about disputes (and undesirable future outcomes)

Something I though of writing after a conversation I had late at night yesterday. Again, I couldn't sleep. I did sleep eventually, but I didn't rest. Maybe this story was in my mind too much, unquieting me, maybe it was just another normal night of insomnia. 

That's what I wrote:

He always though it was probably a bad idea, what they did. Get married. Build a home. Pretend they are a normal, suburban couple. He should have listened his (rather sexist) friends. Instead of getting hitched with the smart woman that would challenge him in everything she felt like challenging, that would correct him both in public and in the safety of his own home, that would dismiss him for work and never look at him when she was writing, lips purse and eyes glued to the laptop screen.

He should have married a girl like Liza. Oh, uncomplicated Liza. Her biggest problem was thinking about what she would dress for a dinner party. She would never get a red pen out of her purse when he gave her one of his drafts like Claudia did. She would never shush him if he wanted to talk and she was working. Hell, it is even hard to picture Liza working outside of the house-wife sphere.

But then Liza bored him. When he wanted to discuss something about science or the human brain or foreign politics, Liza would just squirt her eyes at him and try to understand what he was saying (or better, why was he ruining a perfectly nice evening with those complicated issues). Claudia? She would jump at an argument like a starving mountain lion. She loved the dispute, she love to make a point, she loved to convince him and he had to admit, that although sometimes they took it too far, it was fun to have someone that would make him think, jog his brain, every now and then.

But it was hard. Claudia was hard because she was an equal. Maybe she was smarter than him, there was always that possibility, a scary one as it is. She could, at any moment get tired of him. She would look for a man that could laugh at her nonsense, that wouldn't let her be right, that would smash her ego, put her in her place. The rightful place of a woman. A man that would treat her research, her books, all that made Claudia Claudia, as the hobbies of a bad behaved housewife.

And he would be with a Liza. Easy to deal with, easy to get complements from, easy to be around. Never fight over first or second drafts, never discuss the situation in Middle East. The only Kashmir she would ever talk about is the cashmere pullover she would give him for his birthday.

He looks at Claudia, intently looking at her laptop screen. She has music on and a glass of wine by her messy notes, almost staining some of the papers. She doesn't notice him. She doesn't notice her notes are about to be stained.

He says he will buy cigarets in the corner store, she answers with an unintelligible sound, just to prove him she is not really listening, absorbed, consumed by what she is writing. That's just the way she is.

While Gordon is leaving the house, taking no more than his wallet and cell phone, he thinks of the irony of what he is doing, and a smirk creeps on his face. Claudia once wrote the history of a woman that was left by her husband, and in that story she discusses about the classical move pulled by several men through history, of saying that they will simply buy cigarets, and never coming back to their wives.

Well, he didn't intended to disappear and never come back. He wanted his freaking half of the house, he thought, while he crossed the street in front of Claudia's house. But for now he would make himself absent and find himself a Liza. 20 years younger than him, blond and stupid.

about libraries

I just wrote this poem. I never write poems, specially in English. It is just a bitch to rhyme. Anyways, I wrote it and here it is:

Alexandria, don't say that word,
I'll think about its holly walls.
Rather had the story remained unheard,
Instead of thinking of what could befall

if only all the wisdom was still intact
I could read Alexander's voice,
If only there was no such riot act
I could maybe the story retract,

bring it close to the heart of the imagination,
Read papiri forever lost, read the word of kings and commons,
But it is all consumed by fire, the inverse of what is creation,
Alexandria, just don't say it, or I'll see the work of demons.

If only I could know,
What hand was the hand that destroyed,
If only I knew the name of such John Doe,
To the fire of Hell we would've been deployed.

Oh, reverse of the hand of Midas,
Instead of making gold, he was the fabricant of ashes,
The crime, worse than the killing of pandas,
Would've been punished by the worse of Hell's bitches.

And if there shall be no Hell, I wouldn't bother,
You, hand of fire, will be punished with oblivion,
Your family is dead, all that you once called brother,
and the sands of time will turn you into simple abstraction.

Don't talk to me about Alexandria,
I don't want to think about what was lost in the fire.

Leite©

about panoramic views

I was reading this book for my Brit Lit class and my professor proposed that we write a panoramic view of our lives.

Out of everything, what would I put down for people to see, as if my life was the compilation of a series of events with no beginning nor end. Just a series of facts in no order of importance. I find that rather difficult, rather complicated to do.

Are we, humans, am I, a series of events, no order? no beginning nor end, just a series of events that happened?

I don't think so. First of all, according to modern psychology, aren't traumatic events, the ones the cause an enormous amount of psychological damage, so hard to cope that the traumatized person forgets the event that led to the trauma altogether? How much do "scenes", independent events, are important in themselves? How much can they matter out of context?

I'd rather believe that I'm a product of everything, every tiny piece of information that I gather, every dream I don't remember, every unconscious though that I am barely aware of.

