Mi vigésima sexta vuelta al Sol

Ok, the time has come to write about happier things (especially since people started to worry too much about my present state of mind due to my last entry hahaha. Sorry about that! but I think it's important to write in all sorts of moods, in order to better understand ourselves).

MA' BUUUUURTHDAAAAY

So I just had another birthday, yay!

End of the post.

                           

Kidding! Anyways: so the day came, finally, after having announced it to the world since the beginning of the month, and we decided to throw a little Mexican-themed party with whatever materials we could find (since it's rather hard to obtain almost anything too specific in this godforsaken little town).

Ok, but firstly I shall refer to the events that lead to the glorious Friday in which we celebrated the humblest of my births (?): on Thursday (the day before) we booked the music room for the night and it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Just a bunch of internationally assorted dudes improvising, singing, and learning each other's favourite songs. There was a PIANO!!! *head explosion* and that made my entire year... it had been ages since I last played any kind of instrument (I miss my dearest Cordelia... my uke), so I had a cathartic plunge into a world of infinite joy for a little while (yes, and joyness as well). After that we went back to the girls' crib and made some tea, talked for an eternity, and then I came to realise I was turning 26 in a matter of minutes, hence we decided to have a little toast! LITTLE. TOAST. NO SUCH THING.

So the Hippie, the Hipster, and the Barbie (as we like to call ourselves whenever the three of us hang out) ended up singing and dancing in the kitchen to a lot Latino dance songs while the rest smoked outside and had a little gathering of their own. They wrote a happy birthday note on my arm with a pink marker (pourquoi pas?). But eventually Jan came inside, took the Gin bottle from my languishing extremities and told everyone to save our energies for the next day. In spite of my ethylic reluctance I finally succumbed to the powers of her imperviously Dutch use of reason. I love her.

The next day...

I woke up, jumped on Jan's bed, got dressed and headed back home to get some stuff. I had a horrible essay to hand in on Monday, so I went to the library to work a little (boo). But then fortunately my lovely Colombian artistic sister appeared out of purely fantastic blue and swept me away for a birthday lunch-break. We went to a lovely little Italian sandwich shop, bought paninis and citric sodas and then headed for St. Mary's Quad. We talked about life, sitting on a bench facing one of the most magnificent trees in town, and it was just perfect.

                                   

After that Jan and Juju and I went to the shops, where we filled our carts with tortillas, veggies, cheese, pop, chips, and TEQUILA. We took a cab home, 'cos we were feeling fancy (nay, we had too much to carry in the end so we were f*cked) and got the stuff ready.

Dinner was MANIC. We decided to throw the party at the other Mundus' girl's apartments a.k.a. the "nicer" ones in Fife Park, just to take advantage of the kitchen/common room space (since most of my friends live in what is known as "the ghetto", but these two enjoy the privilege of residing on the other side of the fake lake, where the grass is greener and more expensive). So a bunch of us got together, and started chopping up stuff according to the laws of chaos. We fractalically made Chinese-production-oven-QUESADILLAS and the Belgian guy managed to make a fair enough guacamole for a side dish, so it was SET.

After having eaten my deliciously improvised (and horrible looking) chilaquiles the door rang and EVERYBODY CAME IN. Yep, at the same time... weirdly so. So we plugged and turned the music machine on, and did what I always force people to do: DANCE UNTIL DEATH.

I took one of the tequila bottles and started giving off "tapitas" (filling the cap with the liquid and pouring it down everybody's mouth, systematically, and in a somewhat authoritarian mode) so minute by minute the mood started to ease intro a fantastic groove of limb swaying and cumbia/salsa dancing.

Calle 13, Bomba Estéreo, La Sonora Dinamita, Juan Luis Guerra, Maelo Ruiz, Fonseca, Rosana, Celia Cruz, Garibaldi, Big Boy... and DUBSTEP?!!!

Hahahaha, one of the Spanish dudes is incredibly keen on listening to (what we imagine to be) dinosaurs with lasers beams attached to their "frickin'" heads, so we always manage to sneakily insert a random tune in the middle of the completely unrelated repertoire just to mess with people's minds. Of course, once the ambiance was dramatically switched to electronic madness we had to, of course, wrestle on the floor and take each other's shoes off and hit the ceiling and then run around the residences going out the window to chase one another shouting curses in Spanish.

Children... right?

