November 20, 2009

Following Eco's Poetics of Cataloguing

I like Jerusalem Artichokes | Sempé's Cartoons | Mendelssohn | Camilleri's Montalbano | Conceptual art | Being read out loud to | Sunny, cold Autumn days | Warm clotted cream rice pudding | to cook | to read | to go on long walks | to be naked in the cold rain after a hot sauna | to drive abroad without a map | Caillebotte | the colosseum in Rome | BBC Radio 3 | Eric Rohmer's movies | Lamb's Conduit | snow | heirloom tomatoes | Freud's Wolfman paintings | Francis Alys | Mariage Frères Tea | the smell of roasted peppers | warm wool socks | head massages | Purcell | Stationery | quakers | pedestrianized bridges | the Prado | moss | ripe persimmons | ligne claire drawings | making quince paste | older people | the japanese garden in Holland Park | Amartya Sen | Turin | old cemeteries

I dislike the monument to Vittorio Emanuel II in Rome | celebrity chefs | almonds | shopping malls | pre-prepared meals | "working lunches" | strong winds | bitter fruit | italian operas | noise | shopping for shoes | having a haircut | yoga | bracelets | boats | long skirts | Berlusconi | strong coffee | the toes in the subjects painted by Botticelli | the smell of disinfectants | pink flowers | squirrels | cemented front yards | gps | Tony Blair | Dogu figurines | women wearing leggings without a skirt on | bull terriers | Barcelona | chocolate with nuts | Wedgwood's Jasper White on Pale Blue Porcelain | Live chickens | People speaking on bluetooth headsets | old plays adapted to a contemporary setting | guitar jazz other than gypsy swing | Rothko paintings hanging in brightly lit rooms | putting the liner bag inside the garbage bin | celtic music | when there's wet cardboard on the sidewalk | Schoenberg

***

Asked R. for help with the dislike list. He said "that's easy, you're always ranting about something" and then proceeded to remind me of my pet hates.

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November 09, 2009

Historically induced awe

A feeling of awe: attending a book launch among a small audience that included 92 year old Eric Hobsbawm. It's like having the whole 20th century sitting there with you.

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November 04, 2009

Domestic silly scenes

C: What are you thinking about?
R: Nothing at all.
C: But that's amazing!
R: Huh?
C: There are people who spend decades in buddhist convents trying to achieve that.

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October 28, 2009

I've been having weird, weird, weird dreams. "Aren't they all?", you'd say. I know, I know. But mine are usually very frivolous and I wake up annoyed at myself for losing REM time with things such as Carla Bruni turning out to be Juliette Binoche wearing a wig. Yet, lately, I've been having dreams that sound like Umberto Eco plots. The best of them all was one where I was sitting in a dusty library reading manuscripts and I had made a fantastic discovery regarding John Chrysostom and cartography. Whatever the discovery was, it was so exciting that I woke up, convinced it was real and that I should get up and write it down. I didn't, so I have no idea what it was.

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October 22, 2009

Fall out

The letter was suprisingly rather informal and asked her why hadn't she responded to the previous ones. It finally said "Take a look at the last New Yorker you received. How would you live without it?"

"Just fine", she said while she unfolded the Times Literary Supplement which was also in the mailbox.

(and to compensate for the lack of the odd Sempé cover, I'll buy a couple of the Phaidon albums)

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The education of an american

Walking by the British Library, I point at a poster with a Marie Curie quotation: "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood."

C: That's a good one.
R: Didn't she die of radiation poisoning?

To think I am supposedly the cynical european in this couple.

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October 14, 2009

Catching up

I've been so neglectful of this blog and I blame Twitter and Facebook. And my laziness. It's so much easier to write a sentence and click enter. And then one fine day I'm trying to remember the name of an author or of a book that I've read, I google my own blog to find it and realize why I do this after all. It is public which means that at least I have to write complete sentences rather than jotting down some notes but, in the end, it's my own diary without the naughty bits.

******

I've been thinking that this obsession with cooking and chefs has to be related with that endangered species: the housewife. There was a time you'd learn how to cook with your grandmother or great aunt; they'd teach you the little tricks for the perfect steamed rice or how to skin a garlic clove in 1/2 a second. And they probably didn't even attend school. Now, you trust that some man (in most cases) knows all about that arcane science of cooking. It's a bit like all those books about child rearing. Everybody has been doing it for ages and humanity isn't, on average, getting any cleverer or less screwed up. So it is with cooking. There's no mystery.

*****

Just as the Queen does, I moved my birthday to the following Saturday because of a sore throat acquired while visiting the fatherland. Yet, I couldn't miss going to the LRB's 30th anniversary party/book sale that coincided with my own birthday. Got meself the new Max Weber biography.

*****

Also at the LRB, I attended a talk by John Bainville and John Gray about Simenon. It was entertaining in the way that listening in on a conversation by literate people around a table is but they couldn't claim to be experts in any case. The highlight of the evening was when during Q&A a Drunken-Zizek-on-a-bad-personal-hygiene-day-lookalike asked if Simenon wore a mustache or a beard because if he had slept with 3000 women he HAD to sport a beard since that's what women prefer. A reminder: Zizek has a beard and so did his lookalike.

*****

We went on a adventure of epic proportions to Paris. Which means a family trip involving 3 people over 60 and a 59 year old. They all behaved really well, got along well and were very un-fussy and would have been happy to have been fed sweet crêpes all day.

Mom in a Toulouse-Lautrec background at the Musée d'Orsay

*****

I need to get a book on Caillebotte. I don't think I was aware of the existence of this painting at the Orsay and, on entering the gallery, I was attracted to it as if it were a claudia-magnet.

*****

I finally read "The Maltese Falcon". I was shocked: Spade is described as having pale brown hair. Hammett didn't have the prescience to imagine that Bogey would be the perfect Spade. All tough guys are dark skinned and dark haired. Everybody knows that.

*****

Sociologist David Riesman's 50's book "The Lonely Crowd" summarized in one sentence: "Most people don't know what they want from life until their neighbor gets it".

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April 04, 2009

Baroque exhibition at the V&A

R: It says here the word "baroque" might come from the portuguese "barroca" which was used to refer to these misshapen pearls. So, your family name means misshapen pearls! That's you, a misshapen pearl!
C: Thanks a lot!
R: Well, you're precious but a little bit weird.
C: .... actually, I like that.

******

R: So this exhibition is about the history of cheesiness?

******

R: Hmmmm. How can you tell the difference between bad baroque art and good baroque art?

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March 13, 2009

I "inherited" a box of diaries which belonged to my grandfather. In fact I seem to be the official family archive - my uncle and aunt saying "you keep that, you're the one who always cared about trinkets and mementos" while we cleared my grandmother's place after she died and as a I salvaged valueless chinese cups and saucers, my grandparent's wedding night linens, boxes of old eyeglasses, newspaper clippings.

The diaries run from the late 30's - when he came home after being stationed in Macao - to the early 70's after he moved from the south of Portugal to Lisbon with all the family. They're impressive and scary. My grandfather obsessively noted down on each day the time he started working, times spent having lunch and at what time he stopped working. This was Portugal in the 40's and 50's, under a petty dictator that glorified poverty, and he was working from 4 am to 10 pm almost every day. On the good days he wouldn't start until 8am and he'd be home by 7pm. He was a truck driver, delivering groceries all over the country and sometimes in Spain. I remember my grandmother feeling aggrieved that he never got any overtime payed. When the revolution came and, with it, rights for workers, I think she secretly kept the illusion that if there was any justice in the world they would be able to receive what they were, at least morally, owed. I think that's why she held to this absurd registry of punch ins and outs. That day obviously never came but knowing that the situation wouldn't be that bad ever again was at least comforting.

Reading those timekeeping records really breaks my heart. For a number of reasons but foremost because I know his children loved him dearly and were thus deprived of his company. But by the end of the sixties, when he moved to Lisbon and became a private driver, his schedule was more relaxed and he started noting down mainly what he had had for lunch that day. Occasionally the stress went up and he'd note down times and addresses where he would pick up his employer, a well known lawyer.

It fascinates me how much I can read into these simple annotations, apparently giving no clue to his private thoughts.

By the time he retired, he still kept diaries. But there were no more working hours, no obligations. So he started copying meanings of words from the dictionary (an orange thick volume of which I am also the keeper still). I guess he was a pioneer of the concept of "word of the day". Eventually he moved to notebooks since his schedule-free life didn't ask for any more diaries. I also keep finding, to this day, random pieces of paper torn down from newspapers with scribbled word meanings on them inside the dictionary and inside other books. He became a compulsive Dictionary-phile.

There is one diary, however, from 1959, in which he noted down a quotation which to this day I'm not sure what was the intended meaning of. It's something in the lines of "Even if God didn't exist, religion would go on being holy and divine. God is the only creature that doesn't need to exist to rule." I never understood if this was an atheist's lament or a misguided religious excuse*. And I certainly don't know what grandfather thought of it other that he found it remarkable enough to jot it down. I wonder if he was wondering about God's existence as he drove a truck heavy with bags of refined sugar through the night?

