Private · problem

So - my last post was about how mad I was with my best friend.

Now she's going to Russia, and I wanna spend every little time I have with her - a task made that much harder considering the fact I got into Uni and am living in another city.

A part of a Joni Mitchell's song jdbracknell  used on her story, "The firewhiskey incident", made me reflect upon that. "Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got  / Till it's gone."

It's not like I didn't appreciate her friendship before - she is my best friend, after all -, but it's funny how you suddenly realise she won't always be there. That movie you wanted to watch together? That food you two wanted to cook? That trip you wanted to make? It can't be "someday", anymore. You've gotta rush - it's not like Russia is right around the corner and you can jump over there anytime to hang out.

And here I was thinking living an hour away was too far...
 
 
# I've finally managed to complete a few translations I had hanging here - "Incident", "Just in case", "Owned" - and am seriously working on two long-shots, "Next" and "Whisper".
 
# Just realised I posted a meme 3 posts ago and didn't do what I was supposed to. My bad! :D

Seeing herself in someone else's words had always been a hobby, almost a need - or what some might call obsession, the notebooks full of text's passages and loose phrases, shred of the countless printable, collectible lives. It wasn't her fault, in reality. Because wouldn't it be a sacrilege to despise the centenary warnings and wisdom, ignore the words of those who had lived it all before her? Original stories didn't exist anymore.

It edged out irony, almost. That when one falls in love, one believes said love - their love - to be so unique and so particular, but that the end - all of them and none; the necessary, could be said -, the end she herself had just assimilated, was described right there, in her hands.

"Love ends. At a corner, for example, on a new moon Sunday, after theater and silence; it ends at greasy cafés, different from the golden parks where it started to pulse; suddenly, at the middle of the cigarette she throws in anger against a car or that she crushes in the full ashtray, powdering with ashes the scarlet of her nails." And with only one more sentence, Paulo Mendes Campos would have analyzed her there, open and completely. Because, to Rose, ended with a cigarillo the love that had started with one of them. A whole story, in an unspoken phrase.

They met by accident, two strangers taking refuge in the cold night, running from a party in which they should, but didn't want to, be. He, wearing a dark coat, making himself noted only by the luminous point between his lips. She, wearing carmine, intruder heels punctuating the black silence. He'd laughed at the pretension of that stranger, who had asked him, shocked, if he smoked; he'd been amused by her formed opinions about everything. She'd blushed, smiling. He hadn't seen. It started there. It ended one winter later.

It'd been almost like a mirror. As Fernando exhaled the smoke of another one of his brown cigarillos, pestering his girlfriend's clean, organized little room's air, Rose eyed him mindfully. Her heart didn't beat faster when she saw him like it used to, the customary gestures looked strange now and she didn't find it funny, like she did in those first months, when he offered her his old addiction, even knowing she couldn't stand it. She didn't feel anything anymore, so suddenly as she'd felt everything that night.

The little tobacco cylinder rested now crushed in the glass ashtray. Rose fingered the ends of her colourful scarf adorning her neck, her perfectly nicely done nails - so little and with the borders equally rounded, uniformly covered with a light nail polish, varnish for the imperfections - distracting her from the desperate look of the man sitting across her. The hazel eyes had lost their always present playful light and seemed full of incredulous despair, and it looked like he was trying to assimilate what she had said a few minutes ago. Maybe he wanted to believe it was all a joke.

- Why? - he asked, with an unsteady voice.

Would it be fair telling him the truth? That she didn't want to  to bear him a grudge. She just... didn't want him anymore. Because who would dare trying to understand love, putting it into words - its beginning in as much as its end? Could she be so insolent? She opted for a white lie. Lies disguised as truths by way of maintaining the order of things.

She saw him disappear behind the dark wood door; he hadn't noticed her shaking hands, nor her green eyes begging him for something. She felt her nails cutting her palms, spines piercing her white flesh to prevent the scream stuck in her throat from exiting. If only he'd looked back... All she wanted, left to her own loneliness, was that he made her feel. Something. Again.

Love ends, but it shouldn't. She let herself cry, empty, alone. Faded rose amid the pallid cushions. And the smell of the cigarillos imbued in the garden.
 

I think I have to accept the fact that I am not able to stay focused in one and only one thing. When I started to translate fanfiction - my first try was with Prelude to Destiny -, I was completely willing to commit myself with the story and finish it as soon as I could.

It didn't work.

I caught myself getting bored with the story, because it was all I read and looked at. Now, one year later, I only translated 1/3 of it. And I have something like 10 translation projects in my mind.
 
( list of fanfictions I plan on translating )

I also want to translate some of my original work to English, but I don't have the patience to do it. All of this got me reflecting upon how badly you want things, how you have to work to get them, and how sometimes it's hard to compromise yourself to something.

That is my problem - I can't compromise. I don't want to, I don't want one - one promise, one life, one "I love so forever". Some people need it - they need to (think) know something in their lives is for real, know they'll work as hard as they can to keep that something there for as long as they can, know that there's something (someone) to hold on to. But I... I don't. Sometimes I think it would be easier - if I could devote myself to writing that little, oh so special book I've been planning, to those funny and strange characters named Rosa and Barbara (and this will be clearer when I post "The grey of the roses"); if I had a God to believe in, someone to pray for; if I had a lover, a love, if I loved with all my heart and gave all I am to that one person - but it wouldn't be me.