Aaaand we got told off by the warden, yes we did, but in the end we played some Lady Gaga tunes in lower decibels and slowly became less and less active until the couch appeared to fancy some love making... and that's when Jan came in and took me to her room, saving the day as she always does.

That was a great night, indeed. And now I'm 26, which isn't an odd number at all, and that makes me happy :)

Reality Check

"We have all sufficient strength to support the pain of others."

-La Rouchefoucauld

(¡Ay, sí! la amiga ya sabe usar epígrafes pa echarle salsa al peritexto).

Nah, but seriously though, that quote has changed my entire view on life, and on the way we should all treat each other. But have we? HAVE WE? It certainly does not seem so at times, but then again, I'm slowly and increasingly learning to push my own limits a little further (since I've given up on being a sports-doer, might as well challenge myself in other aspects). And surprisingly enough, I'm finding out that I am capable of coping with more, and more stuff than before (by changing my attitude towards all that in which I'm investing my efforts). So there is potential flexibility to our psychological-endurance-muscle (in evolutionary terms, that makes all the sense in the world, since we need to adapt to ever-changing contexts). So I reckon if I can work on it, so can anybody else, right? I just need to find a way to start convincing other people to (at least try to) do the same (that's why I had come up with the idea of writing children's books in the first place).

But the thing is we're just too lazy, and that's the main problem. As I see it: we're capable of so many things, but we just choose the easiest way out of the trial, out of the danger zone, ALWAYS. We seek comfort as a life goal, and that's where we're messing it up.

I have had to make some fairly difficult decisions recently in terms of easing up certain frictions/tensions among our group of friends: and I've come close enough to lick the fact that it's really hard to manage escaping the bad in each other, since we're seeing each other DAILY, AND FOREVER. We almost hold hands when hitting the loo, which makes it harder for everyone (not in a literal sense, although that's a funny thing to imagine) to look each other in the face each morning, after having heard everything going about during nighttime inside every single bedroom in the household. The NOISE, or lack thereof, makes culture clash bludgeon your eardrums with an ice pick... *Pueblo Chico: Infierno Grande*

I woke up this morning thinking to myself: "these little details keep piercing the entire universe of my soul". Maybe that's how constellations are born; I had imagined this balloon-like fabric being torn off with a nail (Lucio Fontana-like, peeling off the canvas), and I suddenly realised how I miss being able to think in the way we were showed we could (as a life mode) in art school. That's why I'm writing this, actually, today; I took the book one of my best friends gave me as a farewell present just before starting this new life, opened it up randomly, read, and remembered how much I can relate myself to Susan Sontag; the way she felt about people, about sex, about books, about love, about interpretations, about frustration in life, about gender ambiguity... etc. It all made sense to me: we're never meant to fit in this fucked up little world, it's too artificial and immersed in its own artificiality. Sometimes it's hard to even talk about the most banal of things to a random stranger. I miss that. I miss staring at the ceiling with my best friends and listening to colorfully pungent music while hugging each other and falling asleep tangled up in ourselves; because there's not a thing in the world that can bother us while we're there, basking in our own unfolded, honest, vulnerable, and beautifully imperfect selfness. And it's not about satisfying our carnal impulses in a bit, and anybody can say whatever the hell they want because we understand each other perfectly... We conceive each other as complex beings, and have come to accept that. 

But then again it's because we belong to the same fucking class in the same social stratum, in the same fucking culture, also because we share the same intellectual upbringing, and that brings me down a little (ha).

How can anyone relate to anybody else? I hear about my friends' pains and it pains me as well, but I never feel I truly understand other people, especially when they're being strange... flirtatious, obnoxious, fake.

I suddenly wish everybody could be honest, for a day, not in an uncontrolled way or anything, but that people should be open about how they feel towards each other, sort of by fracturing the Ego (yes, we're studying Freud now), in order to let the Id express itself not necessarily in order to get what it wants, but sort of as a Joyce-like narrative insight into the other person's mind. That would be nice, but it would also take a lot of courage (the kind people aren't always willing to exert). I like telling others exactly what's on my mind, and they think it's because I'm high or too jumpy... that makes me sad, but the day is sad in itself.

We need crappy weekends sometimes, in order to better realise when the leaves turn a little greener, just before 5:30 in the afternoon, against an overcast sky; that's when you get the best light of the day. And the broken flower in the flower pot that's leaning against the window pane inside the kitchen, under that latent gaze of a warier sun, is my favourite of them all.

Life in the Petri Dish

I really should be reading...

