Bitter sweet

Como en la vida debe haber dulzura y amargura -no por nada el mejor chocolate es el amargo- hoy me voy a Copenhague. A disfrutar del sol, -es increible, hay mas sol alla que aqui en Londres- y de la musica en el festival de Roskilde. La vida tiene sus recompensas. Happy birthday to me! since I won-t be able to write tomorrow! My computer is completely f**d since a guy who came to the office tried to 'update' it. Another lesson in life! Jeeez, when am I gonna learn?

And on another tone I woke up early in the morning thinking about a song, by Devendra Banhart, that I wish I had wrote:

I don't owe you any money
You don't owe me a thing
When we drink beer
Dragon flies appear
Dragon flies appear

Skol! Salud! Cheers!

what is it?

I walked you in rain and I walked you in snow.
I never liked you.
Never liked your park or your tennis courts
or the people around who talked in afrikaans.
I looked at them with prejudice and suspicion
as my flatmate could understand what they said
and it wasn't any good.

You told me stories before we went to bed and I held you in my arms
and pushed you away when it got too warm.
I even pushed your legs with my feet when you tried to
lay them over me.

My English sucks. My Spanish is not good.
I'm inarticulate.
I love to feel pity for myself.
I like to wake up and suffer.
Suffer because I haven't finished the damned work that I was supposed to finish before I started being what I am today.
And what is it that I am to-day?

Someone who bumps into people who are having barbecues in their gardens
but says no I can't go because I have to finish the work I haven't finished in the last three years.

Someone who was bitter enough to punish herself as badly
as to decide to go and live in her hometown after six long years.
Only to find that it wasn't home anymore
but a boring dessert place full of memories
of teenage years.

But it's a sunny day today

Yesterday, on my way to work at 9:30am I lost £100 I was gonna spend on my monthly travel card. As I didn't have money to buy a day travel ticket I went back home. 'Of course I left the money in my room or somewhere around the flat, coz, this can't be true', I thought. But it was. It was true. A man was painting the walls inside the building and I asked him if he had seen £100 around. He said no. After seeing my face he told me: 'It's only money. I lost my father and my brother in Kosovo'. As I didn't have much to say after that I just went back to the tube. When I went home I was feeling miserable and my new flatmate was trying to make me smile, without much success. I decided to take a walk and take some fresh air. I called a friend and she told me: 'Hey Belle and Sebastian is playing today in Hyde Park,' I said, 'Ah! cool'. Mmm... I bumped into some friends at Circus Space, where I was intending to do some trapeze, so I just went with them to hang around and so I didn't train. In the night I called my parents. My dad told me that Belle and Sebastian was gonna play in Mexico and I said, 'are you sure? I really don't think so dad'. But they are gonna play in the Cervantino Festival in October! Needless to say, I'm broke and I haven't smiled much since yesterday...But it's a sunny day today.

Rare

What a rare combination of beauty and intelligence is the Swiss Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan, who has given several talks in different universities in the UK about Western Muslims and Islam. I still remember his face on the cover of the tabloid The Sun, the first day I arrived in London. They did not like him. Why?:

We all need to step out of our respective intellectual ghettos. In our specific spheres we talk to people who are exactly the same as us and we say, ‘I am open-minded’. That's just words. In the last week, how many people from a different cultural or religious background have you met? We live in a multicultural society but very often the reality is that we have a patchwork of communities.
Living together takes effort. Non-Muslims need to meet Muslims, read about Islam, ask questions. And Muslims should know about Britain: the constitution, the legacy, the memory. We all need to know more. There is no pluralistic society without knowledge.
Not only that, we need critical dialogue. Strong and difficult questions from both sides are essential to building trust. Asking questions out of trust will build a strong society, avoiding questions out of fear will not.
My hope for Britain is to see a national movement of local initiatives. It will not be at the government level but the local level. People building spaces of trust, working against the common enemies: ignorance, marginalisation, injustice, and a narrow understanding of religion which says, 'I am who I am because I am against you'.
If things are to change we need to work together ‘for’ a reformed society. Unfortunately, it's easier to be together ‘against’ than together ‘for’.

Freedoom

I found a newspaper in the tube and it was called ARC 05. It was a very amusing issue about vouyerism. It had drawings and photographs, poems and little stories about what people like to spy on. The cover of the newspaper had two holes in the middle of a woman's eyes. So as I opened it in the tube I could look at other people through the holes.
I was just telling a friend that what is great about blogs is that you don't have to read them, you read them because you want to, that's it. That offers so much freedom. So, I guess we should rejoice.

And again what's the point?

I feel like writing in Spanish but I make an effort and I write in English. I'm exhausted, it's not easy to move from the south to the east in London. Specially when you don't have a car or money to spend on a taxi cab to cross the city. But I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that I'm tired and I hope I can finish today. I was reading some blogs today and I had a creepy question in my mind. I wondered if some people get as sick as I got by reading these blogs. People are craving so much for attention, it's kinda pathetic. Is that what I want? Attention? What's the point of writing? (I made a mistake and wrote what's the pont, in a way writing is a pont, or a bridge, whatever the case) To show how intelligent you are, to show how much you read? How many friends you have? How cool you are because you hear this or that music? Hell no! Please tell me that's not the point.

