, 31 and Tommy, 29, and a summer they spend together with Tommy's friends at their childhood home, a cottage in Walcott, Connecticut. The advertizing text for the book, well it spoils it up real bad for the reader, as it says there that "it's a complicated relationship where the couples break up and ends in tragedy". Thus you pick up the book already knowing that there will be a terrible tragedy (or maybe not so terrible, but there will be a tragedy). In the frame of this, the story develops with some already seen techniques to keep the mildly attentional deficit reader engaged from a segment to the other. An easy read, here and there it's evident that it has escaped the grasp pf the writer, with some scenes that seek to be somewhat bold and in-your-face, but overall demure.

A thing that catched me, which is why I'm bringing this book up, is who, in the mixing of "now" and memories, there's this conversation between the Bishops, that links to this topic I want to develop, which I talked about in my previous post. So basically, in their youth, Nathan had a boyfriend, his first boyfriend, his highschool sweetheart, scared away by his father, where basically he told them to never see each other again. Many years later, in this summer, Tommy, known for being absolutely unstable with his boyfriends, replacing them every few weeks for a new model, starts cheeting on his boyfriend - later on discarding him, of course, as the prologue says - with one of Nathan's highschool students. Nathan confronts him, and makes everything in his power to keep the two of them separated, protecting both the boy and his younger brother.

In the fatidic conversation, Nathan's temper gets the best of him, and demands his brother to stay away from the kid. Tommy, naturally denies everything, and then throws at Nathan that he's behaving like their father, and doing to him what their father did back then to Nathan and that first sweetheart of him. It doesn't matter to him what Nathan tells him, that it's not the same because back then that boy and him had the same age, and in their present case they are talking about an adult man and a minor, which means he can be charged with statutory rape. For Tommy it's a matter of his brother acting like his abusive father, trying to hurt him no matter what.

In the light of recent happenings in my life, it got me thinking how in so many circles of our life the words themselves, no matter how well explained they are, get understood in a different way depending on the recipient of them. 

At work it happens, and has happened to me, that a review requesting further detail on a hazy segment, is considered "malignant trampling of other department's work". A workshop ordered by someone above, where a team requests another to explain their work, so they can see in which way can they be of service, is interpreted as an attempt to steal away from them the work and the credit for it. No matter how much you explain that it's an order from above, and you just a) want to make sure everything fits perfectly the set up standards, or b) you are there to help, but you need to understand first what has been done in order to see how can you help them get it to the next level. 

It happens in your relationships, when you say something - anything -  and the other person takes in a way that wasn't what you meant with it. Funnily, this is the usual complain of men about women, so I'll give an example of it. One person asks the other whether somepiece of clothing looks good on him or her. The other person looks at the one asking, the garment, and not knowing what it's supposed to look like, shrugs and says "I don't know about these things". The one asking reacts with a scene about how the other person is this and this and that. The one asked may try to explain, that really, she or he has no idea how is that thing supposed to look like (not everybody spends their lives on Fashion Week), but there's no avail.

It wouldn't be accurate to say that one part is trying to trample the other, or that they have some secret agenda with this whole deal. Now, indeed there are cases - which had happened to me as well - where one party tries to mask as an innocent comment a bitter remark. This is called indirect talking or even sarcasm. How to set appart the two of them? By listening, honestly, objectively, as sarcasm and indirect talking, as well as ill speach gives away on the fluctuation of the tone of voice, as well as in the relating to other events.

However, this distortion in the communication doesn't happen only from one individual to another, but also between an individual and a community, or between communities. These are often much more serious, as the distorted version of the communication gets spread through the community after the reception from one individual. Though all types of communities are prone to this kind of behavior, often it's those under attack that swing the bat at anything remotely looking like a threat, particularly when extremist (and often personally insecure) leaders are at the head of it.

Personally, I'm a keynesian, existentialist, socialist feminist person. In simple words, I believe that economically speaking, the State must ensure that the population has what it needs to live with dignity, offering excelent, free healthcare, excelent, free education, excelent, free infrastructure, and must make sure companies respect at all times the rights of the workers, ensure the pension of the elderly, and that the basic needs, such as food, shelter, water, power and communication is provided at an affordable price to all. Personally, I believe that people should stop blaiming other for their faults and take the responsability of their own lives. Socially I believe that everybody, men, women, black, white, rich, poor, educated, illiterate, etc are all equal. As individuals our selves makes us different from others, but as people, as citizens, we are all equal.

