en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 60 http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal The Last.fm journal for Angelical_devil. Last.fm journals are a place to talk about all things music. http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/05/01/5tatvx_art_&_digression Wed, 1 May 2013 00:07:31 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/05/01/5tatvx_art_&_digression I've wanted to write here in a while, but no time at all.
I was eager to reflect on Rodrigo Guzmán's promotion. In fact, I wanted to write about how much he has improved over the last couple of years after I saw him on "Zorba". He was amazing!!! Everybody knows I'm a huge Ortigoza admirer since I was a little girl, yet this time Guzmán totally stole the highlight from him. They were both at the same time dancing on stage and I couldn't keep my eyes off Guzmán. This is a first! I've always said when Ortigoza dances everything else on stage vanishes.
Of course, Ortigoza was still great, just in a really different style, because of the characters, but also because each of them has a very unique dancing style which was perfectly portrayed in this ballet.
I used to tremble whenever I thought Ortigoza's soon to retire and there was nobody to fill in his place at the company. There are many great male dancers, but there wasn't anyone as dazzling as him. Yet this perception of mine started to change at the end of 2011 and last year kept moving towards the hope Guzmán might just be the one. I think the exact moment in which I started to feel confident he might do it was when he did Petruchio. One strong point he holds is that he's usually Andreza Randisek's partenaire. You can't go wrong in such position!
So that night I got home from the ballet really joyful and dazzled by his dancing, and just the next day he was promoted, now he has the same position as Ortigoza in the company. And truth is, he sure deserved it!

So, what else? I wanted to write about "Flesh on the mirror. Essays on the art of Angela Carter" by Lorna Sage, Ali Smith, Margaret Atwood and many other wonderful writers... However, I finished it too long ago ^^;; I even read an awesome book by Soseki afterwards and now I'm deep into a critical trilogy about german philosophy from Kant to Heidegger, so it's pointless.

I loved Avantasia's new album. I was a bit frightened after I saw the Sleepwalking PV, but even that one song has grown on me by now. Sometimes I really wonder if I lack even the slightest trace of objectivity once I like a band. I'm not like this about literature, but music has a different effect on me. My relation towards it is a lot more emotional, therefore once I've fallen is extremely hard to raise again. Once I love a band, is quite impossible for me to dislike it afterwards, unless they do some terrible crap and betray everything they once were, such as DIR EN GREY did. But I don't need innovation. I don't need a band to do something completely new and revolutionary - as my lil devil does-, I just need it to be bloody good and honest. If it touches me, and that usually requires beautiful music along with great lyrics, then that's all I ask and my gratitude will probably be eternal. Oh! If I like the singer's voice then that adds a lot on my loving-meter. And I looooove Tobias Sammet's voice, even though there're rumours he might be losing it.

And that's also the reason I loved CRASHDÏET's new album too. I like Simon Cruz's voice so much! I think -though I know this might be a heresy to most of the band's oldest fans- that he's my favourite CRASHDÏET's vocalist so far. The texture of his voice's perfect! This album is really different. They took quite a risk and it worked! At least for me. I'm a bit pissed at them though for they came to Latin America, played in Argentina and yet didn't play here. C'mon! It's less than an hour by plane, how hard can that be?

The last few weeks have been tough. I was on one of my blue periods and could barely get up and had lots of work and many things to do for my new book and my mom underwent surgery and had complications and my lil brother got sick and had to spend the whole night at his side at the ER and I discovered Jester has leukaemia and I'm freezing even though the bloody sun shines as bright as ever, damn him! I've moved a lot anyway, all covered up as an alien creature while people goes on in shorts and tanks, and met wonderful strangers and learnt many new things, which is always the most precious blessing and though I'm aware I know nothing, it always comes as a surprise, and I enjoy autumn, my favourite season in which the world dresses for a masquerade in blood and gold, baroque and seductive, and I've dreamt a lot, as usual, though he eludes me.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/03/10/5rqzzf_on_oppression_and_women Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:09:34 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/03/10/5rqzzf_on_oppression_and_women Two things first:

1) I was extremely sad about Chávez death. That's right, I really admired him, in spite of lots of things. I liked his passion and honesty, and even his evident incoherences, which to me are always proof of an open heart and a lack of hypocrisy and art.