Of the ends of ends

I was trying to keep on writing my tesina, that thing I used to call The beast in the closet. Why? because whenever I want to finish it I start reacting emotionally to it, as an actor would do, and not as a student of English Literature.
I suddenly made this association of Blasted with Endgame a year ago, but I didn't want to approach it I don't know why.
I went to see Endgame a couple of months ago at the Barbican, and Clov was performed by a little man, who was actually a dwarf. Not very long ago I read an article by Salman Rushdie on Samuel Becket in Bookforum. And I wanted to post something about it but then time passed by and I never did. But here I am, writing now. Rushdie says:

Beckett, not Molloy, attempts the impossible: viz; to write of death, of the end of ends, the ending that ends the future as well as the other tenses, the past imperfect, the present subjunctive, the present indicative, the pluperfect, and to do so using the tool not of prophesy but of memory.

And about endings, Clov says:

Clov: (As before) I say to myself – sometimes Clov, you must learn to suffer better than that if you want them to weary of punishing you – one day. I say to myself – sometimes Clov, you must be there better than that if you want them to let you go – one day. But I feel too old, and too far to form new habits. Good, it’ll never end, I’ll never go. (Pause) Then one day, suddenly it ends, it changes, I don’t understand, it dies, or it’s me, I don’t understand that either. I ask the words that remain – sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say. (Pause.) I open the door of the cell and go. I’m so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit. (Pause.) It’s easy going. (Pause.) When I fall I weep for happines.


Why Beckett? And how? And and and? Why does it hurt so fucking much?

De tacos y sol

I went to eat tacos in London, at this really decent place called La Taquería, ni nada más ni nada menos... in Nottinghill. And my fingers still smell like taco al pastor! It's a very funny feeling. I've been listening to The Life Persuit all day long and I can't get enough of it. It's just funny how after some months you start assimilating new material from an old band. Old, well, not that that old, but althouh I started listening to B&S only three years ago it feels like I listened to them my whole life. My favorite song in this record is We are the sleepy heads. It's absolutely fantastic. I wanna dance it all day with Stuart preferably. He has such a funny style. I never know what the lyrics say, but whenever I decide to read them I'm surprised.
The beauty of the moment is the beauty saldly lost
Sadly lost
I'm moving to a really different place from the one I live in right now, and that's very exciting. It's full of immigrants and the streets smell of curry and other spices. It's funny but the smell reminds me of Nabrogade, the street where I love to hang out in Copenhagen. It's funny that such an "exotic" -whatever that means coz at the end we're all exotic to others- place is like Copenhagen!
Oh, it's sunny and nice and I wish I could jump into Marisol's swimming pool in Cholula! But hell I'm in London town, so I can only refresh my throat with beer.
I missed the sun, and now I'm a happy bee.

On a sunny day in London!

It's so hot here that it feels like home. And I love it. I'm finally moving to the east side of London. Goodbye south! Goodbye, goodbye, I'm so happy to leave you. I went to a concert last weekend of Isobel Campbell and I wrote something about it in One hundred bars, in case someone's interested. That sunday was great because there were like three posts sent.

After calling a sleepy head yesterday night I fell asleep with the phone in my hand. Then I woke up suddenly, my heart was beating fast and I thought: I love. I love my country. I love so many people there. I have to go back. And then I had peace in my heart. I needed to accept it. I still love. I love. I am able to love. Then I could let go.

jolly happy and drunk and loving and loved and having seen Isobel Cambell in concert I realised today's my blog's number 1 birthday! Thank you blog and people who've read it once in a while. It's given me so much... you don't know how much........................................................................


fireworks please!!!!!!!!! oh what a day! oh what a day my Horace Andy baby! Oh what a day my busy bee.......................

I'm disappointed

Yes I'm angry at you. Yes, I feel I can't aford it but still. You, so sweetly loved me. So deeply. At least that's what I thought. That might be the reason why I fucked things up so many times. You. Your eyes and your smile were mine -I thought. Silly me. And now you have a girlfriend. And now I have a boyfriend too. I'm angry at you, he made me say so. Since then I feel I'm almost there. Where you and I are not you and I but other people.

We had a deal there,
We almost signed it with blood...
An understanding
I thought that you would keep your word

-even if I didn't keep mine-

I'm disappointed,
I'm aggravated
It's a fault I have, I know,
When things don't go my way I have to

B&S's Dressed up in you

Where's the summer?

I was coming back from work and a lady said to me on the street, oh, I came out of my house without a sweater and it's freezing. She was a Londoner! Imagine how cold do I feel. Hello! It's june already. Grrrr. A friend who's part of The Cabinet of Shameless Acts send a message to the rest of the company from Spain saying: "By the way, the weather here's warm, and the sky is fucking blue." So, you can imagine how nasty and grey it's here............................................................ Sighs and more sighs.

Of pigs and cows

It can't be wrong. It's true love!