*So, I did the obvious just now. I googled it. It's from Baudelaire's Journal Intime.

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February 25, 2009

Lent

Sunday, Hopper

Today is the beginning of Lent. I'm giving up idly surfing the Internet and reading the news online for 40 days. I'll use the internet only when I need to communicate - and blogging is communicating - or for limited and necessary searches without getting caught on the vice of mindless site hopping which is the equivalent of channel zapping.

This is the best I could come up with. I can't think of any other things I indulge myself with to give up. I don't like sweets and I hardly ever eat dessert. The rest of the food I can't really afford to not eat or I'll slowly disappear. I don't watch TV. I don't eat snacks. I don't drink coffee. I don't smoke. Sex is non negotiable. I already avoid buying things I don't need as a principle so that wouldn't be much of a plan. Obviously there are things I love doing but to me the spirit of the thing is to abstain from activities or items without any real added value; I don't see it as much as sacrifice but as a way towards simplicity. Simplicity can also mean giving up things that are relatively useful but which aren't worth the time spent acquiring. I won't stop reading books, for example.

It's a shame I'm a non believer, I'm a sucker for arbitrary religious discipline. I even have my own version of the Sabbath which I must say I haven't been a good observant of: I try not to work, use machines or make noises on Sundays. I don't know, it just makes sense to me.

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February 19, 2009

Frabjous day

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January 02, 2009

Letting out excess bile or when Claudia rambles about stuff that has been annoying her for no particular reason

There's nothing like starting the year by completely breaking my only new year's resolution. A life of contradiction and of opinionated gibberish is so much more fun.

*****

It's too late - and the 2008 Turner prize is as relevant by now as the work of most people who have won it in past years - but once in a while the interview the winner gave to radio 4 pops in my mind. I can't find it but it was even more entertaining than this stunthere. It involved something about how he uses the Simpsons to give meaning to the experience of contemporary life. Had he used Futurama and I might actually have cared. Not.

Also, about his favorite films: "I’m a big fan of the director James Cameron and I think Titanic (1997) is an incredible film – a big film about big ideas".

An excerpt of an essay by Orwell comes to mind:

"Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. (...)

But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the PRIVATENESS of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official—the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’."

*****

Funny how the same people who get all worked up and rave about how greed caused the recession are the same ones who seem to only find time to speak about finance. So much for a shift in values.

Nonetheless, I've come across a number of sites and post-bubble gurus prattling about frugality and living with less. My favorite is one that has a title in the lines of "Simplicity: how to become rich slowly" (paraphrasing here, there's no way I'm going to link to that; heck, there's no way I'm even going to google for it).

*****

I remembered recently a story by a brazilian writer who was staying in some remote village where there was no TV. He found reading the newspapers strangely relaxing since he stopped being manipulated by the lineup of the TV news, the anchor's histrionics, the skewed and useless people in the street point of views. Then there was some sort of storm and they didn't get the papers for a few weeks. Suddenly there were no news and he realized how the events he used to worry about didn't really have any practical effect on his life.

Considering how bad the media in general has become (I have to exclude at least El Pais from this generalization), the alternative to being news-less is the RSS reader. Every piece of news (discounting headline sensationalist phrasing, that is) has the same importance, the same typeface, the same colors, the same font size. You're your own editor.

*****

Random aesthetic pet hate: I find blue jasper Wedgwood-style porcelain repulsive.

*****

(from the epicurious blog)

So, instead of following and critically analyzing recommendations by people who devoted their lives to studying a subject and to reviewing the most items related to their field of expertise they are able to, we should rely on the opinions of random people on the internet and follow the majority ruling? Hmmmm. Someone is confusing entertainment with learning.

*****

Paul McCartney should just give up. He's on a crusade to prove he's cooler than a dead man.

"In an interview with the intellectual journal Prospect, Sir Paul said that he persuaded Lennon to oppose the war in Vietnam."

"John's Revolution 9 is very far out. It came out of a lot of experimentation I'd been doing with two Brenell tape recorders at home. My greatest regret is that I've lost them all now. I'd take them round to friends' houses. John Dunbar [artist ex-husband of Marianne Faithfull] used to plug this little Philips tape recorder into his system and we'd play my avant garde experiments. Someone might have my loop symphonies in a box of tapes somewhere. Can I have them back please?"

In the post Beatles era, Lennon gave us "Imagine" and McCartney "Mull Of Kintyre". Oh God, and "Ebony & Ivory". Paul McCartney is a Knight of the British Empire and John Lennon returned his own MBE. In 1976, Time magazine was saying Paul was a sort of conservative Republican. John was providing funding for anti-war protests while under CIA surveillance. Enough said.

*****

Phew.

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October 24, 2008

No fair.

She just went as she always said she would, paraphrasing a portuguese comedian: "One day, I'll wake up dead."

"To me the thought of my dead friend is sweet and appealing. For I have had them as if I should one day lose them; I have lost them as if I have them still." - Seneca, Epistles, On grief for lost friends

(us heathens have to find consolation in philosophy since that stuff about heaven doesn't stick.)

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October 19, 2008

Of late

Piemonte. Gastronomer's paradise. Wondering why would walking on Via Po where Nietzsche went definitely mad by hugging a horse in public would give me such a thrill.

Also, who would have guessed that only a few months after seeing the marvelous Vittorio Sella's pioneering mountaineering photos and learning about the Duke of the Abruzzi at the Estorick Collection, I would be visiting the Torino Section of the Clube Alpino Italiano?

*****

At the Tate Modern:

The Turbine Hall thing is boring and predictable. The books left on the bunkbeds are War of the Worlds, Hiroshima mon amour and the like. If it was supposed to have a post-apolcalyptical feel, someone whould have considered not painting the beds in bright colors.

The Rothko exhibition was unnecessary. The Tate already had the Seagram murals in a dimly lit room which was practically deserted on Friday nights when the galleries close at 10pm. It was just perfect for any aspirer to religious ecstasy through contemplation of color. Now I'm dreading that it won't be there anymore after this.

Cildo Meireles is amazing. A brazilian conceptual artist that completely blew my mind.

"You recently paid tribute to Manzoni at Herning Park in Denmark by standing upside down on his Socle du Monde plinth. Like so many of your works, the title you gave the tribute – Atlas – is wonderfully ironic, inasmuch as you invert the mythological character’s performance."

*****

Las Vegas wasn't the explosion of kitsch I hoped for or, at least, my expectations were too high. However, driving back to San Diego we found the cutest american tourist trap: a wild west ghost town complete with saloon, sheriff's office and silver mine.

*****

Oh. Oh. Oh. The Wire. Magnificent. I find myself mentally going over the episodes and marveling at the social commentary embedded in it.

Stringer Bell being my favorite character...gangster and macroeconomics nerd.

*****

Found Thomas Dutronc, a fellow Djangophile.

Also, his is the 5th version of September Song on my iTunes now. I love September Song.

*****

Standing on a red light on Market Street, a San Francisco homeless woman joined me and R. on a futile lover's quarrel. We ignored her as you do in a city full of homeless people who unfortunately seem in their most part deranged. She listened attentively to the arguments on either side and, as the light turned green and we were about to set out, she said "I wish I had your problems". End of discussion. And I suspect that just the memory of it will be a stopper to any idiotic quarrel to come.

*****

Amazon's recommendations on drugs.

Obviously wanting to buy a foilcutter means I drink wine which means I have a toddler. And buying Pushkin's biography makes me the owner of an HP printer.

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February 19, 2008

Gibraltar Airport Runway

Finally made the plane into Paris,
Honey mooning down by the Seine.
Peter Brown called to say,
"You can make it O.K.,
You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain".
--The ballad of John and Yoko

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December 20, 2007

Despite the flu and the rain, today is a very happy day and I just wanted to convert a blog post into a milestone. For personal future reference.

Chagall

2007 has been great. 2008 will be even better.

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October 02, 2007

I am obviously a cat person

So first, your memory I'll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

Now Dogs pretend they like to fight;
They often bark, more seldom bite;
But yet a Dog is, on the whole,
What you would call a simple soul.
Of course I'm not including Pekes,
And such fantastic canine freaks.
The usual Dog about the Town
Is much inclined to play the clown,
And far from showing too much pride
Is frequently undignified.
He's very easily taken in -
Just chuck him underneath the chin
Or slap his back or shake his paw,
And he will gambol and guffaw.
He's such an easy-going lout,
He'll answer any hail or shout.

Again I must remind you that
A Dog's a Dog - A CAT'S A CAT.

T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

****

Much to Neska's credit, she does have some cat like traits which make our co-habitation bearable. By the way, why should anyone name that butch, oversized dog "Neska" - "girl" in basque - is a mystery to me. Even more puzzling is why the two other people in this house insist on calling the Great Pyrenees-white-fluff-ball-monster "poochie".