2) I hate International Women's Day, and even those feminist approaches that see this date as a day to reflect on the improvements on gender equality and crap seem just a lame excuse to me to try an make right that which cannot be under any circumstances. This celebration is paternalist, patronising and down right offensive to me and any woman who prides herself on her sex. The way the media and institutions approach this date makes it all even worst. I almost choked to death with the publicity about it and seriously, if any man would have told me anything on march 8th I'd kick him on the balls with all my might and joy. Of course, no one was so foolish. The fact most people seem to have forgotten what really happened on this day makes me want to cry. There's no reason to celebrate! And we've barely moved forward since 1911. And as I've stated many times in this journal, I don't believe in equality of gender anyway, I believe in the obvious superiority of women. So damn right I'm not satisfied at all!
And men keep using brute force and unjust laws to maintain their -non existent- superiority, through sheer oppression, because otherwise it wouldn't stand a chance and the truth would be too powerfully evident to anyone. It's just pathetic. And what's even more funny is that through time they've become so convinced of that mirage that they stopped trying to improve themselves as humans and they've actually moved backwards...
Anyway, I better leave it at that.

On that subject, though through a slightly different view point, and my real reason to crawl in here: I finished reading that amazing compilation of novels by Mary Wollstonecraf and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

First I noticed: The mother was a lot more forward about her critic of social injustice and gender inequality, yet the daughter wrote more beautifully. In her case the critic's there, but less evident and painful.

First I read Mary by Wollstonecraft and wasn't very impressed. But she was ridiculously young when she wrote this book and that explains its weakness. It's still really interesting, but too self indulgent and immature.

Then I read Maria and was blown away. I knew she wrote this book with the idea to put in evidence the blatant oppression of women in different classes and situations. It's a painful book and quite depressing. More polished and beautifully written. It's unfinished, as most of my favourite books ever, and the fact it was left that way because Wollstonecraft, as most of her heroines, died in childbirth, seems a terrible irony.
I know because of the notes how it was supposed to end, and it makes me want to cry in rage. I hate that feeling of helplessness.. is it really all completely hopeless?

Finally I read Mathilda by the daughter and fell in love completely, even though it lacks the social compromise of the mother. It's such a passionated and wonderfully written book. It's devastating. All through the last pages I felt a sharp pain and sadness overwhelming me. It left me desolate. I really appreciated the twist on the subject of incest which was actually quite in fashion through romanticism. And it was so powerfully portrayed that I couldn't help but feel such empathy for the characters, especially the father, which is quite an achievement, I must add.
The reflections on art and nature through all three novels are perfect. And Woodville as such an accurate reflection of P.B.S. and his failture, of course, it's actually kinda sad... I didn't like this character *chuckles* I love Shelley, but I there's a part of him I despise too.

Death and despair are the true winners in these novels, and quite fairly so. Death is such a blessing in them, as Mathilda says in the last chapter:

"I am in love with death; no maiden ever took more pleasure in the contemplation of her bridal attirement than I in fancying my limbs already enwrapped in their shroud: is it not my married dress? Alone it will unite me to my father when in an eternal union we shall never part."

PS: Funny to note the repetition of the name Mathilda in Gothic Novel. There's a Mathilda in 'Monk' and also in 'Castle of Otranto'. It's a beautiful name...