Thinking like that often gets you in a hard spot with people who get an extremist point of view. I recall a case back in the university, where a feminist teacher of mine got a kick out of constantly diminishing men in class. She didn't pointed out at our male classmates and called them stupid or anything of teh sort, but constantly made comments refering to alleged scientific proves (oddly none of these scientific investigations were handled out for us to confirm) that showed that women were more empathic, therefore mentally and intellectually more developped than their male counterparts, or that women are capable of using both sides of the brain while men only one side.

Once she was making a case out of stating that men are insensitive, therefore their lives is less intense, less rich than that of women, because they can't feel and then whatever they feel they can't express. Thus their capability to understand poetry, sociology and life in general is quite limited. It upset me first because she was making a hurtful distinction within the frame of feminism, where she was seeking to state that women are better than men, which is exactly the behavior men had towards women for ages, and against which feminism has been struggling. Then, also because I knew it not to be true. Unafraid and outspoken - characteristics that became my banner through those blessed years - I stood up and actually dared to tell the teacher that I believed men and women to be equall. We both have a brain composed of two hemispheres, and we both learn to speak and interact in society, and as a matter of fact, I happen to know that men are also people capable of feeling and expression, just like any woman. In one word "we are not better than they are".

Needless to say that I was publicly processed for being anti-feminist and given my condition of woman, it was even bigger a shame. Well, I didn't know that being a woman was a condition, I thought it was my gender. Being publicly berated wasn't a pleasant feeling, but it did made me feel good when at the end of the class a classmate come to me and said "Thank you for defending us".

There's the matter of standing by what you believe, and pledging for a group. Standing for what you believe is harder, particularly because you can be pulling in the same direction groups do, whether it be, equal rights for men and women, equal rights for gay and straight, respect for animal rights, protection for the environment, but some groups and some individuals in a group may have extremist positions, that you do not share, that do not go with your believes, and thus, even though you fight for the same cause, they seek to destroy you as an enemy. The feminist acuse you because you refuse to partake in the denigration of men, the gay rights activist wants to rip you a new one, because you'd like the straight people to enjoy the same rights gay people have (in some countries they give more rights to the unmarried gay couples because they can't marry, but refuse those rights to the straight couples who don't wish to marry) and that, in their eyes is "taking away their rights". The animal rights activist calls you a hypocrite because you fight against animal cruelty, but you are not a hard core vegetarian. (Honestly I wasn't aware that me liking lamb roast and fighting against people who beat their pets or poison other people's pets, or kids who find it amusing to torture small animals were two mutually excluding attitudes.) 

It's suddenly a Salem Witchhunt case where if you don't blow your head and nod obediently, praise every word whether stupid or not, you are an enemy, a spy, a witch. In these cases it's not a matter of the concept you wish to express, because a few words used, taken often out of context, work as a platform to distort the message, rob it from content and make, from those picked out words, a new message filled in with a different content. In a narrow vision, a narrow box of thoughts rules, and anything that doesn't fit with the predeterminated, preapproved message, is all against it. But is it?

Only by calmly studying the message, by listining to it integrally and deducing the content, the meaning from it, shall we know.

Fashion

As I break away a bit of time to type down these thoughts, into this particular blog, another topic, a recent topic still flutters in my head. I discovered recently how someone had misinterpreted my words - not a new phenomenon, and oddly, from the same type of character. In a closed friend circle I threw the matter up and we discussed about the subject, comming to many interesting conclusions that branched out to an incredible array to aspects, that lead us to realize how diverse the understanding of people is. Thus, while some see the whole scope and deduce the message from it, others pic a part and induce the message. This last procedure often brings people to mistakes, as they don't really pay attention to everything that's said, to the construction of the message, but focus on certain elements and basically "invent" for themselves the rest, regardless of it being what was said or not. In my personal experience, people who feel threatened often proceed this way. Not that's bad or stupid for them, indeed it is a defense mechanism, trying to filter and fight threats, but saidly it trumps communication, and thus the ways to solve conflicts.

