He's back, baby.

Ha vuelto el insomnio con más fuerza que nunca. Y eso que desde este agosto me dormía en seguida. Quizá sea por eso: ahora que ha vuelto a mi lado, quiere recuperar el tiempo perdido. Qué mono.
Por alguna razón que desconozco -  tal vez algún agujero en el espacio-tiempo - también han vuelto los mosquitos. Al menos a mi piso. "¿Ahora? ¿En pleno invierno?" ¿No os lo creéis? Decídselo a mi muñeca (me refiero, por supuesto, a la parte del cuerpo, no a ninguna de mis queridas roommates junto con las que duermo esta noche).

Bueno, lo que me ha llevado a volver a escribir aquí ha sido eso de que en oubliant, on trouve y que si lo de echar de menos va a más y demás contradicciones poéticas que, en realidad, prefiero dejar a quienes entienden de eso, en vez de a quienes les gustaría no entender.
Y ojalá no me identificara con usted, Didion, porque eso de que aparezca en sueños o al escribir aquello que la mente bloquea automáticamente de día es una verdadera putada, señora mía. Pero, en fin, cuando el cerebro está empeñado en jodernos, ¡qué se le va a hacer! Quizá es que no le he cuidado como merecía últimamente. O quizá fueran la posmodernidad, la sicología y los antitalianismos... claro, es que ver eso cabrea a cualquiera.

Pero, ¡ya basta! Suficiente tengo de día como para pensar en eso también de noche. Ahora mismo me gustaría pensar en quién inventó las mañanas para ir a pegarle un tiro, al graciosillo. Y ahora mismo lo que no me gustaría pensar es que no voy a querer levantarme de la cama, y que voy a querer cantarlo. Porque soy así de masoquista, o tal vez de cabezona con un poco de agarrada.

Es la primera vez que escribo en castellano aquí (y de manera tan nonsensical)... pero eso no significa que vaya a hacerlo a partir de ahora. Tal vez sí, tal vez no ¿Quién sabe? Hoy lo he hecho porque lo necesitaba. Porque quería y podía. Porque, para mí, este idioma siempre tendrá el sonido reconfortante de hombre mayor que va a recoger a sus nietos al colegio y les recita sonrisas y poemas - sin sentido para sus jóvenes oídos - de camino a casa.

Para que tú nunca lo entiendas. Un beso.

"Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up" - Author Unknown

Nightmare

Hey! Usually I don't write dreams in notebooks or anything like that, but today I had an incredibly long nightmare. Also, it was kind of coherent, almost like a film, except for a few details.

It was Sunday. I know it because my aunt, uncle and cousin were at home for lunch. I was in the kitchen with my cousin when I looked out of the window and saw three little girls in the street, in front of the garden door, dressed in a uniform dress from a school I couldn't identify and looking inside the garden. I didn't say anything because I was used to children standing there looking at our cats, even though those girls seemed to be looking at the kitchen window instead. Nevertheless, a white old model car stopped behind the girls and a man wearing a gabardine came out, pushed the girls in it and drove away.

Later, at late evening, it was only my parents and me in the house. I looked out of the kitchen window and the girls were there again, but then the same car came and the scene from that afternoon happened again. After I took a glass of water, I went into the living room and saw the newspaper in the sofa. I took it and saw in the first page a photo of the three little girls. It was an article telling about the disappearance of three girls 40 years before and a recent investigation which proved that they were kidnaped.

Obviously, I freaked out. I went into the kitchen again, and saw my parents were there, my mother cooking dinner, so I explained everything that had happened. My father stayed silent, but my mother got angry at me – not quite sure why – and said that it was impossible that those were the same girls, it had passed 40 years! Then, suddenly it was raining heavily, and, as we heard a deafening thunder, the lights blacked out and a sudden steam misted the window. Next, we heard the sound of someone pressing a finger in the glass and sliding it against the window and, indeed, a mark appeared in it. I was paralyzed with fear, but my mother ignored it, denying that something paranormal was happening. She glared at my father and said, “well, aren't you going to start the lights again?” but he only answered with a look that said, “if you really want to pretend nothing is happening, why don't you do it yourself?” So she went and turned on the lights. When she came back I could tell by her expression that she was starting to accept everything that I had told them. The window was still a little misty and the line the finger had made, still visible.

