Hoops & Yoyo

The designs asre ugly, I admit to it, but I can't get enough of them! Gara love them. Really. Do not posses anything with their mug on, but a friend of mine and I send Hoops&Yoyo cards to each other quite often. (Well, we used to send them far more often when I moved into this new building...) Hallmark, which is our "source of cards" of choice, has created a site for them with a lot of interactive stuff you sure can't download into your mobile just now (sorry GPRS), with a lot of links that send you back to the begining. Yep, back to Hallmark. Cards, gifts... they certainly don't have enough, if I may say so. What do you do with two mugs, two ding-dong plastic buttons and two termic jars? Hello people! There must be something more out there you ain't showing! For fuck's sake, this is the Internet, and the Internet is supposed to be more stocked up, have more variety than my local store! Nope. It ain't the case. So, will I be buying?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA !!

No.

Come on dudes! Show me some respect here!

It's early, but not too early. Have loads of job to do, and I have the feeling I did something extremely insulting and extremely exposing, but I can't remember what it was. Something I said? Something that came to light? It's like a memory was triggered by what I was reading last night from Anais Nin's journal. It was so... How can I properly express it? Well, se wrote about how she remained silent as Antonin Artaud, a very extreme character I would have never talked to from the begining, was acusing her of being an evil, deceptive person. Okay, her fault for going around waving lies upon lies to make people happy. Her fault for talking to that mental case in teh first place. From the begining, she tried to make frineds with him, though she thought of him poorly, but since he's an artist and all that, she wanted to know him better. It's something she took from her father, I believe. Anyway, the silent character turns out to be a terrible mental case that lives in nightmares, that suffers constantly and seems to seek this kind of life. In a way, Antonin Artaud reminds me of a friend of mine, Marc.

There's a violent need for a dramatic life, dramatic days and he must, must be the victim. Must be the outcast, the suffering, the one cheated on, the one who must close himself and remain a mistery because everybody is out there to take advantage of him, hurt him, because nobody understands him, and nobody fits really into the world he lives in. Artaud falls in love (or so he says) with Anais, and triest to have a more physical, sexual relationship with him, which she doesn't want because, though she likes him as an artist, truth is she doesn't like him as man. So she invents a story, but eventually let him kiss her... when he can corner her into it. Yes, right then I thought « WEAKLING!». I belive that if she would have told him face to face that she doesn't love him, period, that she appreciates him as a FRIEND and as an ARTIST but that's as far as her feelings go for him, then she could have saved herself a lot of trouble.

Artaud acused her of not loving her, of leaving him, of her feelings being shallow and whimsical, and that she exchanged him, replaced him with the love she has for her father, which, according to Artaud, is an abomination. (Well, Anais clearly has an Elektra Complex going on...). She remained silent, and according to her notes, denying nothing. Well, what else to do? Unless Artaud's outburst rends me speechless, I would have countered saying that I may have softened reality (actually, I would have never lied), but that he can't blame me for what he chose not to notice until it was way too evident. Then I guess, it's easy to judge from outside. At the same time, it made me think about a couple of things. Sometimes how hard can it be to tell something to someone?

As you age, as days go by, you can become more and more tough to certain things and flap down an answer to them. This is it and if you don't like it, like we say in Hungarian « fel is út, le is út ». ("There's also a way up, there's also a way down". It's a way to say: go anywhere you chose, just go.) One friend is having a hard time for a guy she likes but he ain't making the first step, and ain't giving her any clear signals of his feelings. Another friend is suffering also for a guy who is chasing her, who she doesn't find attractive, but he doesn't seem to undestand her subtle messages on the matter. A friend is suffering because the girl of his life doesn't want to acknowledge his love.

What do we do? We remain silent.

Unlike you would think, in some cases matters of feelings do tie up my tongue and I struggle and don't get to express myself properly, but I always seek to enjoy teh feeling, happy that I'm human, I'm alive and I can feel. Feeling ain't a curse, but a beautiful blessing that makes life richer. Every feeling should be cherished. Then again, usually matters of work is what tangle me the most. These are situations where I feel my losses could be higher than my gains, so I try to keep a balanced scorecard. But what about the rest? What about feelings? what about the one sided experiences that are killing us? I have only one thing to say: speak up. When we were babies, we cried for everythign we needed. What happened now? We subdue most thing, even unnecesary things, in hopes of things solving themselves, problems fading away, but this is not the way things go. Furthermore, there's a terrible social phenomenon that also adds for things, specially between men and women, to get particularly bad.

Traditionally, women are taught to be "hard to get". Never say "yes" at first. Women are systematically told to lie and lie, never to be honest, because honestly isn't a ladylike behavior. Men think that if they just persevere and press long enough, women will yield. But what happens when a woman says "no" and means it? There's no way she can express so. Women are told things that are expected from them, not what they really think, what they really feel. For ages they were even instructed to hide their brains, to suggest things instead of speaking them up front, so how do you know she's being honest, and when is she being "ladylike"? I don't wonder poor men find it hard to understand us, and then, when a poor christian finds his way to a woman like yours truly (and there are a lot like me), has no idea what to do or how to reaxt, because this bitch is telling him what she wants, what she things and no means just that: no. If you want something, someone, say it. Ain't no shame in saying yes at first, kissing in the first five minutes, hitting the bed in the first two hours, as long as you are clear with what you want and you are doing what you want.

I'm not saying it's easy, but wouldn't this be an easier world if you could come up front ans say thing as they are? The first step to being understood, is to speak clearly.