Now, I'd love to eventually (some other day) develop this subject working down the branches of language, and attached topics, but not today. Today's topic is "Fashion", but not in a Fashion Channel or Vogue form, but from the message of it. This is how, after this recent case, I found another way of pulling these ends together.

Like I said the other day, I was watching TV one day, zapping my time away, when I stumbled upon a fashion show. There was a lot of impressed people and oozing flatteries from - obviously - big shot personalities that had attended the event. Since Versace - Gianni, mind you - I haven't seen a fashion show where I had liked every piece. I rather tend to look at the pieces and think: "Yeah, I might use that". It suddenly makes me extra happy not to be a celebrity, so I don't have to wear those... things. Sure, maybe I'm simply a prêt-à-porter kind of customer, but these pieces are supposed to be prêt-à-porter. Who wears them? Well, sadly, not only the people who genuinely like the pieces wear them, but also a lot of people who's only desire is to be "fashionable".

It caught my attention also, how when the designers (more often than not, gay men) are asked what was their inspiration, they usually reply on the lines of "the modern woman who knows what she wants". I wonder what makes them think that the modern woman that knows what she wants (me being one of them, though then again I may not be so modern), feels the compulsive need to walk around in tiny shorts, transparent blouses and clivages that reach to their pubes, or where the pubes should be. These modern women who are strong and know what they want, get skeletically thin to fit these sex-advertizing dresses. So, exactly how are these, their unhealthy, abused, exploited, uncomfortable trends part of the woman who knows what she wants? Or is it that the modern woman wants to be seen as a sex-thing? The modern woman needs to advertize her body, sell it in bilboard clothes?

The woman who really knows what she wants - be it modern or not - doesn't follow fashions, doesn't pledge to the trend, but pics what fits her needs. She wants to show leg, she pics a leg showing piece. She wants to be comfortable, and she will go for the comfortable piece. She won't be paging a fashion magazine or scouting fashion shows to know what she must have in her gardrobe, but she will focus on what's important for her. Fashion doesn't make her image, or her "self", but offers pieces to her, to serve her, and she will decide, based on her needs, whether she gets a piece or not.

I wonder sometimes how some designers with a seeming detachment from everyday women, women who don't live and die for clothes and have nothing to do with the fashion business on a primal level, take to themselves to define "what the modern woman is and wants". Then, as we look around the gobblers of the fashion trend products, it becomes clear that the fashionable pieces are not meant for the actual modern woman who knows what she wants, but to the insecure, uncertain, undefined, weak, voluble women who want desperately a personality, any personality, and instead of building their own, they shed shells, and dress up to assume the personality a given dress advertizes.

Wear Benetton and you'll be young. Wear Prada and you'll be elegant. Wear Armani and you'll be high powered and successful. Wear Channel and you'll be beautiful. Wear... I don't know who and you'll be I don't know what.

Like the problems in understanding, with fashion a broken message goes to starved masses, to a vulnerable population that doesn't get the whole message and deduce the meaning from it, but pick up the bits and from them they induce a meaning. If they wear they are. A dress is an excuse.  You can be dumber than a bell, but of you are in an Armani, you are successful. You can tell them, that the clothes don't make the person, that by acting the way they do, they are becoming a subordinated kind, with no thoughts, no opinion, no peronality. Shells, no better than dolls, as they let them pump their wallets and dictate their attitude. Slaves of other people's personal interests. Not like it goes through.

The calls and songs of advertizing, the marketing machinery works to deconstruct the person off the person, and those trapped in their webs attack those pointing at the trap. And yet, still, you are not what you wear. You are not what's advertized. You've been tricked.

Children Question

In a glop of inspiration, I found myself yesterday thinking about a couple if really awesome topics for posts for today or whenever. Didn't pick up my laptop, though, slamming my ideas quickly on the digital plane, but instead played them around in my head, letting them grow, swell and find a path of their own.

One of the topics I was concerned with, was the child-question. A comment issued to me recently again, about how can I be so mean as to refuse my boyfriend the joy of having a kid with the one he loves, and how I'm going to be to become a lonely, bitter old lady with no one to take care of me.  Well, I wasn't personally aware of the fact that my body isn't mine but my boyfriend's and thus my womb must be put at the service of his desire to have children, rather than respecting my decision to not have any. Besides, he can perfectly well have all the kids he wants with any other woman he wants, and I don't even require him to break up with me. Then again, I'm this open minded deviant who honestly believe that love is unique to each person, that jealousy has nothing to do with love, but understanding that no person is God, therefore no person can be everything for someone else, which lead us to conclude that real love is the capability to be happy your other half is happy and actively seeks the way for him or herself to be happy, while he or she is happy you also seek your happiness actively.