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June 20, 2007

London

I moved to London temporarily where I'll be busy busy busy drowning in paintings, sculptures and written assignments.

The view:

*****

Made it to the White Cube gallery today and saw "For the love of God", the latest Damien Hirst. I loved his work when I first got to know it but by now it just seems too much mainstream/marketing stunt to me. He's no longer an enfant terrible but he insists on being outrageous. And however I try to cooly dismiss him, he keeps surprising me. Yes, it's just a skull covered in diamonds, big deal...but the fact is that it's really exciting. A group of people is let in a dark room where you can't see anything but the skull in a glass case, cleverly lit. We were allowed 2 minutes inside and we were advised to circle it. It was like a religious ceremony, 8 adults walking around a skull that shined with all the colors of the rainbow, like a tribe performing a ritual dance around a totem pole. Everyone was gaping for is a truly beautiful, strangely seductive piece. And the whole dark mystery setup just adds glamour to the bloody thing. Argh, 4 days I've been here, mostly surrounded by Americans, and still I have used the expressions "Bloody hell", "That's rubbish" and "Loo" way too many times.

(also saw Richard Hamilton himself at another gallery, an old man wearing a long white beard and levi's jeans chatting with an employee)

*****

So much to blog about, so little time.

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June 07, 2007

Excitement Adventure Romance...

Picasso, La Joie de Vivre

*+*+*+*

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,

pray that the road is long,

full of adventure, full of knowledge.

--Cavafy

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May 22, 2007

I wanted to write about...

...the centennial of Hergé and how despite being a Tintinophile I am also a contrarian. Hergé used to say that there was no place for sex or women in Tintin's male friendship world. So I started a post on Tintin porn parodies only to realize this site has a fantastic compilation of bootleg Tintin albums from the 80's and Arte channel aired a great documentary called "La vie sexuelle de Tintin". I also found a couple of bloggers or website owners who got sued (and condemned) for promoting "illegal" Tintin album versions. Which made me want to blog about copyright, civil liberties, the moustache on Mona Lisa, the power of dead people's wishes over the creativity of the living and trash Belgian law but I'm too lazy.

(Roy Lichtenstein is allowed to throw a Matisse painting on Tintin's living room)

...Elias Canetti's Auto da Fé and how if were this book edible it would leave a bitter-sweet taste on my mouth. It's a wonderful bizarre and funny novel, a chimera born of crossing Lynch with Ionesco with a german twist. Alas, the version I own seems like someone pasted the results of Babel Fish "German to English" translation into it (my book says the translation was supervised by the author). Here I am holding what could be one of my favorite novels of all times, wondering if this will be the final trigger to upgrade my current tourist babble german language level. Which made me want to blog yet again about the difficulties of translation, the wonder of learning a new language, post an hilarious excerpt of the novel when the main character tries to convince his books to go to war and faces the opposition of buddhist texts and of Schopenhauer who suddenly found the will to live, quote Walter Benjamin, add an excerpt of Saramago's Baltasar & Blimunda and show you how crappy the english translation is but I'm too lazy.

...Gilbert & George's downloadable art and how the open source paradigm should invade every corner of knowledge, cadavres exquis, the recent trends on how art can be an effective political and social integration tool, how weird that most art reviews I read are favorable and hardly ever anyone dares to say that - although Gombrich says there is no such thing as a bad work of art - that red canvas with a bit of newspaper glued to it brings nothing new and is a lame attempt at originality, the New Yorker article on Banksy and how even the most wannabe rebels give in to money and vanity despite maintaining their anonymity, the Hopper exhibition at the MFA in Boston, the underrated value of art in the developing world and Maslow's hierarchy of needs but I'm too lazy.

...my plans for the second semester of 2007, Cavafy's poems, Socrates' "know thyself", healthy doubts, status quo, Ecclesiastes, Ovid on fishing, missing oneself, the Bloomsbury group, low cost airlines, auction houses, journalism, aging, optimism, adventure, excitement and romance but that would be too personal.

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April 28, 2007

It's official...

....I am now a Mac person.

(wallpaper wallpaper by ~zygat3r)

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February 22, 2007

Random belated posts

It's been a while.

******

I wanted to write something clever about a Milan Kundera article that was published on the New Yorker but I'm feeling sick. I derived much pleasure from it and had R. reading it out loud from the book "The Curtain" where it's originally from. Very apt too, since it speaks of the provincialism of both small and large nations.

******

Hated Scorcese's "The Departed". No one who has seen the fantastic Hong Kong "Infernal Affairs" trilogy - of which the Scorcese movie is a remake - can think this silly movie deserves an Oscar. I was deeply irritated by the use of foul language that seemed completely out of context. It seemed like a teenager wrote the script. Argh.

The only fun thing was seeing one of the characters sitting at Boston Commons looking up at the golden State House dome and a few hours later I was getting out at Park Street Station and having exactly the same sight. And also from a corner of the hotel room :)

******

Saw "The Lives of Others". So brilliant. One of the best movies I've seen in years. Made me prompt my parents to go look for their secret police files at the National Archives. If this one doesn't win the Oscar for best foreign movie, the little respect I have for that Hollywood event will never even have a tiny chance of being restored.

*******

Saw "Little Children". The ending can be frustrating in two ways. The characters don't break up with the status quo and do not pursue their passions nor there is the edifying ending which would be something along the way of finding that it's not their lives that are wrong but themselves, hence the solution would not be trading a partner for another but finding out how to be happy regardless of relationships. That's why I said to Rui that I hadn't learned anything from it since I don't see how the problem posed has been solved. He seems to think otherwise.

The only fun part was when Kate Winslett appears naked and automatically me and Monica look at each other and whisper simultaneoulsy "She's got stretch marks on her thighs!". And we both sighed at that strange frivolous consolation.

*******

Read "The Accidental Masterpiece", got Siri Hutsvedt's "Mysteries of the Rectangle" and Julien Levy's Diary at the excellent Museum of Fine Arts bookshop in Boston. The Museum in itself is chaotic. I couldn't follow a logical path to the exhibition rooms and found hilarious that they should hang a Tagore portrait in the India section, amidst the hindu gods statues, for no apparent reason other than he was from India.

******

And since it's been a long time I've insulted anyone through stereotyping (at least online), I can say that in Boston:
- people smoke a lot more than in any other place i've visited in the US
- everything, from a school, to a park, to a subway station, to a pebble in the street seems to be "the first in America"
- too many bricks.

Had a great time at L'Espalier but also at Ten Tables. Yum. No Boston baked beans, though.

It was freezing.

Had a fun sentimental tour of Harvard Campus and Adams House.

Enjoyed Piotr's Smurf Explosion and Lisa's Jesus Line up. And also the cheese fondue, reminiscent of Astérix in Switzerland childhood reading days.

********

Fascinated by cultural differences. The same game show - with a few modified rules - is on TV in the US and in Portugal at the same time. The portuguese version relies on the presenter's jokes and anedoctes to keep it alive otherwise the public is so passive that it could be a popular cure for insomnia. In the US version everyone seems to be on cocaine. Or speeds. Or something - I'm not very savvy when it comes to recreational drugs, I'm afraid. Also, the difficulty level of the questions is....very different.

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November 16, 2006

Ding a ling a ling

Going over half of the world to:

- kill many saudades (a literal translation; give me a break, I'm portuguese);
- revisit a place where I've spent my early childhood dreams.
- attend a wedding - the main excuse.

I'd say it's mainly an anthropological expedition.

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October 07, 2006

Birthday Girl

By the time this pre-scheduled entry is posted automatically, I'll have been away for some days and will be enjoying my 31st birthday in the middle of quiet Alentejo, reading the pile of books that my ongoing amazon shopping spree has provided and cherishing the gifts that have been sent from the other side of the Atlantic, a heartwarming array of pleasures (including a compass from a very special pirate shop). Oh, and I probably will have gained a few pounds from all the pancake eating!

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September 19, 2006

My grandmother moved and I realized that I am not as attached to the home where I spent so much of my childhood as I am to worthless, random objects with which I used to play. Old eyeglasses of every shape; a 60's record player and a ventriloquist's 45 rpm in which he engages on a dialogue with Donald Duck (how silly is it to listen to a puppet on a record?); old necklaces, some made of coffee beans and plastic beads; colourful buttons which I used to pick up on the streets (what happened? are clothes more resistant today and no one loses buttons anymore?); my grandfather's diaries and notebooks where he obsessively scribbled words and their definitions.

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June 26, 2006

Childhood Nostalgia

Tough times, the late 70's and early 80's in Portugal. But my parents have always spoiled me. Still do.

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Never understood this Barbie thing. My Sindy Ballerina was the cutest.

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The Fonz action figure with moving thumbs. Can't believe I thought Henry Winkler was a hunk. And I loved watching Happy Days. What was I thinking?? (it could be worse, I could find Richie Cunningham cute - but I didn't)

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I could spend hours making Mickey catch the rolling eggs. A bit numbing though.