My father and I moved to the living room. There, my father pointed out something under the sofa: there was a tiny stream of blood coming from under it. As we looked, the blood started to retreat until it disappeared, then came out from under the sofa again and repeated the same process. But when we pushed the sofa away, there was nothing there. We looked at each other, not knowing what to make of it.

After a few minutes, we started to dinner while we watched a black and white movie on the TV. We didn't discuss what was happening, first, because we wanted things to go back to normal and, secondly, because we didn't really know what was going on.

"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast."  ~Author Unknown

Of Mice and Men

Last summer, I was very impressed by a book I read in my Reading and Writing class in Vancouver, a novella called “Of Mice and Men”, written by John Steinbeck in 1937. It tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California. It impressed me because of the economic and social situation it describes and because of the suffering of the characters, who see their dreams crashed helplessly.

In fact, one of the main topics presented in the book Of Mice and Men is the disappointment that makes every character suffer in their own way. The principal factor which leads to suffering is the time were the story takes place, in the 30’s, right after the Great Depression of the USA, which lead to a very long period of economical instability, lack of work, and decrease of salaries. All this conditions lead to the increase of homeless and penniless people who would do any physical work for a low salary, like George and Lennie.

This is one of the main reasons for the suffering in the novella: they have to find work, even if they don’t like it, to survive and to try to save money to have one day their own house and to achieve the American dream of being their own bosses. But it is not easy for the characters in the story, because of the period of crisis we mentioned before, and because of Lennie’s mental disability, which makes it difficult to find a job and to keep it, since Lennie’s lack of control over his own strength gets him into trouble, and ultimately causes his death.

Another important character of the story is Crooks, the black worker of the farm. His suffering and disappointment comes from the fact that he is black in a period of time when discrimination against black people is common and accepted by most of the American population. He is isolated from other people in his room in the barn and he gets a horrible treatment from the boss. However, he remembers living with his family in their own farm, where everybody loved him, and where he was always together with his brothers. When he was a child, he never imagined his life would be like how it is in that moment, and that causes pain and disappointment in his life and in human beings, as well as the loneliness he feels since the other workers of the farm always keep their distance with him. In the book, he states: "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you."

The readers can also see disappointment in Curley’s wife’s story. She was expecting to have a life full of love, acceptance and even fame. Her dream was to be an actress, and to be able to wear “nice dresses” and live in hotels, but it didn’t come true. And even when she married Curley to get away from her house and her mother, she was disappointed again when she realized Curley’s violent and possessive behavior and the way every worker in the farm treated her coldly, so she didn’t have anyone to talk to. So again, loneliness and shattered dreams are the cause of suffering.

And last but not least, it’s Lennie’s tragic death. George and him had a dream of having their own house and living together. But when Lennie kills Curley’s wife accidentally, George sees no way out of it, and has to take away Lennie’s life by his own hands, to spare him from a more painful and cruel death decided by Curley and because his conscience wouldn't let him let Lenny ran away on his own, since he wouldn't be able to survive and could be a danger for other people . By making that decision, he throws away that dream which they have been working for for so many years, and kills his only friend and family, the only person that really cared for him and that saved him from loneliness.

"Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets" - William Faulkner

Damn, it's 4am...
Again, recycling homework is so much fun...

Eight of Diamonds

In Spanish class the teacher made us pick up a card from a pack. They weren't normal cards, they were illustrated by some graffiti painter, and he told us to write a 300-500-word story using the painting from the card, and so I wrote this thing (in Spanish, of course). Don't you love recycling homework?

It's a mix of the card's picture (the girl on the bench), the song I was listening to when I got the idea: “Pinta de Tarao” by “Los Punsetes” (LOL at that), and a nightmare I had a few nights ago.

*

It would happen that night, he could tell, he could feel it in his seething blood. That night he'd go hunting.

He was wandering around his favourite club area, looking for something that would make him react while imagining and remembering other hunting nights. No matter how they started, they would always end the same way: slim arms tied up behind their backs, eyes full of fright, blood sliding down the curves of their bodies... it was the best medicine to calm that burning, that restlessness that would chase him on nights like that one.

At last, he saw someone in the distance that made him stop searching: it was a girl seated in a bench alone with the light of a streetlight shaping and sharping her features and hiding her eyes under the shadow her brow casted. She was giving off a feeling of aggressiveness and strong character that attracted him greatly, and she was wearing some informal jeans and a short-sleeve t-shirt with a suggestive “sex” written across her chest.