The end thought, the final destilation of this thought this time around, leaked down another branch of the thought. Children are not pets, company, an insurance for your elderly days, your servants or future caretakers, or a token, a milestone in your life without which you can't evolve to the next level. Sadly I realize that parents often don't get children, don't understand them, perhaps because they forget they are someone else's children too. Fact is that children are the one people with whom you must develop your most serious relationship. That's really a lifelong relationship where the parent figure must be mature, adult enough to understand that the child person will be first entirely dependant on him or her. The child person will require the parent person to show him or her the ropes. Teach the child person the language, social skills, ensure education, food and shelter, teach him or her through the years about values, principles, ethics, morals, good and bad, generosity, kindness, trust. Teach him or her to be alert, to avoid danger, to stand up for his or her believes. And then, the parent person must also be mature enough and prepared enough to let go of the child person, when the child person is adult.

The parent person do not own the child person, and the parent person has given to the child person according to his or her responsability, for bringing the child person to life. The child person owns the parent person nothing, more than what his or her soul dictates, because after all you can't be in debt for something you have not asked for.

Are those parents out there, those you throw stones at the childfree, aware of this? Or for them breeding new people into this word is their way to prove their worth, absolutely regardless of the imprints they leave in the children-people?

The other topic was about women, fashion and how at every fashion show the gay designer - someone with evidently no interest in women, other than friend and model - always tells us that he made the collection thinking of the "modern woman who knows what she wants". But this topic, perhaps, I'll reserve for tomorrow.

On Human Experiences

Finally I was able to get  a grip - or something of the sort - on my onw stuff, and finally was able to sit down and start my letter to Hélène, which I'll probably crush into a paper ball later on and start again. On Saturday my mailbox brought me two new letters, which on top of Daniela's add, well, three letters to read and reply. On a way I'm happy I have letters still to read and to write, as these keep me occupied, keep my "hobbies" filled instead of leaving me with the sound sensation of void that comes when the last letter was written, sent on its way and all you are left with is with the waiting. 

A penpal of mine wrote to me recently that it was mean, she knew that, but often letting go of a letter filled her with a feeling of sadness, as if she were putting an end to a nice, warm, long conversation, and though you would get an answer and the cycle would go on and on endlessly it wasn't the same. To say this over the net doesn't sound as stupid as it sounds face-to-face (reason for which I believe some people avoid the face-to-face reality and therefore stay only on the cyber plane of life), but I get that, and I understand how hard can it feel when you must part from a dear friend, who lives on the other side of the planet, whom you can't see for a talk and a coffee every Tuesday, but with whom the contact is through some distant mean of communication, and whether if that person has been in your life for years or merely a few weeks, or if you just met him or her online.

A letter, thus become, like some sort of extended afternoon coffee where actually time isn't a boundary for you to say all you want to say (unless you are in a hurry to post the letter before the Post Office closes, which has happened to me more times than not. Has anyone else finished a letter at the Post Office, perched on one of those uncomfortable counters  - suddenly so comfortable - while every single postal employee eyes you like the sole reason on Earth they are not home? If you do, please honk, so I don't feel like I've been the only "Postal Worker's Nightmare"), that time decomposes, fractures differently. A written letter on one side, and one on the writing at the other, your pen balancing from your fingers while you nurse a cup of good, hot, tasty coffee. Its a long, nice chat where no one has to go nowhere, that breaking up a moment to go to work is like taking five minutes to go to the bathroom.

However these past weeks have been anything but peaceful and quiet. There have been a lot of "situations" to handle, many of which I would have rather handled with a shotgun,  thruth to be told, and others that presented such a level of tanglement my brain simply froze upon the attempt to get some sense out of the mess. The human capability to mess neves ceases to amaze me.

I had this intense desire to write, to communicate from my inner self, and thought often about picking up my pen and replying to my letters, connect my computer, steal some time and blog, and optimistically took hundreds of pictures of my surroundings, of the lovely things that inspired me at the moment, builing in my head paragraph after paragraph of thoughts and stories.

