Extremist

1. All or nothing
2. All or nothing
3. All or nothing
4. All or nothing
5. All or nothing
6. All or nothing
7. All or nothing
8. All or nothing
9. All or nothing
10. All or nothing

x 3 = a life

But this is getting old

Box Of Feelings: Assignment #1

Loosely nspired by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher‘s Learning to Love You More Project, I am going to propose myself with assignments I must complete throughout this year.

I want to instill my version of the project with heavy emotions I usually only keep very hidden inside my head/heart.

This particular project will be called BOX OF FEELINGS and you can participate too, if you want. Take a picture of yourself before and after you complete the assignment and send it to idealistico.wordpress@gmail.com.

***

Assignment #1: Find a corridor where there is no one and cry for the sake of your own emotions

***

Feelings are never to be underestimated.

Five people and a band

Things that happened to me while I was in New York:

1. We hired a shuttle bus service to get to the city. It took way too long and I got impatient twice. The long time got me angry too and I even thought the driver wanted to kindnap us. He won us over though, for he managed to say something nice to every single passenger as they got off the van. We overtipped him.

2. Our first night out almost turned sour because we took the wrong subway line, which led us to a random place in Brooklyn. Then we waited for 30 min in the wrong side of the platform until we figured that one out. Luckily, we ended up in a nice little alternative spot, in which we saw The Pains of Being Pure at Heart totally by chance.

3. A nice saleswoman convinced us to buy sunglasses based on her sincerity: she told us twice some model didn’t suit us well. We felt obliged to buy the ones she said looked good on us. Actually, I was the one persuaded to purchase without the need, my friend really wanted a new pair of shades and was more than happy to get them.

4. I was hit on by a salesman in a hat store who was really sweet and charming and interesting. He told us he was from Oklahoma and that he lived in Harlem in this very nice street and that he wasn’t scared of the area at all. I pictured myself already falling in love with him and sharing his apartment which I would decorate with nice things I would pick. Nothing really happened between us and I didn’t get his name. I’m still curious about it.

5. We had a major fight but ended up theorizing on why people who love and know each other well are still capable of hurting one another. We came to the conclusion that sometimes harsh feelings and bad habits are just too difficult to withhold.

Read carefully

Even-handed

My mind is one of the most imaginative I can think of. And that’s not necessarily positive. The scenarios I picture, the expectations I nurture, the fictitious events I fathom – it all reaches gargantuan proportions in the blink of an eye.

I’m thinking I should devote even more time to the visual arts, to cinema and literature too. And I should declare independence from my own thoughts.

Or maybe use them to weave wonderful webs of stories and characters, all intertwined into something that will not prevent me from leading a quieter existence.

Rather than adding fiction to what’s real, I shall attempt to extract imaginativeness from reality and place it where it belongs.

In creation.

Tormented

But working on allowing feelings to flow.

Order

Everything must be in its right place.

Objects as well as feelings, each entity should be where they belong.

With the help of brilliantly insightful Miranda July, I will give it a try.

Importance should be given only to things that matter.

Big sister, little brother

My sister has recently given birth to a baby boy. It is her second child but I wasn’t living here at the time when my niece was born.

My sister and I have had our ups and downs but I am really glad to be around this time.

As a tribute to her and all the other big sisters out there, here’s a song by Antony and the Johnsons that always makes me cry a bit:

Let the lyrics speak for me.

Bound

Today is my birthday.

I’m going to spend it as I always like to do: surrounded by my dearest friends.

I don’t know if this is odd, but I think of this day as a celebration of my friends,without whom I’m nothing. (Maybe that’s the reason).

Decisions

I will buy new, nice pens.

I will not test my flexibility to the extent I don’t recognize myself in the end.

I will write more, all the time.

I will tidy up my bedroom each and every time I’m bored (and at home).

Doing productive things will keep me from getting bored.

my hand, my diary (2011)

True story

About two years ago I was riding a train from Warsaw to Krakow, in Poland. We had decided to take the earliest train possible for monetary reasons, meaning that we were short on cash at the time. Or that we were in a cheap phase of our trip.

The departure was so early and it was so cold and dark our brains could barely function. Just about when I was damning the axis of the earth for the freezing temperatures, the train arrived. We found ourselves in a wooden train compartment, just the two of us, eyes squinting with sleep but with enough attention to notice the scene felt like an old detective movie, from Cold War times. Perhaps the train was from those times. We closed the sliding doors and fell asleep.