He walked to where she was and asked her why she was alone at night. She raised an eyebrow, showing all her disdain in that single action. Then, she put on some sunglasses, even if it was already dark, and looked up at him, but the man still couldn't see her eyes.

“I'm waiting till morning. My neighbourhood is kind of dangerous at night.”

He offered, in a way that left her no choice but to accept, to walk her home, assuring her that he knew martial arts and self-defence, which was a lie, but it didn't matter, they would never make it to her neighbourhood.

While they were walking, she started talking about how bad things were in the world lately, with the increase of murders and kidnappings and the new war that was starting in the East, although never losing that feeling of disdain she showed him earlier. She said that the world was losing its balance. He thought it was a strange comment but didn't say anything. He couldn't care less.

Just before going into a deserted alley, after telling her it was a shortcut, she asked him:

“Do you know which is Newton's third law?” The man shook his head, getting a bit impatient. There was something in the way she talked that unnerved him. “That to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”

Then, they went into the alley and he took out his penknife, turned to face the girl and saw her smirking. After a few seconds, the young girl took off her sunglasses and he screamed out of horror: they were just empty sockets, but filled with terrifyingly intense shadows.

“Wh-who...? WHAT ARE YOU?” he screamed, trying to walk away, but his feet were glued to the ground.

“The opposite reaction,” she whispered in a satisfied purr.

The last thing he saw was the glint of sharp teeth and bottomless sockets, full of darkness and nightmares, that trapped him.

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.” -    Leonard Cohen

(Un)Fortunately, not the end

Friends who read (or not) this blog:

I raise my broken, angry cry to the heavens, for I shall continue this blog against my volition due to the unavoidable orders of my tireless professor. Therefore, I feel obligated to warn you that I shall write... 4000 words M O A R! - Le gasp! -

Oh! and I have to make another one for my Spanish class, too. It was kind of funny that as soon as the teacher said the word “blog” everyone started groaning and making annoyed noises at the same time.

Aside from that, I made it in time for the 4000 words (4043, actually) and so, I shall try my best to complete this noble, although tedious, task again.

And why this speech? Because I'm in an odd mood and felt like it.

“Leave my door open just a crack

'cause I feel like such an insomniac.

Why do I tire of counting sheep

when I'm far too tired to fall asleep?” - Owl City

Don't mess with karma

So! My last entry before midnight! I'm going to tell you about the day with the worst luck in my life. Just because! (My Soulmate already knows about this, LOL)

I was in Vancouver and I couldn't sleep (how weird) so I went to the kitchen with a book in hopes that my flatmate would come out of his room so we could talk for a while to kill my boredom. I filled a glass of water and after drinking I left it on the table, next to my book. A little after midnight, I was concentrated in the story and I went to pick up the glass without tearing my eyes from the book, I miscalculated the distance and knocked over the glass. Of course, all the water spilled, getting completely wet the pillow of the chair next to mine. The day was starting really well. I dried the table and the floor, left a note of warning to my flatmate about the chair and went to sleep angry with myself.

The next day, I woke up just fine. I went into the shower and tried to get the water to start but, as I grabbed the faucet, it came off (it was very loose) and slipped from my hand falling on the floor of the shower and making so much noise it could have woken up all the neighbourhood. Great.

When I was ready, I came out of the house and walked to the skytrain station. After I got there, I noticed that I had actually come out one our and a half before the meeting time, and not knowing what would I do alone in a place I didn't know (other than getting myself lost), I decided to go back home.
As I crossed the door mumbling about how stupid I was, I run into my flatmate. He asked me why I had come back and, after I explained, he invited me to go get coffee at Starbucks, so I went.
There, I got my throat burned with the coffee and made a fool of myself coughing like a maniac. After some time, I went back to the station.

Then, I saw the skytrain arrive while I was going upstairs and hurried so much I tripped and fell on my knee, which hurt like hell. I got up the skytrain, sit down and started listening to my i-pod. The thing is, I got into the skytrain to the wrong direction, but only noticed after 20 minutes, after seeing a restaurant with a ridiculously big Elvis on the roof, which I hadn't seen any of the times I had taken the skytrain to Downtown.

The result was that I arrived half an hour late.

I still can't believe they didn't kill me.