Some might say this is being lazy, afraid of commitment, lonely, even. What is right? What is the most intelligent choice, the most appropriate one? It doesn't exist, it doesn't care - because your life is different from mine and from the life of that girl sitting in the other table or the boy reading a book or the couple sitting in a bench.

There are people that simply don't want to commit. I'm talking about life, love, work. The thing is, I want to commit myself to something, just not one thing. I found out I work better when I have a lot to do - I can translate a little bit of different story every day, if I want to, and I translated 6 stories this year working like this -, I discovered a hundred little things I want to do for a living, I loved and laughed and lived in the middle of my personal chaos, but with all I had.

Why do I have to have only one work? One favorite story? One favorite song? One boy to love? One best friend? One author I don't like? One food I don't eat?

One, one, one.

The world is such a solitary little thing, sometimes.
 
 
A meme I copied from ladybracknell:
Leave me a comment and I will reply with why I like you. If I don't know you, I'll either make something up or tell you why I like your LiveJournal. You must may pay for the privilege by posting a message like this one on your LiveJournal.
 

Every time I write something down, I get this whole new perspective about the problem. I realise things aren't always as horrible as I made them out to be, and that, sometimes, the best thing to do is try to relax and enjoy whatever (and however) you can.

Everything turned out okay last night, after I watched an amazing class (it makes me laugh every time), ate a superb sandwich, read a brilliant fic (you should totally check it out, it's a story about Narcissa Malfoy, nèe Black, and the things that led her into marrying Lucius - and it has an amazing artwork) and laughed a little more while watching (again) the video jdbracknell posted on her LJ.

I feel bad about complaining for stupid reasons, specially after having watched this film at my Composition class today about corporations and globalization - if you've ever watched "The Corporation", you'll know what I'm talking about; the documentary was kind of a brazilian version of it. (Ever heard of the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos? This documentary is based in  conversations the director had with him)

"An interview with Milton Santos, the globalized world seen from the South" (Encontro com Milton Santos ou O Mundo Global Visto do Lado de Cá) is the kind of movie that gets you thinking about what happened to the world we used to dream of, and made me want to get a degree on Geography instead of Journalism - even though today it downed on me that I too can try to make a difference as a journalist, somehow, and as a writer too. This is something I already knew and wanted, but I felt like I was losing my faith in the power of changing - strangely enough, a movie about how bad things are gave me hope. Because it showed all these people trying to change things, in all Latin America, showed me others perspectives besides the ones you see every day in the news, and that made me desperately want to enter Uni to try and repay my country for the free education I'll receive, doing something better than gaining money in (and for) some company.

Independent media and free classes to poor people, anyone?

It's nice to see a silver line somewhere. :)

Note: my sister and brother-in-law just got into a car accident. Hopefully, none of them was hurt. That's what I get from complaining too much.

Recommendations:
- to watch: An interview with Milton Santos, the globalized world seen from the South
- to read: What girls want - a critic about the Twilight series; The bad girl: a novel - Mario Vargas Llosa
- to laugh: http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAN7Ts0xBo

I was thinking about the best way to write your very first entry in a site you use mostly to read fanfiction and probably no one will read what you wrote. Could it be writing a short story about girls and sexuality? Gee, I don't think so. Great, huh?

I was never good with this whole "oh, look, let me write about my day and life and all that jazz" stuff, though - it only takes a look on my blog to know that (although unless you speak Portuguese, you won't understand a thing of what's written there) -, so it's not really all my fault.

Now, seeing as this is my second entry, and if you're reading this you probably already think I'm crazy, let me say something: being angry with your daughter for no good reason whatsoever and acting all "you're so wrong all the time, stupid little imbecile girl" is not cool. I mean, it's not as if it's my fault that my mom has this cleaning issue or whatever, and she can't spend a day without doing the dishes. I can, and she knows it. So why the hell couldn't she just say something - "Hey, Livia, would you mind doing the dishes today?" - instead of making a fuzz about it and refusing to give me a lift to my class tonight and, at the same time, not allowing me to go by myself ? Because that totally makes sense. And doesn't she know I need these Literature classes if I want to pass the vestibular (a Brazilian test you have to make to enter Universities)? And that I can't go see it tomorrow because I have Composition class, which I also need?

And there's a good chance I won't enter Uni anyway, because I can't find my copy of "Dom Casmurro" to re-read it, I don't remember all details I need to from History and Geography, the composition theme probably won't be Language or Genders Equality, and I'll be so nervous I won't know a single thing.

And, to make it all better, I just found out my best friend already has the DVD I got her as a Christmas present, so I'm gonna have to buy another one.

I can't even eat chocolate anymore because of this damn allergy. How's a teenager supposed to survive like this? I have no idea.

(Note to self: never write such a melodramatic-teen post like this again. Ever.)