At one point, I woke up and looked up (maybe in search of sunlight) and realized our backpacks were no longer where we had put them. Without the energy to move a muscle, I screamed to wake him from his sleep. He tried to explain to an employee what had happened in his beginner’s Polish but there was no solace. The backpacks were gone.

Their content: a bottle of perfume, flip-flops, a diary, underwear, toiletries, snacks, maps, dirty clothes in a plastic bag (mine); a second-hand jacket, food, a nail clipper, a book, sunglasses (his).

Looking out the window over the white-covered fields, the thought of my purple backpack standing alone, buried in the snow was too much for me. Would it ever be found? Would it be forgotten in the middle of the Polish countryside up until when, maybe one day, mischievous children running away from their parents would find it and keep it for its unusual color?

The thief couldn’t keep it, for he would have easily been caught by the train police. I guess ordinary Poles wouldn’t normally wear such an item on such an early and cheap train in the middle of winter. It would have looked suspicious.

But the backpacks were found, no Polish child would be cheered by no bright color from abroad.  The things that had been stolen: my perfume, the flip-flops, the nail clipper, a razor blade and the second-hand jacket. I thought the thief was at that moment grooming and dressing up for an early hot date in Krakow. Perhaps he needed the foreign help to look better. But that thought didn’t help.

The end.

Heart tendecies: Nerd boyfriends

This is dedicated to all those boys I’ve ever loved in my life but who were unfortunately out of my league:

I’ve got this heart-breaking tendency to fall for lovely sweet nerdy straight guys only to be left wondering how their lives would be good if they could know the depths of my love. (My mind, my rules)

They kind of always end up becoming my friends but, you know,

I wish they were my boyfriend.

30th Birthday Wishes (not mine)

As he approaches his 30th birthday, a close friend of mine started thinking really seriously about his life and his choices. He then asked me: do you worry about having accomplished all the things you wanted to by the time you turn 30?

My reply: not anymore.

I made peace with my future because it does not reflect my unrealistic dreams anymore; it’s more rooted in the consequences of my present actions.

But then again, the choice of which actions to take is not an easy one. My painstaking method to make such decisions is to stop completely whatever I might be doing for a while, and then take this time off to figure things out.

In a recent interview to AnotherMan, one of the world’s top creative minds – the brains behind Aphex Twin summarized my point. I quote:

I tried not making it [music] for ages as I thought maybe I was doing it because I couldn’t think of anything else to do but soon realized that it’s what I’m meant to do.

Sometimes we confound our wishes with our true possibilities and that usually leads to no good.

As for myself, right now I’m pretty much satisfied to know that I’m doing what I please and love to do. That is, truly, more than I could ever desire.

And here’s the first song I ever listened by Aphex Twin, a true classic (watch it through):

For inspiration.

Crossword Puzzle

In my life, I often postpone important decisions or actions because of difficulties choosing the most appropriate words.

It is terrible, and I often leave messages, letters and all kinds of cries for contact unanswered. Not replying does not mean not caring – much to the contrary, a late reply implies careful consideration. At least for me.

The time has come for me to make an utmost important decision which I’ve been putting off pretty much ever since I started thinking about it. The difficulty lies exactly in the choice of words.

Having said that, I decided to post no images, at least for today.

The mind has to stop wondering about to be able to focus and choose. Fast.

Dreaming of beds

How do you spell t-i-r-e-d in 5 images?

Credit where available.

Why is completing a task much more tiresome than it is relieving?

I would like to know, but I’d rather go to bed.

Two introductions for one new love

I couldn’t decide on which two ways to begin today’s post, so I decided to post both – a more personal one and one with a recommendation.

1. If I had to pinpoint its origin, I guess my larger-than-life passion for music started when I was a teenager. As I said yesterday, those were hard times and I often sought refuge from my troubles in music. Sometimes I turned to happy music, to cheer me up and take me to a different world; some other times I choose gloomy tunes to help my express my pain. I still like both kinds, and it is truly overwhelming when I song can be both at the same time. This is how I felt when I first heard…

2. LaBlogotheque is not only my all-time favorite French blog but also one of the best music blogs there are out there. It was through it that I came in contact with…

How To Dress Well‘s music:

HTDW is a project by Chicago-based Tom Krell which started like an online sharing of remixes, reinterpretations and ultimately his own music. His record, entitled Love Remains, will be released some time this year.

His beautiful voice, his subtle melodies, the wonderful lyrics and the marvellous combination of all these factors have won my entire admiration and musical fondness.

Renewal.