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

Metaphors

“At any rate, you – and your theory – are throwing a stone at a target that's very far away. Do you understand that?” 

I nod “I know. But metaphors can reduce the distance.”

“We are not metaphors.”

“I know.” I say “But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”

Haruki Murakami – Kafka on the Shore

Photo by melancolia-neroli on deviantart.

A few days ago, I lent one of my favourite books to a friend of mine and since he can be a bit lazy sometimes (admit it, it's true) I thought I'd write a little about it to encourage him to keep reading even if it may be slow sometimes. But don't worry, I don't tell spoilers like some people.

I first read this novel in English, which is one of the reasons I didn't understand half of the things that happen there. Even so, I fell in love with the charismatic characters, the dream-like feeling that it had sometimes, a love that defied time and space, the Japanese idiosyncracy that always fascinates me, a journey about looking for a home and, of course, the cats.

I couldn't leave it like that and, after some time, I read the book in Spanish. I still liked how the author could create atmospheres with music, his wide knowledge of literature, that the main character kept telling himself “you must be the toughest fifteen-year-old in the world”, the other-worldly silence of the woods, the boy called Crow... But I still couldn't understand a few things.

After that, I made my parents read it, because I was starting to think I had become an idiot. Thank goodness, they didn't find the answers to some questions either. But then, we started to talk about it while having dinner and came out with some pretty good theories for almost everything. And I had a very enjoyable time with my parents talking about it. That's probably one of the things I like most about this book: it's not just a great story, it slowly opens up to you, it makes you think about the reasons of everything that happens there, about hidden meanings, about metaphors and feelings...

In fact, Murakami himself said about his novel: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it in another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write".

Well, I think I have nothing left to say. From my point of view, Haruki Murakami is one of the best writers I've ever read. Besides, he is also a well-known translator, he doesn't like fame and he used to manage a jazz bar because he is into that type of music. Can he get even more loveable? Yes, he can. He really loves cats.

It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. - James Keller