PS2: Now I wanna re read The Modern Prometheus... I read it when I was around 6 years old and though I remember loving it, truth is I don't remember much more. This happens to me a lot with the books I read back then. I actually read the complete library of my school, in alphabetical order -howsillyisthat???-, which was huge and had lots of oddities, as many novels by Sand ^^;;]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/02/27/5rffv5_artful%5Bl%5D Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:23:06 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/02/27/5rffv5_artful%5Bl%5D I still haven't read 'There but for the', but when Amazon reminded me Ali Smith would be releasing 'Artful' around a month ago, I fell in love with the subject of the book and preordered it right away, reading it as soon as it got here, before the last novel I still had left to read by this witty lady.
Of course, I fell even deeper as I passed the pages-which is how it usually goes with Smith. And now, days after I finished it, I keep thinking about it and falling, even though I'm already reading a wonderful compilation with two novels by Mary Wollstonecraft and one by her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin -Think I've already stated somewhere in this journal I hate how everyone nowadays calls her Mary Shelley. So sexist!- with a great critical introduction by Janet Todd.
'Artful' is amazing, of course, as it usually goes with Smith it's witty, brilliant, touching, painful, gorgeous... and obviously, art full.
This genius book is a seductive blend of essay and novel in which you have to chase the narrator through reality, imagination, reading, writing and fantasy through all the times, present, past and future.
The narrator is a character haunted by a dead lover who wrote this amazing series of lectures about art, literature and well, life itself, because as Smith reminds the reader: art cannot be separated of life.
This character who misses her lover and is crushed by grief, though it's been a twelvemonth and a day since they've been separated, suddenly is visited by the decaying ghost, who can barely communicate, speaks in unknown languages about unknown places and people, steals her things and spends most of the time going through the old lectures left behind unfinished.
So as the living one starts reading Oliver Twist, she picks up the lectures to read them for the first time, somehow as an act of acceptance and despair at the same time.
The lectures, with all its multiple voices -the dead lover and all the theoretic frame she used to write them [Carter, Atwood, Kay, Michelangelo, Ondaatje, Shakespeare, Dickens & others] mix with her own thoughts and views to reflect on time, form, edge, offer, reflection, love, the nature of art and literature, the power of imagination, memory and pain, among many other subjects. This creates a dazzling kaleidoscope, which -obviously!- becomes much more meaningful if you know and love all the original voices as much as I do. I swear I cried non stop in the last chapter when the lecture starts reflecting on the broken mirror as an image in Angela Carter's novels. I love Carter wholeheartedly, and the view of Smith about how her last novel 'Wise Children' somehow manages to resolve the fracturing and in a certain way redeem all her previous characters was just so beautiful.
I think Smith is one of the very few authors who manages to make me cry like this -Carter also in her last novel- is not a cry of sadness, though there's pain in it, but there's also hope, gratefulness and bedazzlement at such power and beauty in words.
The way at the end everything comes together in this book, and all the little misunderstandings and seemingly incoherent things were solved and meaningful is perfect, because there wasn't just a reason, but she knew and loved her dead lover so much she could actually imagine everything as it had been though she was completely unaware, and blend live and death through it.
I love Ali Smith. I think she's the strongest voice there's right now in literature. I love Winterson more, because we have story, and I respect a lot the fact she's more friendly to her readers, but I'm a sucker for complexity and tough challenges and Smith's all that. She forces you to use neurones you didn't know you had and she makes you forget all your certainties and she skins you alive and then makes you anew ;)

Well, to the quotes:

"Books themselves take time, more time than most of us are used to giving them. Books demand time. Sometimes they take and demand more time than we're ready or yet know how to grant them; they go at their own speed regardless of the cultural speed or slowness of their reader's zeitgeists. Plus, they're tangible pieces of time in our hands. We hold them for the time it takes to read them and move through them and measure time passing by how far through them we've got, what the page-edge correlation (or percentage, if we're using a digital reader) between the beginning and the end is."

[Artful by Ali Smith/ page 31]

"We do treat books surprisingly lightly in contemporary culture. We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once. Books and music share more in terms of resonance than just a present-tense correlation of heard note to read word. Books need time to dawn on us, it takes time to understand what makes them, structurally, in thematic resonance, in afterthought, and always in correspondence with the books which came before them, because books are produced by books more than by writers; they're a result of all the books that went before them."

[Artful by Ali Smith/ Page 32]

"Because when I think about what it was like to live with you, it was like all these things. It was like living in a poem or a picture, a story, a piece of music, when I think about it now. It was wonderful."

[Artful by Ali Smith/ page 52]

"The power of the artform is stronger than stone, the poet says, and chooses the sonnet, a form concerned with argument and persuasion, to say so. This sonnet, he says, will last longer than any gravestone-and you'll be made shinier, brighter, by it. In this form it will-and therefore you will-avoid destruction by war, history, time generally; it'll even keep you alive after death; in fact it'll form a place for you to live, not die, where you'll be seen in the eyes of and the context of this love right to the end of time."

[Artful by Ali Smith/ Page 70]

"And it suggests this truth about the place where aesthetic form meets the human mind. For even if we were to find ourselves homeless, in a strange land, with nothing of ourselves left-say we lost everything-we'd still have another kind of home, in aesthetic form itself, in the familiarity, the unchanging assurance that a known rhythm, a recognized line, the familiar shape of a story, a tune, a line or phrase or sentence gives us every time, even long after we've forgotten we even know it."

[Artful by Ali Smith/ Page 76]

"At one level reflection means we see ourselves. At another, it's another word for the thought process. We can choose it to look into the light of our own eyes, or we can be light sensitive, we can allow all things to move over and through us; we can hold them and release them, in thought. Broken things become pattern in reflection. The way a kaleidoscope works is to allow fragmentary or disconnected things to become their own harmony."