I can pinpoint some events that I consider bigger. Moments of strong overflow of emotion. Most of those where  accompanied by nightmares, tricks of the mind, extreme stress and such pleasant things.

So no, I shall not write a panorama of my life for several reasons, but mostly for two: (1) I don't like to dwell on my past mistakes, the "if's" and (2) I don't think this way to approach my life is the best way to look at it.

If I want to see what I was, I just have to see what I am now. I am the product of what happened and the seed of what will happen.

Carnations over her body (2)

Mais do Mesmo:

Carnations over her body 

The smell of grief was all around me. It was everywhere. Does grief even have a smell? I think it does. It smells like damp grass and old dresses and rainy weather. But it wasn't raining. It had already stopped when my father and some other men carried the coffin to the burial place. I knew then, more than I could ever know that this was real. The death was real, the absence was real, the pain was so very real.

It was real like dreams are real while you are dreaming. Somehow I felt like I was watching my own funeral from a third person perspective, like I were a cloud or a ghost. Probably a ghost.

It is not natural for fathers and mother to put a daughter six feet under. But few people can relate to the agonizing feeling of seeing a twin sister go under the ground.

And here I was, red carnations in hand, waiting for my turn to throw some dirt at her. Death is a funny fellow. Sometimes he comes when you're not really waiting for him, when you have almost forgotten that he exists, and sometimes he just lurks around for quite a while before he decides to make a move. He lurked and lurked around my sister for her whole life.

He was almost our friend now, mine and hers, the type of friend you don't really want to have close by, but since he must, you welcome him.

I remember yesterday. Well, of course I do. It was freaking yesterday. What I mean to say is that I remember yesterday as if it was happening right now in front of me, and I knew those memories would last me a lifetime.

She was pail and broken. Nothing unusual there. She had been pail and broken her whole life. Well, not all of it, but almost. My mother said she looked healthy and normal until she was two, but that doesn't really means a lot to me because as far as I can remember, we where always in and out of hospitals.

She was a miracle for surviving 22 years and that was all because of me. I was her identical twin, her perfect match. I gave her my blood, I gave her my bone marrow, I gave her a kidney, I gave her a best friend, I gave her a reason to stick by way past what she should have ever stuck.

And somehow that made me a criminal in my eyes. She could have found relief a long time ago, if our almost perfectly identical bodies didn't gave people hope.

I never though hope could be such a dangerous, dark thing.

But death is relief, death is oblivion and with hope, she couldn't have relief.

Laying in her bed, her hospital bad covered in expensive linen that could not disguise the smell of death that impregnated the room, I though of us.

She told me she was done suffering yesterday. I remember because my eyes watered and because you try to remember all the lasts things a dead person told you.

Laying in her bed I though about the places where she could have hidden it. I know she had one for me somewhere in the room.

I looked at the windows and I though she might have written in there with a marker, and then erased it. We both knew that a blow of hot breath would reveal whatever she wrote and erased, an invisible message. I felt limb, though. My legs, heavy with grief, didn't wanted to carry me from her bed to the window.

I though about other places she might have hidden a letter. I knew she wrote letters in her worse moments, wanting for me to have something of her in the future, when she would not be there.

Maybe she duck-taped it under the table. I would probably do that instead of writing in the window. Who knows how long the invisible mark in the glass would last? Would it last enough for me to find it? And it is not like she could stand in her shaky legs for too long.

I though about half an hour ago. Or was it in another lifetime? My hands throwing dirt at her coffin, my mother crying, my father glancing at me furtively, as if I would metamorphose myself into Anne-Claire at any second, but I kept insisting in being Molly. My hands, shaking, placing the flowers in her newly raised tombstone.

Anne-Claire M. Atkins

1988-2010

Beloved Daughter and Sister

And that was it. That's what she was. Just that, nothing more. There was no written proof in her tombstone that she was an amazing photographer, that she fought with a terrible disease that ate her body for twenty year, that she was loved by all, specially by me, that I don't feel like living on without her.

The ceiling of her room wasn't white like in most rooms. I had a blue summer sky painted on it 6 months ago, when we decided it was time to stop fighting. It was time to rest until it happened. Before she came home, I had it painted, so just she had something nice to look at in the hours she was grounded in her bed.

I though again about a good hiding place. My legs felt strong again because I needed my sister, and the only way I would have her would be by reading what she wrote, what was inside her mind before.

I blew in her window and in the bathroom mirror and nothing came of it. There was no letter under the table, under the bed or under any chair. There was no clue that she had left me something, but she had. I knew it, I had to believe in it, or else I would be lost.

I look at the pictures of us scattered through the room. My face, always looking pinkish and healthy, compared with hers, pale and thin. Her cameras were everywhere. I could see at least five. Her newest toy, a EOS 7D Cannon, her newest toy ("I want to take some pictures with this bad boy before I hit the sac" I remember she telling me, when I asked why she needed yet another new camera)

Carnations over her body

Will write more today, but I just wanted to post this here. The very first paragraphs of the 2nd draft of a story I wrote with my love Fred. No, we didn't wrote it together. He wrote his own novel and I wrote this. The first version of this, I mean. This is barely the start of the second draft for "Death Lens", the story I wrote last November during NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.