This month, I had this intense feeling, magical sensation almost, of the colorful, loud, teluric beauty of this land. Odd it me, I know, but I found myself aiming my camera and loving the typically Latin American flair of the world around me. The simplicity, the odd and uneducated way of things, where the colonial features remain here and there as a reminder that no longer hurts, of the history, of the Spanish domination, of those white men that came to conquer, that vanquised the natives and of which the society in general has no feelings one way or the other. Buildings that hold more about the short and badly told story of this young nation, that seems to believe history is something to be forget, something to pull out for banners and political justifying, not realizing, how that story, and the undervein of it still runs strong, as if in reality the whole country were still submerged in that past - minus the heroes.

From the terasse of a somewhat trendy-wanna-be coffee-bar, while waiting for Carrie, the pictures snapped, the Postal Office building yellowing away behind the buildings of a 1970's built, and refurbishings and other smaller attempts at pulling something from the 21st century, something that seems to pepper other districts of the Capital City. Escazú, Mata Redonda, Montes de Oca, Zapote. A building crammed in a city center so chaotic, so poorly planned, so messed up, filled to the brim with crime, which politicians fleed, abandon like rats after it has been their doing, their lack of real interest, their poor planning that turned into a cluttered maze of aformity.

Yet it has a sort og charm that touches my soul in these days. It's the city that mirrors the hearts of those living part of their lives here, those that inhabit it. It has a lot of detached bits of many trends, and uneducated collection of a lot of things you should know to be educated. It's the forward thinking of the Metropolis, that's somewhat unable to let of of the old, because the crowds are so large and everybody has his or her own opinion. Thus the mind and the city remains cluttered, trapped in nobody's land with a lot of bits that leave up to nothing, with the elitists thinking only on escaping, living the mess to others, detaching themselves from the experience, as if they had really nothing to do with it.

San José amazes me.

Last week I took my first train trip in Costa Rica. Well, we call it "train" and it does look like a train, but it's more like some ... well, it does work like a train... like a trimmed train, slow and short that does the job of a tramway. Small platforms, somewhat haphazardly made, very basic infrastructure, for a rather modern machine. Another entertaining feature. It has a character too, an amazing air about it, as it compresses a trip through unseen sites, poverty and lush vegetation. My own province opens up, from a mildly modern, yet even more narrow and crammed city center, to truly honest mid 20th century visions. Wood structures built decades ago, painted ages ago, only recoated, but never changed, with simple stores packing fresh vegetables and fruits on wood shelves and boxes. Simple people and such a sweet, soft feeling about everything. The mirror of my people: cluttering up a little for appearence, to show up to the big brother San José, but in their heart simple and homey.

It's a warm feeling, something close to delving into a nice Carmen Lyra novel, full of romantic dreams of the life in the country, in dreamy poverty where love and honestly is all you need. Heredia, the city of flowers and beautiful women, stays quiet and simple, honestly believing itself to be the safest place on Earth.

One Good Book

I started following - via Blogger, though I follow via Twitter too - Changeling, a Twitter and Blogger with a well-laced sarcastic style, that swings with cadence between insulting you and other in your face and dipping the tip of the [insert whatever you are thinking] in a swirl of whipped throughts of the heaviest nature. A delight to read, I must say. I found this delightful cyber phenomenon through yet another witty, fun twitter. Social networks, I tell you. Sometimes it like swinging Tarzan-style from one contact to the next.

Last week, I finished reading Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller, and I must say, it was one of those books that leave you in a daze. Certainly a book hard to describe, as I have said so time and again while I read it, and often almost engaged in a long courting of the pages, worshiping from far, reducing our encounters to hushed minutes in a secluded waiting area. Russian romanticism applied to a jaded, brute, seedy bum. However everything tied up amazingly. After the long courtship, I've realize that also a quick fuck is needed. Take the book, escape to some place where the two of you can be alone and deep into it, spread it like Miller had said to spread his whores, and slam head first between the many lips of the paper cunt. The impressions such should leave must be amazing.