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Great success with friends and family. An italian cult object, a Mupi Super 8 projector. I had Disney tapes. Fun!

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And my ZX Spectrum, of course. But I've written a whole post about it. I miss my Spectrum so much. I miss BASIC. 16Kb were more than enough. So odd.

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June 19, 2006

Post-it Portraits

Leftovers.

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Sam the Eagle: Will you stop this foolishness?
The Great Gonzo: What foolishness would you like to see?

I rest my case.

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jaquinzinhos.wine.oliveoil.mario.thieves.lightning.dinheirobrasileirofoleiro.moules.festa.
alfama.moon.caipiroska.silly.hot.handcuffs.tower.scream.sun.thunder.
miguelestevescardoso.charisma.reading.friends.physalis.sardines.football.muppets.
PORTUGAAAAAAL!!!!!!

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Live blogging :-)

1. Clouds
2. Thunder
3. Lightning

The light from the sky flickered across your body as you stood naked by the window.

4. Dawn

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*dramatic music* ... "The Tower"

+*+*+*+*+*+

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June 18, 2006

Summer Interior, Edward Hopper

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June 07, 2006

Sometimes memories come up unexpectedly, triggered by this Lisboa heat that glues to the skin, softens the movements and turns the act of remembering into a whole body experience. A remembrance of summers past, of joyful hours with friends or little pleasures. Portraits, glimpses of moments.

Prosciutto and cantaloupe melon at Sant'Andrea in Amalfi. A hot August in which each dinner was crowned by an intoxicating shot of limoncello. Andrea Pansa's delizia de limone pastries in a cove by the warm, green Mediterranean sea.

Escargots and red wine out in the terrace of Café Serpente after an evening concert in the cathedral. Feeling a child again, laughing and learning a mysterious foreign language. A labyrinth. A moleskine.

Mushroom and goat cheese tapas in La Latina. Too much Ribera del Duero and a long walk under a full moon, from Puerta de Toledo to Puerta de Atocha. I may have talked about going to Africa and saving the children.

Sitting in a clawfoot tub, dipped in hot sulfurous water. Raining outside, the cold air in the cheeks and the creek running wild, pretending to be bigger than it is. Pancakes and maple syrup. Naked bodies.

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May 08, 2006

It feels as if one has stepped onto the right train. That is, even if you don't know the ultimate destination, it still has this overwhelming feeling of beautiful inevitability.

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January 19, 2006

One of these days I'm going to write a story about a character from a book, a character in a novel mentioned in that same book and a dead abstract expressionist painter.

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January 12, 2006

Personal, Randomly

How ridiculous is it that I spent years of my life wearing a school uniform that included a tartan patterned skirt that actually looked more like a kilt? (in Portugal!!!)

I found out that it's called the Royal Stewart over at House of Tartan.

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The building's tenants annual meeting. Big discussion on how much should they pay for an extra fund for maintenance emergencies. After 15 minutes of arguing to decide between a 20 or 25 Euro monthly payment:

My father: "I think each of us should pay 75 Euros."
Everyone: "What?? No! 25 euros and that's that".

He has a special gift to put an end to silly discussions by making up even more silly arguments. He's the only person I know who is happy to open the door to Jehovah's Witnesses just to come up with the silliest theories about religion and afterlife only to try their patience. Or that has surrealistic conversations with dodgy people who call to make him go to some hotel for a cocktail and sell him time-share holidays. I think he may have led some of them to suicide.

"Congratulations! you just won a mystery prize Mr. Dias! You have 3 hours to come and collect it at Hotel X."
"Prize? I don't recall entering any kind of contest."
"No, you were picked up randomly by our services to win this prize! How lucky you are!"
"Oh, ok. Do you have my address? Mail it, I'll pay for the delivery."
"No, no, you have to pick it up yourself!"
"Oh really? Ok. So give me the authorization number for this contest."
"What?"
"Please....you must know that every contest must be authorized by the city's civil authority?"
".....but you've won a prize....I don't have that kind of information, I'm just letting you know you won! Aren't you coming to collect the prize at Hotel X?"
"Well. If it's an illegal contest I may be considered your accomplice. And this may be just a scam to get me somewhere and kidnap me, so I'd like to check."
"....No, no, no, it's all perfectly legal! You are throwing away the opportunity to win this extraordinary prize?!?!"
"What prize?"
"The mystery prize!"
"What is it?"
(puzzled pause)
"You'll have to pick it up yourself at Hotel X, it's a surprise"
"Hmm. I'm not sure. Is it tax free?"
"What?!?!"
"You know, if I win something I should declare it to the IRS. Is it a tax free prize or will I have to declare it?"
"I don't have that information either! COME AND COLLECT YOUR PRIZE!"
"You sell time-share holidays don't you?"
"YES!!!! I'M SORRY BUT I REALLY NEEDED THIS JOB!!!..." - hangs up.
Dad with a victorious smile.

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January 08, 2006

Let's get Physic-al

I'm reading Lawrence M. Krauss' "Hiding in the Mirror - The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String theory and Beyond".

What's interesting about this book is the way the author links the developments in physics to art & literature. The quest - even if unintentional - for extra dimensions brings together Einstein, Bohr, Kaluza, Dirac and Picasso, Wells, Faulkner, Duchamp, Lewis Carroll.

Like in many other things in my life, I'm not that interested in the practical side of physics. I'm interested in the concepts and how they interact with or inspired other fields of study. Pure intellectual masturbation.

And also, Krass has a sense of humour (he was born in NY but grew up in Canada):

"Quantum mechanics is, as I like to say, just like the White House: As long as no one can measure what's going on, anything goes!"

"In cooking, the proof is in the tasting. In physics, it is in the testing."

"As any European high school student could tell you, the sum of the angles inside this triangle is 180º."

Although it's an easy read, I realized how much I need to brush up some basic physics concepts and my geometry.

I've always felt like physics was a low priority subject for me. Somehow, I must have had this mystical notion of nature and had no interest in understanding how the world works, risking stopping being marveled at things with a child-like innocence. And physics concepts were not as intuitive to me as other more abstract ones. I can understand the maths behind it but to say that I fully apprehend the meaning of it in practical terms takes me a lot of work.

So, it'll be like going back to school, only this time I have a purpose and no examinations. Which will be much more fun.

Not to mention being motivated by my private interest in space & time.

++++++

One example of these literature/science links I had run into before:

-"Are you saying I'm superficial?"
-"No...what others call profundity is only a tesseract, a four-dimensional cube."
in Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Although I know now what a tesseract is - especially after being enlightened by Banubula's post on Hinton's cubes and after checking an applet featuring a tesseract visualizer sent by István - I still have no idea what Eco meant.

Salman Rushdie mocked this same excerpt on "Imaginary Homelands" as intellectual pretentiousness/gibberish.

I kinda like it. I'm having fun coming up with alternative interpretations.

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December 21, 2005

Oh no, it's Christmas again!

Drowning in work, worries, Christmas lunches and dinners. A situation which is only worsened by the attribulations of gift finding.

Paralyzed by the cold weather.

Will find a way to inflict pain on myself for being so impatient and not waiting in lines to have someone wrap up my presents at the store. Hoping stapled plastic bags will be the new chic.

This blog will be completely neglected during the holidays which I will be spending far, far away.

Looking forward to some Christmas Tamales :-)

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" I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it." -- Steven Wright

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December 17, 2005

The Odyssey from Stick Figures to Male Torsos

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I am indeed a theory lover. I'm probably the only one at drawing classes to prefer the times when the teacher talks to the times we have to draw.

This is a very weird drawing course. The teacher is a very grumpy man, even rude, who takes his art very seriously. Which can sometimes be hilarious.

We were told to forget everything we knew about drawing (which in my case wasn't much) and start looking at the world with new eyes. We slowly integrate degrees of complexity into our sketches. Right now we've passed movement drawing (a doodle of the motion of the model) and we're starting volume. Anytime anyone complains about his own sketch as "It's completely out of proportion", the teacher says: "Good, we haven't covered proportions yet."

Oh. And there's a nude model on every class.

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I arrived really late. I had no idea what the exercise was and tried to sneak a peak at the next colleague's sketch without any success. I started playing with my crayon, praying the exercise would soon be over. The teacher comes behind me:
Teacher: [blah, blah, blah, shouldn't have arrived late, no method whatsoever, we're doing volume drawing] "That drawing is ruined, you won't be able to make it transmit volume even if you crawl on your knees to Fatima * ".
Claudia:" It's OK, I'm not a believer so that wouldn't even be an option."

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After being criticized yet again by something I did on a drawing, I promised to mend it. Of course I didn't, I am lazy and was hoping the teacher wouldn't pass by me again. He did.
Teacher(sarcastically): "So, I guess you're happy?" [with the drawing]
Claudia:" I'm not particularly happy today, but I suppose you weren't asking about my private life?"

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We were told to look at the model, who is changing positions continuously; a beautiful, improvised choreography. Only when the urge to draw comes should we start. There was a day that it just wouldn't come to me so I just sat there, waiting for the "click". It was a male nude model.