It is quite different, quite new, but the core of the story is the same.

Carnations over her body

The smell of grief was all around me. It was everywhere. Does grief even have a smell? I think it does. It smells like damp grass and old dresses and rainy weather. But it wasn't raining. It had already stopped when my father and some other men carried the coffin to the burial place. I knew then, more than I could ever know that this was real. The death was real, the absence was real, the pain was so very real.

It was real like dreams are real while you are dreaming. Somehow I felt like I was watching my own funeral from a third person perspective, like I were a cloud or a ghost. Probably a ghost.

It is not natural for fathers and mother to put q son six feet under. But few people can relate with the agonizing feeling of seeing a twin sister go under the ground.

And here I was, red carnations in hand, waiting for my turn to throw some dirt at her. Death is a funny fellow. Sometimes he comes when you're not really waiting for him, when you have almost forgotten that he exists, and sometimes he just lurks around for quite a while before he decides to make a move. He lurked lurked around my sister for her whole life.

He was almost our friend now, mine and hers, the type of friend you don't really want to have close by, but since he must, you make friends with him.

I remember yesterday. Well, of course I do. It was freaking yesterday. What I mean to say is that I remember yesterday as if it was happening right now in front of me, and I knew those memories would last me a lifetime.

She was pail and broken. Nothing unusual there. She had been pail and broken her whole life. Well, not all of it, but almost. My mother said she looked healthy and normal until she was two...

To my one and only lover.

Sometimes I feel I have hurt you in ways I cannot amend. Sometimes I feel you misunderstand what I say. Sometimes I really think you don't know the worst part in me.

And that is most possibly because when I am with you, I am a better person.

Sometimes I feel like you are so irreparably far away from me. And I want to be close, so close I won't be able to differ where my blood is in my veins and where it is in yours.

That hurts me. Even if I can hear your voice and technology cooperates and your voice sounds just like it would if you could whisper your loving words in my ear. It hurts me because when I hear your voice, I expect the touch of your hand in my skin to follow, I expect the warmth of your body to ignite me.

It saddens me to see and hear you but not to touch your skin, smell your hair, taste your lips. It saddens to be remembered that we are apart.

I hate and love to talk to you until I fall asleep, but as soon as I do, my arms automatically reach for you, and they never find you. I hate that I don't sleep. I just stay in bed, waiting.

Waiting for something terrible to happen maybe, listening for a robber and preparing to dial 911, but most of all, waiting for you to knock in my door and greet me with the kiss I have been waiting for, although rationally I know you are impossibly far away. So far away it hurts.

But then, rationalism is a terrible thing. I prefer to dream about you.

And even if the distance is almost impossible to take, and even if my heart is always tight with wait, it is all worth it.

The wait is the fee I have to pay for this undying, infinite, glorious love that we share. And I pay it gladly every nanosecond of the day. The price is not cheap. In fact it is almost extortion, but I would pay it over a thousand times because you are worth every ounce of pain.

But some days I need some quiet and one of those days was today.

on my favorite writer that is still alive

I guess the main reason why I have Neil Gaiman's signature in my arm is because he is humam. And sometimes, in a daydream or a lazy afternoon of reading, I do feel like we are friends and I know him and he knows me. We can just drink tea or bear or things that are sweet and incredibly satisfying that we conjure from the dreams of a french chef.

And although he is very human and nice and has on occasion answered my tweets, and was very nice in the one time I met him, asking me with his kind of changed, but not really faded British accent if I was sure that I wanted to have his name in my arm forever, he is also the voice in my mind sometimes.

I guess that happens with all his fans, or all people that like stories, I guess.

His voice is like our own voice and other times it is like the voice of something bigger, something special to us, that touches our souls and we don't really know why. But it does.

I also like that he is not fancy. He doesn't tries to sound like he is from the 1800's. And I guess I appreciate the fact that his writing is kind of pedestrian. Without criticizing other writers around the world, because I think that complicated, intricate, embellished writing has its value and its place in the universe of ink and paper, I am much more kin to the pedestrian style of writing. Writing is not a thing of the past, so why write as if we are in the past? I like to write and read as I think, as I feel, as I see the world, and not as somebody might have seen it in other times.

And it is also very important to note that I don't think me and Mr. Gaiman can ever divorce. He will always be might favorite alive writer, even if I get to know other authors that I like as much as I like him, he will always be the first alive writer that really talked to me and made me feel like I belong exactly in the time I was born in because, had I been born a little earlier, I might have missed him.

And unless it is revealled that he is a mass murderer, eats children for breakfast or feeds from the souls of his fans, I will always have a reason to carry his name in my right arm and look at it while I am writing.