Why write this blog

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It is a way of giving my other self, my unconscious and perhaps artistic self, a way of expressing itself, and thereby helping me working things out. It is somewhat cathartic in a positive way. :)

25 November, 2010

In between

It's strange, living in this land of nobody, where I should feel like I belong "home": in Portugal where I was born and grew up but don't anymore, and: not quite belonging yet, the place I have chosen to live, my "real home", England, country where I studied, and now work in the career I have chosen.

So, I'm in between, in the land of nobody.

There's many things in Portugal to like, that inspire good memories, a sort of quiet civility where you feel safe and cozy. At least for a little while. It's the lovely food. The nice weather. That incredible place that are the Portuguese cafes (also known as pastelarias) that double up as little familiar bars, where people meet and socialise and watch football and drink expressos and beers (in a tall small glass that are called imperials), where kids are no more out of place than a man on his own. The easily understood language that you know you don't have to try to figure out some words and don't have to worry about how you pronounce others. The friends with their own lives and new experiences. The family with all their idiossicracies.

Yet, all this is no longer intrinsic. It's no longer your own. You're too distant. Too removed now, away from a common societal experience that gives you that sense of belonging. Besides, whilst a lot stays the same, others change, subtly, as is to be expected. That in itself it's not a problem. The problem is when you realise that you have changed also. More importantly, in many ways, you have changed in a divergent manner.

It's your mannerisms. How you think about things. How you react to news, people, situations. It's, ultimately, how you feel.

I was asked, do you often miss and think about Portuguese food? I said sometimes, but that is not exactly true. No, I don't really, not anymore. I just don't think about it. And it applies to everything else as well.

I no longer miss it, not really. Maybe because it's no longer me. Perhaps because I have nothing else left here. There's family, sure, of course there is, and old friends. But that's the past, my past.

I saw on TV today family is the most important thing in the world. And I found myself thinking, is it?

Intellectually I know that is almost akin to some kind of blasphemy, betrayal, a non-sense. Yet I don't feel it anymore, that connection. Through bonds of blood. I used to. I just realised over the last few days that I don't anymore.

Will that make it easier? To leave everything get up and go as I have been debating recently?

Well, family wise I already live far. Some I haven't spoken to in years. Others I have but if I hadn't it would not make any difference, they don't know me as I don't know them. My dad, I don't know, I thought I did, but who knows? My mum, I feel a duty more than anything these days, that's what's dwindled down to.

Friends, my old real Friends, I live far from them already. They have their lives, ever more so, and it doesn't include me in them. I love them dearly but they are the past (M, I know you'll hate me for these words but I know also that despite what might make you feel you know I'm right).

So, what? I'm always complaining/thinking/moaning that people in Leicester aren't my Real friends, maybe in the future but not yet. But I would miss them, that's the reality, they are the people I would miss the most, at least right now. The question here is, are they the future?

My future? Are they? I'm not that close to them, although I know a lot of them for what is becoming a considerable number of years. Will I ever though? They also have their own lives to live and I'm unsure I will ever be a part of it.

The only way, really, is to make my own future. Find the people that will be part of that future. Partner/wife/lover. Friends. Country? Maybe.

Maybe this is it. The moment of zen. As I write these words it all seems to fall into place, at least easily enough justified.

It then becomes a problem of fear, I guess. Of the unknown. Of hunger. Of guilt. Of loneliness.

"Sometimes in order to do what's right you've got to do what's wrong." I read that in a book, recently. "I firmly believe that sometimes it's right to do the wrong thing" I saw that in s tv series, some time ago. Both are expressions of the same general idea. That sometime you need to do what's right for you even if it may seem wrong in someone else's eyes or for somebody. That sometimes that little bit of selfishness is needed. Although the concept and the reach of selfishness is a relative flexible notion.

So yes. I live in between. Not longer in one world, not quite in another. And I'm not sure if I will ever truly belong in either, not anymore.

Do I try a third choice? Do I stick with the current choice, after all I have devoted the last six years to it. If I go for the former is that giving up and throwing the towel? Or on the other hand is it throwing caution to the wind and have the courage to risk everything?