My friend AP sitting next to a colleague who was asking him why I wasn't drawing: "She only comes here to see naked men live."

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Teacher: "Some people come to me to share what their purpose is on taking this course. Some say that they're here as a past time. I tell those people that even if you don't come here, time will pass anyway. We're here to learn how to draw!"

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One of the male models is sitting naked on a stool, head and torso slightly to the right, left hand on his knee, his legs open in my direction. I suddenly think how much fun these boring classes would be if he got a bit excited.

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Chubby women are much easier to draw.

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Everyone wants to finish their drawings. Sometimes students complain that there's not enough time to complete an exercise. That's when the teacher started accusing western civilization and how we only get to see the finished products and how everything that is incomplete is not worthy. And then he started showing slides of incomplete drawings/studies by Rembrandt.

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*Fatima: Portuguese catholic shrine where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to 3 children. It's a popular pilgrimage destination and believers who ask for miracles and are granted them usually crawl on their knees around the shrine.

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December 10, 2005

Winter Sun

One of my greatest winter time pleasures is to sit in a bench in a sunny spot in a park, a new book in my hand. The promise of a quiet time, all to myself, the anticipating of the opening of the front cover and reading the first lines. You can easily judge a book by its opening lines. Some of them stick to your memory even though you can't remember anything else. They are the author's chance of making a good, lasting first impression.

Now that I am physically separated from my books, it seems I appreciate every new acquisition even more. It's like starting all over again, the excitement of building a new private library. It started out as an interesting - yet painful - exercise: having to leave your books behind and considering you can bring a dozen or so with you, which ones would you choose? My grandfather's dictionary; the Quartet, the Sheltering Sky; Gordon; Shakespeare; Palomar; Ficciones; some Kundera; some philosophy books. I get jealous of my books. P has been lending some to his new housemaid's daughter. Apparently she likes to read, they're poor and she got very excited when she entered the study, covered by books from wall to wall. I have mixed feelings about this borrowing.

I hadn't been to the Gulbenkian gardens for a while. I felt like a lizard desperately looking for a nice, smooth rock where to rest and warm up. But the winter sun was playing a trick on me. Hanging low in the sky, it completely shattered the picture I had imagined of a splendorous sunny garden. Only two months ago, I sat in the open air amphitheater, savouring a Gonçalo M. Tavares. Instead, I had to find my way through the maze of paths to find a decent spot. I didn't feel like sitting on the grass and all the benches were covered in the shade. My only option was to sit on the concrete pedestal of a modern statue which turned out to be quite comfortable. Is it just me or concrete is much warmer than stone?

I open the book, it looked promising:

"I was looking for a quiet place to die."

A woman comes and sits on the same pedestal on my left. I was thinking that the garden was big enough for her to find another place but I quickly returned to my reading. She starts smoking. I don't smoke. I don't like that people smoke next to me, especially on a public park and when the wind isn't blowing. In a such a situation and depending on my mood I either ask politely for the person to have her smoke somewhere else or I move away. It felt warm, I didn't want to move. I didn't say anything either. I remembered being told that sometimes what we call superstition is just sense of aesthetics or balance about how the world should work. First, I had to fight to find a sunny spot and now this. Maybe my reading just didn't fit the aesthetics of the situation. She finally finished her cigarette while I delved on my thoughts. Got back to the book.

"Like him, I had majored in English at College, with secret ambitions to go on studying literature or perhaps take a stab in journalism, but I hadn't had the courage to pursue either one. Life got in the way - two years in the army, work, marriage, family responsibilities, the need to earn more and more money, all the muck that bogs us when we don't have the balls to stand up to ourselves."

A man with a crooked back that had been walking back and forth on the pathway just in front of me suddenly stops. He too is enjoying the warmth of the winter sun. I could appreciate this scene if it wasn't for the fact that he was casting a long shadow, all over my feet and legs. I moved slightly to the right. He automatically throws his weight on his right leg, thus making me feel like I'm on a cartoon, a two dimensional Claudia running away from a shadow. He finally picks up where he had stopped that back and forth autistic stroll. My boots are getting warmer again.

"It's about nonexistent worlds, my nephew said, a study of the inner refuge, a map of the place a man goes to when life in the real world is no longer possible."

The woman sitting next to me turns out to be Spanish. Her family, who apparently had been visiting the museums while she waited outside, comes to join her. Now I've got 5 Spanish people next to me, speaking loudly, commenting on the hideous statue they saw and what they should do next. It's always hard for me to concentrate when someone next to me is speaking in a foreign language. I usually don't overhear other people's conversations but my brain can't stop from trying to decipher the weird, unfamiliar sounds that are coming in my direction. It seems that the next stop will be the Spanish department store El Corte Inglés. How imaginative. The equivalent of an American going to the Hard Rock Café when abroad.

"Tom put them off with his doubts and soul-searchings, his obscure disquisitions on the nature of reality, his hesitant manner."

I suddenly feel observed. What is this primitive skill humans still have, this alertness that doesn't leave us to rest, like preys waiting to be hunted? I look behind me and between the iron legs of that grotesque statue figure, I see a man with a camera taking a photo. Of the statue? A photo of me? It doesn't matter, by this point I am convinced there is a universal plot against my reading. The man puts his camera down and I see a familiar smile. Ricardo L. is smiling at me. A "gotcha" look on his face. "Too bad you saw me, I was going quietly away and then I'd send the photo by email". At least this was a nice interruption. R&A are very friendly, interesting people. After a short chat about hiking, rainy weather, crappy Portuguese translations of American authors from the 80's and ginger cookies they leave me to my book.

"Thousands of items were crammed onto the shelves down there - everything from out of print dictionaries to forgotten bestsellers to leather-bound sets of Shakespeare - and Tom had always felt at home in that kind of paper mausoleum, flipping through piles of discarded books and breathing in the old dusty smells."

Despite the occasional kid running by, the garden seems to have quieted down. Which is completely understandable, considering the sun has now dropped behind the museum building. I'm getting cold. I'm going home.

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December 06, 2005

Why Dan Brown should pursue the "Jesus Lived In India" Theory

I read the DaVinci code last year. I was at New Delhi's airport facing a long flight to Frankfurt without anything to read. I rushed to an airport bookshop and bought it. I tend to avoid popular books - it's my intellectual pretentiousness, you see :-) - but it seemed an easy read for a flight and I wanted to see what everyone was talking about.

I enjoyed it immensely. Like I enjoy popcorn-eating-hollywood movies when I'm in the mood for it.

When some friends and colleagues started talking to me about it I was amazed to discover how everyone took it rather seriously ("Dan Brown did a lot of research for it", "There are several historians who say it's a very well written book with solid proof", "maybe it's all true", etc.,etc.)

I had fun reading it. The scholarly, conspiratory tone only made it more fun. Accurate or not, it doesn't matter. Like reading a magazine horoscope. Or it's like reading a much poorer version of some of Arturo Pérez-Reverte entertaining adventure novels.

And I'm not even a religious person, I'm not offended by some of the assumptions the book makes, I was quite amused by them.

So, I was relieved to read this article by Umberto Eco:

"G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn't crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown's book.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes."

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In the same aiport bookshop I bought another popular book in India: "Jesus lived in India" (synopsis here). It's even more outrageous which makes it even more fun than Dan Brown's fantasies. It's so far fetched I swear I wish it was true :-)

I had read Catherine Clément's "Jesus at the stake" in which she writes about these jesus-lived-in-India theories in fictional terms. I found it very interesting and amusing that Jesus had had tibetan buddhist teachings, survived the crucifixion by practising yoga and fled to Kashmir, dying there of old age. As a secular humanist, it seemed as good explanation as the Vatican's :-). When I went to India I had the chance to ask some Indians about this theory. All of them said: "Of course he lived and died here! Everyone knows that! His tomb is up there in Srinagar...go see it for yourself!" - rather mockingly. Too bad that Srinagar is in Kashmir and that I'm rather cowardly or else I would have gone there.

"Ahmadi Muslims believe that the physical ascension of Jesus to Heaven is a later interpolation. The term "heaven" is used for spiritual bliss which the righteous enjoy after a mortal life.

Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24). Out of twelve tribes of Israel, only two were in the region where Jesus preached. The other ten tribes, as a result of exile, were domiciled in the eastern countries, especially in Afghanistan and Kashmir. It was imperative for Jesus to migrate eastwards to complete his mission.

There is overwhelming evidence that the people of Afghanistan, Kashmir and neighbouring regions are of Israelite ancestry. Their physical features, languages, folklore, customs, and festivals attest to their Israelite heritage. Evidence also comes from the names they give to their villages, their monuments, and ancient historical works and inscriptions.

The presence of Jesus in India is recorded in the ancient Indian literature, and records of Kashmir. Jesus came to Kashmir from the Holy Land during the reign of Raja Gopadatta (49-109 AD) to proclaim his prophethood to the Israelites. He was known as Yusu (Jesus) of the children of Israel. It is recorded that great number of people recognized his holiness and piety and became his disciples. " - more here.