The deadliest period of essay writing/handing-in is approaching (Wagner's Valkyries in the background) along with the mighty-roughest of the seasons... so we are bracing ourselves, for winter IS coming, and it's bringing a fat lady who tends to sing and throw shit at a large fan (for kicks, the byotch). 

And being good ol' Jane Snows ourselves, we still know NOTHING! (literally, we-gon'-dieeeee).

We're having a lot of fun, but at times I do miss home... and my bed... and my shower... and my parents... and my dog, but I also miss my other friends from the induction. Sometimes we doze off during class thinking how cool it would have been to have everybody taking the exact same pathway... but then again I'm also enjoying reading other blogs, from other fantastic people, filled with other flamboyant adventures that are happening in a not-so-distant parallel reality. That really gets me smiling.

We've met the second year Mundus students by now, and they're a treat! There's lots of Colombian girls (which is a pleasure indeed, for they're lovely and I can tease them in Spanish!) as well as girls from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Europe and more Europe and Russia, which is Europe but also Asia, and that must be weird for their national psyches.

There's been a little bit of soap opera drama going on (I won't be specific about it, c'mon!), so it would seem that I take it everywhere I go. Sometimes I feel like I'm part of a reality show called "Filthy Flipping Fife Park" where I'm just a wallflower, again, the foreigner (as usual) since I don't officially live/belong there... but almost everyday I grab my tiny foldable bike and head over to either of my mates' humble abodes in order to attend/participate in the cooking of various collective meals (today, for instance, we had curry rice... and some decent steak with greens n' veggies in coconut sauce since two of my mates are grass eaters, and naan bread and cheese bits and hot chamomile tea with honey, and biscuits for dessert). We're easing each other's loads by sharing food, and doing our laundry together... and massaging each other's feet with emphatic dynamism (wtf, I'm sleepy and it's starting to show).

Finding out that you can actually use your own brain and hand power to fix your own bike is AMAZING! I've never felt so self-sufficient in my life! I have to thank my dear friend Jan, who is used to breaking stuff in order to make it work... better/again (depending). She could have been Mexican in another life, I'm telling you.

Guys, by the by, I have an announcement to make: I'm in a brand new relationship... WITH THE LIBRARY (I think we're getting pretty serious, since we're seeing each other 24/7). I haven't read this much since I studied History back in UNAM (hahaha), so I guess I should be potentially getting less dumb than before (unless I keep tripping + hitting my head with every rock in this darned medioeval city). I think we're doing fine in class: we tend to participate a lot and we're sort of working hard (nah, we ARE, fo' sure!). So I guess it's just a matter of writing the good stuff according to the sacred structure of this specific academic institution (GAWD that scares the living shite outta me!). British referencing/citation methods are fascist as! Anyways, first we'll be afraid, we'll be petrified, but in the end we'll survive ;)

Living in such a smallsie teensie-weensie townsie gets you meeting a lot of people all the time. Plus it feels funny to be able to talk to virtually anybody using the lamest of excuses in doing so: last time, I shit you not, I used this exact pickup line "So... is this water?" to what the other cute party-guy replied with a "Yes, and it's fizzy!" K-CHIIIIIIIIIING!!!! Conversation starter or what? Getting lazier by the minute never felt so grand.

As for our social engagement  performance: There have been a couple of parties to which we've gone... involving plastic palm trees, shaving cream, some partial nakedness in the rain, and the forcing our dearest Taiwanese friends to shake their booties to Katy Perry and Rihanna (we struggled heftily, but in the end we endured and CONQUERED!). 

On the academic part of the adventure: I had the most HORRIDLY PATHETIC class presentation the other day (being sleepy and wanting to pee at the same time don't usually work out for me when it comes to mustering the most extreme concentration powers) so I muttered shit words with no sense whatsoever to a class that stared at me with a "are you kidding me?" sort of look. Everybody probably thought I was retarded. But after having a big laugh about it later on I now find that I still have a lot to learn: karma's a bitch, but now I'm humbler... in a way (and I'm drinking coffee now).

But on the good side we're looking at awesome stuff like Che Guevara beyond the cliché, Joyce, Conrad + Coppola mashup creations and analyzing everything with fair enough texts that deal with psychoanalysis, post-modern philosophy and other truly interesting stuff. I'm happy about that, since I'm sort of being able to link the whole of my previous education to this Euro-centric postgraduate system nicely. Right on! So far so good... but let's wait til we get some results first, right?

:) to be continued...