Is it courage or cowardice? It's a shade of grey it's what it is. And I'm caught in it, in my own mind.

I'm in between...




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24 November, 2010

Laughter heals everything

That's it.

It's true though. Music helps also, but the wrong kind can only send you spinning further into the endless spiral of self-pity, despair and exasperation.

But, regardless of how unhappy, grieving or whatever you're experiencing, if you see something funny enough you'll laugh. (not my idea, it was the only thing I got from the second Sex and the City movie, which I was "forced" to go watch!).

And thus, if you laugh, you heal. Just a little more.


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21 November, 2010

A day soon to be lost in time

I remember that day. I will, I suspect, for a very long time.

I remember, your laughter.
Our mutual antagonism, a game we liked to play.
I remember, your smile.
Our abandonment, helped by the ingestion of alcohol.
I remember, your touch.
Our hands playing, our eyes meeting lost in the night without time.
I remember, my happiness.
How I felt that night and the day after, the feeling that we had shared a special moment in our lives, that we had felt that it could have lasted for ever.

Or maybe that was just me. It probably was. It doesn't matter anymore, perhaps it never has, it did to me for a long time.

All it matters is that I remember. That night. Those hours spent together.

Happiness. In a day about to be lost in the inexorable passage of time...



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The more you grow the less you feel...

BLOG IN ABSENTIA

Day 3 - What to feel?

So I did not write yesterday, I guess I was too busy, same today...

More likely I didn't know what to write. Because mainly, I don't know what to feel.

Or rather, I'm not feeling much, I'm like a sinking ship that cannot hold water, I seem to be a draining vessel of feelings.

I know what I want to feel, in my head I believe I know what I should be feeling. Consciously I know I should, and I kinda am but I cannot seem to really feel it.

Cryptic so far I know, a friend of mine always accused me of talking in riddles and being all mysterious, I don't mean to it's just the way it comes out sometimes.

I have a very sick friend. I have had news that the sickness is even more serious than at first thought. And I'm sad. But I should be more, I think. I should be I don't really know, I suppose it's one of those situations life cannot prepare you for until it's in front of you, it's impossible to know how you would react.

Admittedly it's not one of my oldest and closest friends. Should that matter? But if it was, would I react the same way?

Regardless, something compels me to be there for whatever needed, a word, a call, a hug. Is it that just basic human decency rather than any deep feeling of friendship?I'm concerned, of course I am.

But not with a great deal of intensity. Does that make me a bad person? Am I devoid of feelings? Have I lost so much human contact that I have lost the ability to know how to feel instinctively? Have I ever had it...? I don't think so, I never would have believed it, but now...

Or is it just... Another symptom of ageing? Was Billy right?

The more we grow the less we feel?



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19 November, 2010

Day 1 - Surprising Weather

BLOG IN ABSENTIA NOV 2010

So, it was supposed to be raining.

It's my first day of holiday in the beautiful and restful Algarve, and, obviously, I checked what the weather was going to be like. The predictions said rain on Friday, Sunny the next six days (yay!!) temperature between 16/17 degrees which is quite decent, not quite 22 degrees like last year but still pretty good compared to England, where it's currently freezing!

What was my surprise when I got up (late, after eleven hours in bed, oh yeah!) to a lovely sunshiny day. Oh you can see the dark clouds on the horizon but that was a pleasant surprise. Walking in Lagoa and get breakfast in a beautiful morning, great start.

Especially after yesterdays debacle on arrival with the rental car taxi malarkey.

But anyway. I walked through some streets of Lagoa that I had missed before. At the back of this house, that looks pretty posh, not very big but likely pretty old, in their small yard there was a statue of a couple, absolutely lovely, the house looks like it could have been a school maybe at some point but it was pretty cool.

Happy days. Now, to get my money for my rental car from Europcar...

PS - When I got home and switched on the news, President Obama is visiting Lisbon, but it's raining very very hard there!! I just had to laugh, here I am, down South, with the Sun coming through the window. Eheh


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05 November, 2010

04 November, 2010

Love happens

I wish I could believe it...