They're making a documentary on it in India.

"According to legend Jesus Christ's tomb lies at Rozabal in Srinagar's old town . "Rozabal" is an abbreviation of Rauza Bal, meaning "tomb of a prophet". Isa (the Islamic name for Christ) was in fact also known as Yuz Asaf (Leader of the Healed). At the entrance there is an inscription explaining that Yuz Asaf is buried along with another Moslem saint. Both have gravestones which are oriented in North-South direction, according to Moslem tradition. However, through a small opening the true burial chamber can be seen, in which there is the Sarcophagus of Yuz Asaf in East-West (Jewish) orientation.

According to advocates of this theory there are carved footprints on the grave stones and when closely examined, carved images of a crucifix and a rosary. The footprints of Yuz Asaf have what appear to be scars represented on both feet, if one assumes that they are crucifixion scars, then their position is consistent with the scars shown in the Turin Shroud (left foot nailed over right). Crucifixion was not practised in Asia, so it is quite possible that they were inflicted elsewhere, such as the Middle East. The tomb is called by some as "Hazrat Issa Sahib" or "Tomb of the Lord Master Jesus". Ancient records acknowledge the existence of the tomb as long ago as 112AD.

Thus the legend that Jesus Christ Himself is buried in Kashmir!"

More books about it here.

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November 30, 2005

Narcissisms

Took a fun personality test (quite accurate, me thinks)

* High Curiosity Level
* Low Emotional Reactivity Level
* High Multi-tasking Ability
* High Need for Variety
* High Assertiveness Level

(wondering if the image I have of myself is similar to how other people see me)

Posted by claudia Permalink

November 28, 2005

So Happy!

Yet another borrowed nephew!

R&M are pregnant! (honoured to have my painting posted on R's blog as Lelezinho's first ultrasound!)

Correction: ok, ok, it might be a niece. But I've been calling him Lelezinho even before they were considering conception ;-)

Posted by claudia Permalink

November 21, 2005

Random Thoughts & Notes

Listening to Leonard Cohen while driving this weekend. He's probably the only serious composer/songwriter who can get away with the verses:

Give me crack and anal sex/Take the only tree that's left

(The Future)

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The subversive painter Yves Klein patented this shade of blue. I hope he's dead, otherwise I'm in trouble.

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Since Ian Curtis commited suicide and you optimistically think that you're experiencing mild symptoms of SAD due to this uncommon lack of sunny days, Joy Division might not be the best choice of music to listen to while driving to work.

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Thou shalt not reshelve books in bookshops according to your own filing system.

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Just found out how I love Rooibos with lemon and ginger (perfect companion to Anna's Pepparkakor Ginger Thins).

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Can't drive in the rain without humming a Tom Waits song:

Well, these diamonds on my windshield
These tears from heaven

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I've been getting some visitors who are googling for odd stuff:

"everything to know about senegal chameleons" - I've been to Senegal and didn't see any;

"why does claudia run away from home?" - never did.

"claudia sexy web site" - thank you! :-))))

"examples of cyclical time in 100 years of solitude" - hmm. nice idea for a blog post.

"what does it mean claudia" - unfortunately, if you're named Claudia like me, you don't want to know. That's one big disappointment. You pick up one of those books about the meaning of names and every feminine name means either "beautiful", "gentle", "flower", etc. Claudia just means "the one who limps" after Claudius, the roman emperor with a leg shorter than the other.

My personal favourite:

"what do portuguese people look like?" - I'd post a photo of myself but since I've been told several times I look french that shouldn't be of any help.

UPDATE

My new personal favourite:

"claudia you are the center of my mundo" - the feeling is mutual ;-)

Posted by claudia Permalink

Mr. Mojo Risin'

When I was 13 I decided to paint my bedroom walls bright red. I hanged a huge Jim Morrison b&w poster (the young lion photo series by Joel Brodsky, see below) by my bed. I bought every biography of his life I could get my hands on - which was not that easy seeing that we’re talking about Portugal in the 80’s!

More often than I care to admit, I have been made fun of by pseudo-intellectuals for having been a Jim Morrison fan as a teenager. I know it’s a bit pathetic for a 13/14 year old girl to lust after a dead, alcoholic, drug abusing rock star but the fact is that Mr. Morrison was such a great intellectual influence in my life.

I realized this the other day, while meditating about synchronicities, and mentally mapped some of the connections(click to enlarge):

(I've been having so much fun lately drawing mind maps)

I read so many, many books during this period which in one or other way were triggered by these references. I became an obsessive reader - like a chain smoker, I couldn't stop. Then I found boys…… Just kidding, it’s hard to distract me from my reading even today ;-)

(even later, as any true morrisonite, when I visited Paris I HAD to visit his grave at Père-Lachaise. And take a look at the building where he lived –and died - Rue Beautreillis, nr 17)

And none of this would have happened if it hadn't been for my very cool parents LP collection (Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Queen, The Doors, AC/DC, Cream,Yes, Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Leo Ferré, Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg and many, many more).

*****

synchronicities, coincidences, etc. I went to see "The Constant Gardener" yesterday (fabulous movie). There was an intermission and as I was deep in thought about the brevity of life, how petty my own problems are compared to my other fellow human beings who are striving to survive, how my hapiness is sheer luck and all the thoughts one has on a particular sentimentally vulnerable day, when I suddenly realize that the theatre's background music is "L.A. Woman" by the Doors ;-)

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November 08, 2005

Tesserae

The nerdiest birthday gift ever: roman numeral dice.

(sort of an excuse to post this nerd joke)

----

He was so upset that he went to a bar near his house for a drink to settle his nerves.

"What'll it be?" asked the bartender.

"A martinus," said the latin teacher.

"Don't you mean martini?"

"If I wanted more than one I'd ask for more than one."

Posted by claudia Permalink

November 07, 2005

My thighs hurt like hell

Another R&A guided hike. This time we walked (and climbed steep, rocky hills) from Cabo Espichel to Sesimbra. A great opportunity to go to some small, pretty beaches which are usually only accessible by boat.

"The Sea is Water's exaggerated way of not being shy." - Gonçalo M. Tavares in A perna esquerda de Paris

(author exchange with Sunday Morning and founding out that Pedro is blogging too)

Posted by claudia Permalink

November 04, 2005

Note to Self

Stress is your enemy. Stress is your enemy. Stress makes you want to murder your drawing classes colleagues and teachers for stating the obvious during one hour and a half. Stating the obvious in a painful, needlessly detailed way while I'm tripping on my own adrenaline, on the edge of the seat, refraining myself from shouting "get on with it!". I should have signed up for something more physically demanding. How can anyone take one hour and a half to go through a list of drawing material consisting of ten items as complex as "25 sheets of A4 paper"? Have I mentioned how hate when people state the obvious? *take a deep breath*

Posted by claudia Permalink

November 02, 2005

Conversation inside a car - closed windows

C: I've read this silly theory on the internet the other day that explains why yawning is contagious: you yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. The air you expel while yawning unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they too must yawn.

(pause) 

Lunatic at the wheel: Does that mean that if I pass gas right now you'll yawn? 

 

 

Posted by claudia Permalink

October 31, 2005

Posted under protest

Ok! Ok! There! I posted it! Get off my back!

(AP is trying to turn my blog into his online portfolio)

Posted by claudia Permalink

Memoraphilia

"Simonides was engaged to recite a poem at a banquet, given by one of his patrons, and after doing so the room fell in, burying all in its debris, and disfiguring the bodies so as to render identification impossible. Simonides, however, had noted the position each guest had occupied, and was thus able to point out the remains of each. Cicero and Quintilian both refer to his system and advocate its use; and we may add that it is the basis of most modern methods. Simonides found that to fix a number of places in the mind in a certain order was a great help to the natural faculty. His plan was to form in the mind a building which was divided and subdivided into distinct parts arranged in a certain order. The order of these parts were to be thoroughly learnt. As many words as there were parts were then symbolised by the images of living creatures, and when a number of things were to be committed to memory in certain order, mental images representing them were to be placed regularly in the several parts of the building.."

+++++++++++++

"The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in 1582 and spent the remaining 32 years of his life there.
In 1596, Ricci wrote A Treatise on Mnemonics, in Chinese, for the governor of Jiangxi Province. In it he recreated the medieval European idea of a memory palace - an edifice you build in your mind and furnish with mnemonic devices. Recollection is a process of walking through the rooms and associating information with their contents. Those contents must be distinct and dramatic."