There's no outspoken romanticism in the book, book which in itself has managed to steer away from telling a story without either falling into a philosophical essay. Fiction and reality fuse in this non-story bowl, where all shreds of romantic tones are bashed, smeared thick with shit and dirt. Unpleasant details plague the pages often as ice over a frozen river, where maybe a faint rushing can still be heard, maybe it isn't ice all the way to the riverbed, or maybe it is.

Food, sex, food, shelter. Hatred, self-hatred, envy translated into more hatred, into the need to despise, the need to destroy. Unability to decide what he really wants, unability to be happy with anything in the present, but constantly remembering how good it was back then, when this and that. The title eventually makes sense in so many levels, the sheer genius of it smack you dumb. It's the body, the heat, the sex, nakedness, focus on the lower levels, on the stench that sticks to your hair, the sweat that smears on your skin. The poverty, the turmoil.

It reveals much of the writer, the confusion about whe his wife is, Tania or Mona, not as if he wouldn't know, but knowing but mixing them up. Who he felt as his wife? Anaïs or June? It's not an editing mistake, it's his mind, a mind that fused them both into the one wife he needs. A woman less needy, less demanding, less complicated, stronger, more of a whore, less of a bitch.

June's disappointment is evident as well. She wanted to be an uplifted heroine, a beauty, Sarah Bernhardt, but all she was in the book was the cheating-cheated wife on and off his life, far less interesting than any of the whores that so thickly peppered the pages. A character that goes from longed person to a secondary thought, material enough for a brief wondering. It's not an ode to her, but an anthem to him and the life she hates but can't really escape herself.

A book that goes nowhere, a rat in a stinky trap to which it returns whenever he gets the chance to step just a little out of it. Hate it but can't live it. And even as hope shines, feeble like a candle in the storm, and he shelters it, helps it, makes it grow, strenghten, he lets it escape his hands. Twisted, sick, breaking down and pushing away the cure.

The settling at the end of the book rounds it up into a more novelistic type of story, where threads become more evident, and there's a stream that takes you from A to B, which you don't see in the rest of the book. It gives you a strange feeling, almost as if you were coming out of a thick, dark fog into a clearing. It then opens up, it's left half done and untied, in tone with the rest of the book, where it wouldn't mean the end of a story, because it flows constantly and splashes into something else, a few thoughts on the matter, a new quest for food and shelter and money to spend on toothless whores and all types of dirty, clap ridden women, who pretend to be high mantenance ladies while they spread for anyone with enough francs in the pocket to buy them a dinner.

So, now off the heat, bewildered by it still, I chose to soothe my mind with a double attack: The Brothers Bishop and Moll Flanders. New books are on the rack.

October is Here

Well, finally October is here, and I can already feel it in my bones. It's the season of the witch, the season of spells and big moons looming on the sky, flying brooms and big pointy hats. Black cats and wicked stories, tricks, treats and loads of inspiration.

On top of everything, October comes our favorite day of the week, Friday, as if suggesting that the season of magic, shall also be the season of kicked back partying and booze swinging. We've no plans going on so far, but sure as hell, something will kick up soon enough.

Pulling the thread from September, I've connected - or more like reconnected - with an old friend of mine from one of those twists and turns life takes. He has an interestind story, this friend of mine, and has interesting twists and turns about it, some of which - well - you'd think would make him wiser. A youngster he is, nevertheless, allowed to trip and fall, so it is time now to sit down on the road next to him, hands on your knees, watch him attentively se, how things develop. Can't figure out why thishad to happen in these days, cosmic or not, but by him being here, by the twists and turns and stories shared, a piece for a story clicked in.

October makes me particularly restless, which is why I suddenly developped a crave for the story of Mark Foley (Republican Lawmaker who aimed to become a senator in the 2006 mid-term election, but was forced to resign after his affairs and improper behavior towards underage male pages hit the light. His lenghty chats and explicit e-mails with some of these boys were made public by the ABC). Years have gone by and I can't believe, or perhaps can't accept, that no one so far has thought about making a book about this. The topic haunts me, greed and power intoxications that leads to blindless, to a misplaced sense of invincibility that takes what it gives. It's such a plot! I want to read more, biography, essay, theory, fiction... I want to delve into it, but I can't find a thing on this matter. Thus I'm left with my only option: write about it. And there here comes my friend and the twist about him, around him spurs up a character that fits like a glove.

We shall see, we shall see.