Actually that's not true, I do actually, I irresistibly and hopelessly believe it.

But it just seems to happen to OTHER people...


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02 November, 2010

Last time

...

This it, it has to be said, it has to come out, it just does, I'm sorry I'm too much of a coward to send it to you directly. But, maybe this will be the final purge,:

"I thought it was supposed to have finished as well and for a few months I was convinced it was.

I never knew I made you cry when you were in Leicester nor did I mean it, far from it, I've never made anything up about you or insulted you or anything like that, but you made me cry also.
Why would you cry if you felt absolutely nothing for me? You said so, to my face.

It also makes me sad, however, but you know that with me what you see is what you get, what I say is what I feel, same with my writing. I am aware that my honesty is not cut out for this day and age, often it comes out as, or can be perceived as, rude, blunt, insensitive or maybe even cruel. The me on my blog is my dark side mainly, the one without inhibitions, the majority of my strongest feelings come out through my writing without a doubt. I do have though, I think, some measure of contention and tact when I deal with people (maybe not always, hey I'm only human, not perfect, most of the time I do try to be tactful).
My blog is by my own admission an attempt to express my feelings and thoughts and ideas and exorcising demons. Sometimes things work themselves out in my head as I write them. Other times I write foolish desperate things. And that keeps me a little bit sane.

You tell me about questions, you owe me nothing so I've never asked them. But I can't help express my feelings in whatever medium I choose. I did not name you (or anyone else by that matter) on any of my writings because as you have shown me in the past that sort of thing can get oneself into trouble, both personally and at work. Unfortunately as you are central to the whole charade you are inevitably going to know what I'm on about, but, and this is the important part you don't have to read it. I won't lie that I would like you too read some of my posts and I like it that you have been reading all of them, but if you do you must prepared for all the drivel that comes out. It's been a few days now and I've re-read my post and only a little bit was about you, in no way nasty, and to be fair really, I still have the message you sent me last year and I think I still have a right to be bewildered given the seriousness of what you told me then, that's my right, to wonder at things I cannot understand. And I do wonder, still.

You want me to stay in touch, so do I. But sometimes I don't because I still remember. And because when I do, remember that is, it still hurts. This I have told you, recently, and you said YOU were going to be persistent and wasn't going to give up. So, why the change of mind now, why the surprise?
If I make you cry when I talk about my extant feelings for you or how I deal with them, that is certainly not something I want, but it makes me wonder, why is that? Because of "whatever"? Well... hell!

Lol We're like a bloody family at Christmas :) Always arguing and bickering and going too far at times because somebody can't keep their mouths shut and things come out that should not have been said, especially when they happened after everyone had that bit too much to drink, but in the end everyone loves each other. So you don't talk to each other in January, then for whatever reason you eventually need to get in touch, normality resumes, and when it gets to that time at the end of the year again, you dread it, but still you wouldn't miss it. It's Christmas and it's family right?"

There you go, there it is, plain for everyone to see. I've read today that the road to recovery is only as easy as how much or how quickly you cam let go (or words to that effect) and it's true. I thought I had, but I hadn't.

Maybe now I have.



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Grand gesture

I think I almost had an epiphany earlier, it's difficult to say, I was slightly intoxicated.

Once again, there was a brief moment, like the parting of the seas, when everything seemed to be ever so clear but I don't seem to recall it all right now...

There's something about America that fascinates me, it's a fascination that has abated for a while, years in fact, but it's meeting a revival. After years in England and seeing America through English eyes it certainly changes your perspective regarding it. The dreamlike fantasy view is certainly gone in favour of a more reasoned, measured, learnt approach. Yet, there's something about it... America it's like no other nation on Earth, little past history but plenty of big events. I've read somewhere that everything in America it's just, you know, bigger! That's certainly true. There's an ambition there, a fools innocent hope, an immeasurable confidence and indomitable spirit that it's seldom matched elsewhere.

It's all about grand gestures, great cliches and spectacular deeds. For good or worse. Not a place for the faint-hearted for sure.


Dreams are great! And then reality intrudes... 'sigh' ...

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