+++++++++++++

Johannes Romberch, Congestorium artificiosae memeoriae, 1533

+++++++++++++

Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi, 1619

+++++++++++++

Giulio Camillo, the Theatre of Memory

"Various accounts describe the structure as a building which would allow one or two individuals at a time within its interior. The insides were inscribed with a variety of images, figures, and ornaments. It was full of little boxes arranged in various orders and grades. Upon entering the Theater, the spectator will be able to discourse on any subject no less fluently than Cicero as he stands on a stage looking out towards the auditorium where the images are placed among seven pillars or grades. Each grade representing the expanding history of divine thought. In the first grade there were the 'seven essential measures' depicted by the 'seven known planets' which were the First Causes of creation and from which all things depended. The highest grade of the Theatre was the seventh level, which was assigned to all the arts, 'both noble and vile,' and is represented by Prometheus who stole the technology of fire from the gods."

+++++++++++++

"Ireneo began by enumerating, in Latin and Spanish, the cases of prodigious memory cited in the Historia Naturalis: Cyrus, king of the Persians, who could call every soldier in his armies by name; Mithridates Eupator, who administered justice in the twenty-two languages of his empire; Simonides, inventory of mnemotechny; Metrodorus, who practised the art of repeating faithfully what he heard once. With evident good faith Funes marvelled that such things should be considered marvellous. He told me that previous to the rainy afternoon when the blue-tinted horse threw him, he had been - like any Christian - blind, deaf-mute, somnambulistic, memoryless. (I tried to remind him of his precise perception of time, his memory for proper names; he paid no attention to me.) For nineteen years, he said, he had lived like a person in a dream: he looked without seeing, heard without hearing, forgot everything - almost everything. On falling from the horse, he lost consciousness; when he recovered it, the present was almost intolerable it was so rich and bright; the same was true of the most ancient and most trivial memories. A little later he realized that he was crippled. This fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (or felt) that immobility was a minimum price to pay. And now, his perception and his memory were infallible."

-- Jorge Luis Borges, Funes the Memorious

+++++++++++++

"Memory is, therefore, neither Perception nor Conception, but a state or affection of one of these, conditioned by lapse of time. As already observed, there is no such thing as memory of the present while present, for the present is object only of perception, and the future, of expectation, but the object of memory is the past. All memory, therefore, implies a time elapsed; consequently only those animals which perceive time remember, and the organ whereby they perceive time is also that whereby they remember."

-- Aristotle, On Memory and Reminiscence

+++++++++++++

+++++++++++++

"One of the things for which I am still grateful is the way in which we were taught to memorize. Most Tibetans have good memories, but we who were training to be medical monks had to know the names and exact descriptions of a very large number of herbs, as well as knowing how they could be combined and used. We had to know much about astrology, and be able to recite the whole of our sacred books. A method of memory training had been evolved throughout the centuries. We imagined that we were in a room lined with thousands and thousands of drawers. Each drawer was clearly labelled, and the writing on all the labels could be read with ease from where we stood. Every fact we were told had to be classified, and we were instructed to imagine that we opened the appropriate drawer and put the fact inside. We had to visualize it very clearly as we did it, visualize the "fact" and the exact location of the "drawer". With little practice it was amazingly easy to - in imagination - enter the room, open the correct drawer, and extract the fact required as well as all related facts."

-- Lobsang Rampa, The third eye

+++++++++++++

An excerpt of Proust and his madeleine here.

"But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

-- Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."

-- Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

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October 26, 2005

Lately, I've been...(among many other things)

shouting numbers in german...

++++

pretending to be a tourist in my own Lisboa and feeling at home in Madrid...

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completely offline/unreachable...

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taking naps...

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amused by Smullyan's "5000 bc and Other Philosophical Fantasies" (what a great birthday present from R!)...

"Saul Gorn once told me his theory of asceticism :"It is well known that the longer one postpones a pleasure, the greater the pleasure is when one finally gets it. Therefore, if one postpones it forever, the pleasure should be infinite."

:-))

++++

finding out about Remedios Varo eerie paintings at Reina Sofia's bookshop...

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fantasizing about buying every book at Librería La Central in Atocha...

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communicating with an otter...

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finding secret doors at Quinta da Regaleira...

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laughing at Hugo & Nicole's purple outfit dancing and singing on the Eurovision Song Contest...

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singing silly portuguese cartoon songs...

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trying to understand spanish slang/smut on the El País classified ads while sitting on a bench in Parque Del Retiro...

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Hah. In short, great holidays.

++++

and more recently...

irritated by an HR coworker who insisted that I should have had my cellphone on during my holidays because she had something very urgent to tell me. Since that urgent call was not about having been fired or given a raise, it was obviously not that important....

(which makes me want to post about the "cellphone induced social high availability syndrome" and how everyone assumes that just because you own one or because it is on, you MUST take all the calls no matter where you are or what you're doing.)

Maybe later.

Posted by claudia Permalink

October 07, 2005

XXX

(from Story People, by Brian Andreas)

-----

"Only to certain women at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?" - Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

Marilyn had no idea what she was singing about. Books are a girl's best friends.

-----

(yes, I'm turning 30 years old today :-)

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October 06, 2005

They do it with mirrors

A (very) pregnant mother, a smiling (as usual) father and a couple of (very) 70's looking friends. 1975, a funfair.

One of those photos that sticked to my memory. And that would made me put my head in the middle of the open mirror-covered wardrobe doors to see myself reflected a hundred times. I thought I might just put it online so that I can take a look at it any time I miss it.

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October 04, 2005

Natural Habitat

bookshop, Lisboa

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I dream of the day when everyone will wear wigs

I don't know why, but I keep taking philosophy books to read at the hairdresser.

Well, I'm lying, I do know why. Going to the hairdresser is a painful experience for me. It's the most wasted of times. Making small talk about hairdos or shampoos is the ultimate torture. And I do feel guilty for wasting my time with frivolous matters so I always take a highbrow book with me. A Linus & the blanket kind of thing.

---

"We're running a bit late, do you mind waiting?"
C: "No that's all right. Where can I sit to read while I wait?"
"Oh, you can sit here; wait, I'll bring you some magazines."
And she starts handing me gossip magazines, "women's magazines" - whatever that means-, while I reach for my purse and take out William James' essays on pragmatism.

---

I'm not faithful to any salon in particular which means that I usually don't make an appointment and get my hair cut by the only available hairdresser.
"Have you got any preference on the hairdresser?"
C:"No."
"Let me see who's available..."
It turns out the only available hairdresser is invariably a trainee or the woman/man with the most extravagant haircut in the room. Or both at the same time.
"X will cut your hair."
C:"OK", while gasping at the sight of a woman with a side-shaved head and a rainbow colored Mohawk.

-----

Random weird hairdressing memories:

The Tom Cruise in "Cocktail", hairdresser version: a woman juggling with the hairdryer. Impressive. And scary.

*

The hairdresser who would knock my head to make me shift it to the position she wanted to.

*

"Why don't you dye your hair? Men find blond women much more attractive."
C(sarcastically):"Sure, that would look lovely with my black eyebrows..."
"Oh, we would dye them too."
C:"OK, let's stop it here."

*

"I once cut a hair of a man who hadn't part of his skull due to an accident. It was really weird, I could feel his brain, it was like a sponge or something."

*

The woman who was wearing these eyeglasses with the thickest lenses I have ever seen. She takes them off before starting to cut my hair.

*

High-pitched voice, too much enthusiasm: "So, are we doing something special today? Let's make you look pretty for the boyfriend?"

*

"Here, take a look at this hairstyling magazine...I think this haircut would suit you." - (the most awful haircut, beautiful model who would look beautiful even if she was bald) - "When we finish, you'll see. I'll make you look like that."
C: "Are you a plastic surgeon then?"

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October 03, 2005

Time smiles in my hand

Is it because I'm turning 30 soon - and I'm strangely feeling very good about it - or is this just the perfect verse?

Somewhere on the Promenade by the Piers, San Francisco

-----

Waking in the morning
Time smiles in my hand.
This dawn
Lasts all day.

Deena Metzger

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Hiking Sunday

I had the chance of practising two of my three favorite aerobic activities ;-) this past Sunday: Walking and Laughing.

I went hiking in Sintra with a group of fun people; after a somewhat stressing week at work, there's nothing like physical exhaustion (not quite, but it was kind of a long hike) to rebalance the energies.

I met Sunday Morning; great photos, V! And I met Mônica who is the sweetest girl!

(thanks to Ana and Ricardo for all the planning and guiding!)

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September 29, 2005

Stichomancy

I just recently found out there's a name for something I do almost since I learned to read.

"Stichomancy or Bibliomancy is a form of divination that seeks to know the future by randomly selecting a passage from a book, frequently a sacred text. The most common procedure involves placing the book on its spine, and with eyes closed, allowing the book to fall open to a random page. Then, with the eyes still closed place a finger on the open page and read the passage indicated."

Not that I do this to "predict the future". I use this method just like I use my I Ching cards: as an aid for meditation. It's a very useful exercise in imagination and self-analysis to try to come up with an explanation that links the passage that I just read with the problem/doubt that is troubling me.

