Restart

I have now started twice a different topic for today's post and deleted them both.

I am not sure what I want to say.

The first one was too banal, the second one was too personal.

I never managed to strike the right balance with this blog. I never know if what I write is too personal, and therefore irrelevant to people, or if what I write is too generic and therefore boring. Anonymity gives you some freedom, but what about my friends who read me? They know me, and I am not always sure if I want to write something so personal for them to read.

The other day, I was lying awake in my bed for ever, I couldn't sleep, and so many other times in my life, I had these brilliant ideas for a post, and never got up to writing it. Only thing was, it was about an excellent sexual encounter I once had, one that made me radically rethink certain things about love and sex and so on. Lying in my bed, I imagined the prose in my head, powerful and lyrical, strong and explicit, I imagined the whole thing. But then I couldn't write it, I couldn't bring myself to write it at all.

Can we only be free in absolute anonymity?

But then, I like sharing my thoughts with my friends that live all over the place through this blog so much.

Should I have a second blog, an alias of an alias, so I can write my dirty over-sexualized posts, dishing on exes and providing the world of explicit details of my life? Only, if you don't know who I am, it doesn't count?

I don't know, I haven't decided. Perhaps my need to discuss personal details will pass, or perhaps I will find a way to write my thoughts stripped from the personal but not turning into commonalities that have an effect on noone.

On vera...

Internet shopping

I found amazing things on the internet this week!

First a lovely brand of jewelry in amazon: Pomegranate

Lovely, flirty and gold! As Hallo Kitty always said: gold is for the summer, so here we go, summer is here and Pomegranate rocks!

Find number two, courtesy of the lovely Lopi of fashion architect, it's Maria Lucia Hohan.

Everything is especially yummy, but the wedding dresses are actually the best I've seen in a while ;-)

Speaking of wedding dresses, have a look at BHLDN, their new wedding collection is on, and I think it's even better than the first!

Last, but not least: etsy!

A wonderful online shop, to buy and sell handcrafted and vintage stuff. It's full of pretty, often inexpensive things, but the Takemoto wooden glasses are simply amazing!

So, have you been paid this month?
If yes, go spend it all online...

Happy spending, fellow shopaholics!!

Mama

I don't often post videos and i am definitely not part of the "cute cats" epidemic.
This however is amazing.

I am not sure what it tells us (are animals like humans, or humans like animals- cf. the ending of "animal farm") but when I watched it (courtecy of lifo.gr) it made me feel really warm inside.

Slow

Another week is almost over.
I sit sluggishly on the sofa, looking ahead at my empty day. I am not sure what I will do today, I don't have much to do anyway. Or, I do, but I have no brain power to start. I am sluggish too, slow, I only think of the summer.

I don't often have the time to slow down and think. I usually run around trying to do 500 things at once (and failing). When I was doing my PhD, I used to adore these slow days that I spent in my room. I used to work a bit (slowly, thinking about things in some detail and not just doing things) and then listen to a song and think about it, read a book and think about it, in general feel the things I was doing and not just doing them.

In this brief return to the severely underrated notion of sluggishness, I am spending my morning sipping coffee and browsing the net. I am reading on Greece and the situation there. It makes me sick to my stomach, I worry so much. My parents are nervous, my friends are nervous, and I am here. I have a good job and I live a good life. Nothing lasts forever, I know, and the UK finances are not exactly the healthiest in the universe, but I am fine.

I don't know what I would do if I was in Greece, I don't know what I would ask for.
I am reading, I am reading and I am still so confused. Whose fault is it? What can we do now? Is there anything that can be done and not leave Greece in ruins?

Thinking about these things, I despair and still I drink coffee and enjoy the sunshine and browse the net.
Fell sorry for ME.