"Not being able to sleep is terrible. Your have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction." - Lynn Johnston

Here comes the sun in the middle of winter

I hate my blog.
Why won't it let me put YouTube videos?
Here Comes the Sun

 I've already talked about a book, films, a painting, so I guess now it's turn to talk about music. More particularly about the song Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. Because it's simply wonderful that it's early January and 20º outside. A weather that invites you to lay on the ground like a cat and sunbath, despite the proximity of the exams, while singing it's allright. Certainly, one of the best songs of the Beatles was writen by George Harrison

(written on Saturday 8th)

Untitled

There is a painting that haunts me. The image of a king without a kingdom, forever trapped between four walls and with piles of books towering around him. The image of a man sit in a study room with a book open on his lap, which he looks absently, with his heart somewhere else. By the look of resigned desperation on his face you'd say he is a peasant to whom life has not treated kindly; but the rich clothes he wears, even if untidy and wrinkled, the rings on his fingers, and even the uncouncious elegance of the way he holds his head with one hand tell you otherwise.

I can't remember the title of the painting nor the artist's name, but I can perfectly recall the exact position of the man, the shockingly detailed books around him and his expression. I don't know why this painting shocked me so much, but seeing it made me want to jump into it and shake that devastatingly silent sadness off the man, make him stand up from that baroque, wooden chair and see the world with his own eyes to light his heavy mood. Maybe because I'm also waiting for something to shake me awake and make me break this stillness of mine that makes me feel like a frozen picture.

"Dawn: When men of reason go to bed." - Ambrose Bierce

So loverly

I think I need like... 1500 words more, aproximately, so I'll write a reeeally long entry. I'll try to get the larger number of words possible, so I'll probably start rambling. That's why it would be better if you didn't read this. It's going to be boring. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Today I feel like talking about this amazing film: My Fair Lady. Directed by George Cukor and starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

This film takes place in London in 1912 and tells the story of Eliza Doolitle, a poor flower seller young woman who comes across Henry Higgins, a misogynistic, arrogant and famous professor of phonetics.

The professor Higgins boasts jokingly to a new acquaintance of his (Colonel Pickering) that he can even make a flower girl like her with such a strong cockney accent pass as a Duchess at the embassy ball.

Eliza, who wants to have a better life working at a shop (for which she needs to use a better English) and not selling flowers on the street, goes the next day to Higgins' house to ask him for speech lessons. At first, Higgins refuses, but Colonel Pickering reminds him of what said the day before and they make a bet: in four months he is to teach Eliza to talk like an upper-class person and take her to the embassy ball without being found out her true origins.

I watched this film with my friend G, and he told me he thought it was kind of sexist because of what Higgins says about women. Certainly, Higgins doesn't think very highly of women and he leaves no doubt about it when he complains “why can't a woman be more like a man?” or when he declares that he prefers “a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition than to ever let a woman in my life”. But that's not the message the film wants to transmit at all. (From now on this will contain spoilers, so if you haven't watched the film and want to see the end yourself, better stop reading)

In the end, when Higgins goes to her mother's house looking for Eliza and she refuses to go back to his house with him, Higgins is proud of her. Seeing her as someone who has become sufficient and independent -even if he still declares that it is his merit- he tells her “I like you more this way”. And in the last scene, even if she goes back to his house, Eliza isn't dependent of him nor of Fredy, whom she told the professor she was going to marry but doesn't.

As I said before, I think My Fair Lady is a great film which has wonderful actors. Audrey Hepburn has been my favourite actress ever since I watched her there and I've seen a couple of films more which I also like. And I also like Rex Harrison, although I still have to watch more of his films, he makes a perfect professor Higgins. And I completely love the relationship between Eliza and the professor. I love that Eliza makes her way to Higgins' difficult heart. And that he doesn't want to admit even to himself that he has come to think of the young woman as someone precious, saying that he has just “grown accustomed to her face”. Must be my tsundere fetish (tsundere is a Japanese word that describes a person who is emotional but hides it, and may feel one way but act the other. What can I say? Otakus will be otakus)

Another thing I like it's the different accents they show in the film and the upper-class way of talking. I just love it, it's so pompous! (How ghastly! I know) And, of course, the songs.

Well, this is more than 600 words and it's 4 in the morning, so I guess it's enough for tonight. I'm going to sleep. Although first I need to go to the bathroom... "Where the devil are my slippers?"

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?” Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.” - Charles M. Schulz