Well, I just felt like sharing this after I got Salman Rushdie's newest book "Shalimar the Clown" yesterday. Which I used for my very particular variation of stichomancy:

"And memory was not madness was it, not even when the remembered past piled up so high inside you that you feared the files of your yesterdays would become visible in the whites of your eyes. "

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September 15, 2005

HyperSpeech

She was feeling so impatient, she wished she could insert hyperlinks to whatever she was saying so as to not having to explain it all.

(is allusion a different form of hyperlinking that only knowledgeable people can click on?)

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September 09, 2005

Rafael

Rafael was born today. Cool! Another kid for me to spoil and leave the repairing of the damage to the parents.

Rafael was tagged. He has this giant RFID tag on his ankle. Fancy high security hospitals.

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September 02, 2005

Vitia Carnalia

This is more of a gourmandise memoir post than anything else.

Here's what I want to remember:

This is the kind of gastronomical delight that makes me look like a slightly more discrete Sally at the diner. I just close my eyes and sigh with pleasure. Gluttony or Lust? I think I'll take both ;-)

*****

Bix
56 Gold St
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 433-6300

*****

"In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision." - Italo Calvino

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August 12, 2005

Holidays (again)

I won't be wearing flowers in my hair but I sure hope to find some gentle people there.

*****

"Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection." - Lawrence Durrell

*****

I was taking a look at my site counter, more specifically at the search terms that have lead visitors to my blog. Lots of them are about sex. Duh.

A message for a visitor from Japan who is persistently googling for "I had sex with Claudia": I'm pretty sure that's not me. Give it up.

A word of caution to another one looking for "photos of me and claudia having sex": I sincerely hope that's not me. You'd be in great trouble.

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August 03, 2005

Self-absorbed

My mind's sunk so low, Claudia, because of you, wrecked itself on your account so bad already, that I couldn't like you if you were the best of women, —or stop loving you, no matter what you do.

- Catullus

"Claudia Pulchra Tertulla, born in circa 95 BC, was the third daughter of the patrician Appius Claudius Pulcher and Caecilia Metella Balearica. Despite being a woman, Claudia was very well educated in Greek and Philosophy, with a special talent for writing poetry. But she shared the recklessness of her younger brother, the political agitator Publius Clodius Pulcher. Her life, immortalized in the poems of Catullus and the writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero, was lived on perpetual scandal.

Madly in love with her, Catullus wrote several poems about his feelings towards Lesbia, the name he gave her."

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August 02, 2005

Marco

As any other portuguese from my generation might agree, "Marco - Dos Alpes aos Apeninos" was one of the cartoons (japanese anime, in fact) on TV during our childhood which left the most enduring impression. I used to cry my heart out watching it - the theme song was particularly depressing.

"3000 Leagues in Search of Mother is, as can be gleaned from the title, the chronicle of one boy who sets off all alone across an ocean and makes a grueling, bitter journey in search for his mother. His desolate trek spans the Atlantic, starting off in Genova, Italy and concluding in Cordoba, Argentina. The boy's name is Marco Rossi. In Genova, Marco's father oversees a free clinic which treats the vast number of people unable to afford the cost of medical treatment at a hospital. Due to the inexhorable debt into which this line of work has entrenched his family, and the national work shortage which plagued Italy at the end of the nineteenth century -- a glaring side-effect of the drive towards industrialization --, Marco's mother is forced to leave Italy, and go to Argentina in search of work. There she is to find work as a nurse to the poor, like her husband, to return only when the family's debt has been repaid." (more on the book and the anime here)

Recently, while reminiscing about our childhood with friends, I got two interesting pieces of information:

- the japanese series is based on the book "Cuore" by Edmondo de Amicis - "the italian Huckleberry Finn" (which was what triggered an intensive session of googling for this post);

- Ricardo C. tells me he has a group of friends who defend the theory that Marco's mother went to Argentina to become a prostitute; so much for childhood memories :-)))

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July 19, 2005

Growing Pains

You know you've grown up on an unorthodox family when:

* Mom tries to teach you how to smoke:
     - Come on now, inhale!
     - Cough! Cough!
     - If you don't inhale you won't feel the pleasure of smoking!
     - But this is disgusting!
     - Ok, give me that back! Don't spoil a perfectly good cigarrette...

* Dad is underprotective:
     - I'm going out tonight. I'm wearing this skirt, I want to impress someone!
     - That skirt is way too long...

* Both use reverse psychology on a good teenage girl trying to be a rebel:
     - I'm going to the disco, I don't know at what time I'll be back.
     - That's OK. We trust you.
     - (Dammit)

* Mom & Dad go to the video store and rent an X-rated animated movie to explain about the birds & the bees to a pre-teenage daughter:
     - Are you both out of your freaking minds?!?!? There's no way I'm gonna watch that with you!!!

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June 30, 2005

The blog as a sentimental grandchild scrapbook

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May 25, 2005

The chiropractor

I'm lying on my stomach.
- Relax. You'll hear your spine crack but don't worry.
Pushes my back between my shoulder blades with TOO MUCH strength. I suppose most men won't have a problem with having their chests crushed against a not so soft "adjustment table". Most women do.
Nothing cracks.
- That didn't go that well. Let's try again.
No cracking sound.
He has another try, pressing longer and harder.
Nothing cracks yet again.
- You're a challenge, we're gonna have some fun! You're back's too rigid. Relax!
How can I relax when I'm staring at the floor with a man breathing heavily on my back, making weird effort sounds and saying things like "Yeah! It's almost there!"? I feel like I'm on a low budget bad porn movie.
- Let's try the neck, lie on your back.
He starts moving my head from one side to the other and suddenly I have a flashback: I was 7 or 8 and I saw a woman, on my grandfather's backyard, killing a rabbit by twisting its neck.
-Come on! Relax!
Yeah. Sure.

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May 23, 2005

Infinity

The first epiphany: infinity. I must have been 5 or so; while helping my grandmother bake a cake. Had I been Andy Warhol and this would have been my Campbell soup.

****

The obsession goes on. A Disney book where Professor Ludwig von Drake shows how to make a Möbius strip.

I can produce Infinity.

****

The greek gods punishments, far more powerful than any catholic threat of eternal damnation on a pre-teen:

Sisyphus rolling a boulder to the top of the mountain;
Boulder fall backs on its own weight;
Sisyphus rolling a boulder to the top of the mountain.

An eagle eating Prometheus' liver;
Liver grows back overnight;
An eagle eating Prometheus' liver.

Tantalus immersed up to his neck in water, fruit hanging on the trees above him;
He bends to drink, the water drains; he reaches for the fruit and the winds blow the branches beyond his reach.
Tantalus immersed up to his neck in water, fruit hanging on the trees above him.

****

The philosophical years: Achilles and the Turtle.

****
The literary years or how Borges overtook Cantor:

"Cada cosa (la luna del espejo, digamos) era infinitas cosas, porque yo claramente la veía desde todos los puntos del universo."
El Aleph - Jorge Luis Borges

****

It's all about me right now. Claudia's own Infinity inside a Hotel Elevator:

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May 22, 2005

Ser Benfiquista é ter na alma a chama imensa

Ele há coisas lamechas e terrivelmente foleiras que só nos saem na nossa língua materna.

Ser Benfiquista é uma doença aguda incurável e, na maior parte dos casos, geneticamente transmitida (tenho um primo que a primeira palavra que disse não foi pai nem mãe - foi Benfica).

É mais do que gostar de futebol ou de um clube, é um sentimento irracional, misto de orgulho e de sensação de pertença, e em tudo semelhante a uma paixão que nos faz sofrer intensamente. São memórias e heróis de infância tingidos de encarnado.

Já me fartei de chorar. De felicidade.

Cá fica o hino do Glorioso.

Note to non-portuguese readers: Sorry about that but my football team won the championship after 11 years of cruel losses and I'm a bit emotional. Since 6 out of a total of 10 million portuguese are Benfica's supporters we are expecting a GDP increase and a sharp reduction on antidepressant sales :-)))

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May 19, 2005

Plant Sematary

What do they want? I painted the balcony wall blue as the sky, I bought a new shelf, I even framed a pretty picture I took of a flower...

This plant expired and gone to meet its maker. Either that or it's pining for the fjords :-)

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May 06, 2005

Disease

He descended from a long line of hypocondriacs who, at first sign of illness, would rush to the doctor and take whatever pill he prescribed notwithstanding it had fatal contraindications. He had a preferential client card at the local pharmacy.

She came from a family of people who resorted to doctors only when on the verge of being given the last sacraments and who, if necessary, would perform small surgeries at home, on themselves, with kitchen knives.

Him: My leg hurts.
Her: Stop whining. Ignore it.

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March 07, 2005

...And I've been working like a dog...

A cynical New Yorker cartoon

Two weeks to go until my Easter holidays. That's the light at the end of the tunnel while working insanely long hours and weekends!

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February 17, 2005

The Shining, Claudia's version

All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.All work and no play makes Claudia a dull girl.

And this is where I start killing people with an axe.

No I'm not insane YET, you'll have to watch Kubrick's The Shining. Here's a short animated version of the movie with bunnies :-)

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