Memory

She likes walking in the city alone. Looking at other people, strangers she stays in her own mind. She is thinking of her everyday things: what she'll cook later, that she needs to lose some weight, stuff about work. Then she might see something in the city, a person walking, a colour in a sign, something that reminds her of something from her past. When this happens, she instantly gets transported back into that memory, she gets transported somewhere in her past and she starts remembering things in detail. She starts remembering people that she had known in a distant past, for very little time and hasn't seen or thought of for years. She starts remembering songs she would dance to frantically. She starts remembering clothes she used to wear and now does not know where they are. She starts remembering of things she used to like, foods she used to cook and she no longer does.

This lasts some minutes. She might sit down on a bench and think about all this for a while. Or she might just keep walking and smiling. And then, as quickly and as suddenly as she was in that world, she leaves it again. And she is back to being herself, she is back to being in the now. And she forgets about all of these past memories, the treasures of the past until the next time something random will remind her.

Hanna, never let me go

Art often deals with the definition of humanity.

Who is human? Who shows human characteristics? How much "difference" can we accept?
These are central concepts that (like so many other things) seem to be revisited time after time, in movie after movie, in book after book.

Hanna is such a story. Born "special" due to a secret American CIA program, Hanna is raised like a killer, ready for when Uncle Sam comes looking. Unaware of her being "different", she fleetingly tries to blend in. Yet, Hanna looks and very much acts like a girl her age. Is her difference really significant then? Isn't she human?

In "never let me go" the characters are raised in a dubious school, where all their lives they feel something is not exactly as it should be. When they finally figure out their fate, they try to reverse it by appealing to the people that they think might classify "humans" as "beings who can love". They, too, want a "normal" life, a chance in normality.

Why would we even care about what defines humanity?

I guess because of what being human implies.

If an embryo is classified as human, you cannot abort it, it's considered murder.
If a clone is considered human, you cannot use it to take it's organs, it's considered murder.
If a genetically modified kid is classified as human, you cannot use it like a killing machine, it's considered "inhumane".

The world's most important definitions are nothing but a big fat slippery slope. No-one really knows (or agrees) when an embryo starts being human, or when it is just a collection of cells. Any attempt to define it is arbitrary at best.

No-one known if someone eating shrimps is really a vegetarian.

In short, millions of years down the line of human civilization, we are not so sure about how to define many important things.

Definitions are futile. Philosophy has failed.

Art, with all its ambivalence, is all we have to debate and discuss these important things.

As always, then, art saves.

And still, I cry

I love Harry Potter, I really do.

After getting courage from him to finish my PhD, in times when I thought that nothing could calm me down and my mouth was in pain with tension, I decided to revisit him in time for the grand finale. Though I always thought that the books were far from perfect, the world that JKR created is undoubtedly amazing. The symbolism, the complexity, the details, HP's world sucks me in every time. I hadn't read the books, since before the end, where reading served one goal and one goal only: to look for clues of how it would all end. This of course obscured the whole experience and made me devour the books without thinking much, without enjoying them properly. So I thought, this time I will do it differently. Indifferent to the ending, I reread all books slowly, sluggishly tasting every detail. I started the last book this morning and I really don't want it to end, for when it does Harry will be gone forevermore for me, at least until July when I will queue with all the rest of his fans to see the last installment in the movie series. I never liked the movies too much, they left so much out. And, I think, HP is not about the big things, it is about the small ones. The details that the books include, the nuances of the relationships, the inner thoughts of the characters, the little traits that page after page make these kids my friends.

So, now you know why I have been so absent lately, I have been sucked back to HP land, reading and reading, spending my days, the sunniest days Belfast had seen for a while, inside a book and not outside in the gardens, the river and the sunshine. But I really don't care, sunshine will come and go. Harry though will always stay with me, my friend forever. When I read the passages that I love - Sirius's death, Voldemort's rebirth, the Yule ball, Hermione's isolation in book three, Harry's constant quest for love and affection, Snape's story - I cry. And I always cry as if these things are happening to a friend.

Because, I guess, they are.