[Artful by Ali Smith/ Page 197]

On another subject, I finished the nameless book, I'm proofreading and trying to catch the elusive name, but I already started working on a new project and I'm extremely excited. Love that thrill.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/01/09/5pumtl_tragedy Wed, 9 Jan 2013 13:31:43 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2013/01/09/5pumtl_tragedy I've read many wonderful books in the last few months. In fact, last year most I did was reading, and as things are since a few years ago, I only read things I know I'll love insanely, therefore everything I read is wonderful and shakes me completely, defying everything I believe and those things I stand for.
Yet none of those books, amazing as they were, managed to force me out of my dark cave to crawl here to write about them. Clarissa did.
I finished it last night and was actually desperate to do so for my health and sanity. This is the most absorbing book I've read in my whole life. I couldn't stop reading until my head would ache terribly, my back muscles were completely cramped and then I placed the book down only to go on rereading it my mind and to dream about it.
This is an amazing book and now I understand all the stir it must have caused back in its time, and why it remains to many one of the most powerful and psychologically deep novels ever written.
I must acknowledge I drown in this book knowing forehand how it ended and most of the important facts in the story, for in most of the great non fiction books about gender constructions and feminism in literature, romantic novels and gothic novels I've read there's always one or a few chapters dedicated exclusively to it. With full reason, I must add.
Clarissa is a wonderfully written book, and as an author myself, I'm at awe as to how Richardson managed to do this complicated architecture successfully, and how he didn't die or at least dried all his creative capacities in the task.
The vast and colourful array of characters and the depth of each one is amazing, as it is the whole structure of the story through the epistolary exchange, and I must add, in my opinion, this is one of the most difficult genres ever.
Clarissa is classified as a moral novel, and there's certainly a lot of that, and wonderfully achieved as I must own, for it's impossible not to be affected by the girl's story and the fatal outcome of all the characters. But its complexity goes way beyond that and at the same time questions a lot of established moral notions socially accepted. Also, even though Richardson surely didn't intend it to be so, it's quite a revolutionary work in terms of gender, and shows with surgical accuracy the flaws in the mythical constructions of the sexes and the relation between them. Clarissa and Anna Howe's relationship being extremely interesting, and if I must add, quite similar to the one Bettine Brentano and Karoline von Günderrode would have almost a century later, even in the roles.
Lovelace is one of the most disturbing characters ever, being incredibly seductive, beautiful, smart, well learnt, etc... and at the same time so awfully wicked and selfdestructive. He has the most important trait someone can have in my opinion: passion. But extremely contradictory as it is, his worst flaw is the one I think most despicable in men: levity. He's such a contradictory character. In a letter he expresses himself so deeply and reasonably about a subject and in the next runs in the opposite direction while being completely aware of it.
He knows he can't live without Clarissa yet consciously destroys her.
I've read after the first edition of the novel, the readers were upset because they thought a tragedy in which virtue was the sufferer had to end in happiness for the heroine.
I strongly disagree, and I'm with Richardson when he says, in spite of his christian notions and moral background, that life just doesn't work like that. It doesn't matter if you're an angel or a devil, you will suffer the same, at least on this side of the grave. Besides, I thought Clarissa's ending was actually an extremely happy and positive one. I don't think there could have been anything she'd appreciate more than a peaceful death in the certainty that she'll be received in the arms of that God in which she trusted so much, completely untainted by sins of her own will.
And her revenge is terrible on those that pushed her to that point. In her forgiveness and goodness she only pushes deeper the sword of regret in all her family and the destroyer of her 'honour'.
I was extremely affected by this book. The last 500 pages or so are so pathetically painful. I don't think I've cried like this with any other book, specially considering in spite of my tears I just couldn't stop reading. And all the meditations on the transient nature of life, the unavoidability of death, the weight of sins aware to our own mind, the blessing of forgiveness to the one who extends it as well as to the receiver, etc... are extremely effective in their purpose.

Now I think I desperately need a break and so I'll try to stay away from books for a while, at least until I finish the one I'm writing, which was put aside the last few weeks because there was no way I could focus on anything while Clarissa's story kept revolving 24/7 in my mind, either while I was awake or in my dreams. I'm quite damaged and my brain feels like Cheddar.
I own I could be the most pious girl of this time weren't I an atheist. However I don't think we need a God to be decent and in fact I've always said I'd be a priest were I a man, in spite of my lack of faith.
Enough.

"Upon my word, I most heartily despise that sex! I wish they would let our fathers and mothers alone; teasing them to tease us with their golden promises, and protestations, and settlements, and the rest of their ostentatious nonsense. How charmingly might you and I live together and despite them all!- But to be cajoled, wire-drawn, and ensnared, like silly birds, into a state of bondage or vile subordination: to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives"

[L27 by Miss Howe/ Clarissa p. 133 by Richardson]

"But man is a pragmatical foolish creature; and the more we look into him, the more we must despise him- Lord of the creation!- Who can forbear indignant laughter! When we see not one of the individuals of that creation, except his perpetually eccentric self, but acts within its own natural and original appointments: and all the time, proud and vain as the conceited wretch is of fancied and self-dependent excellence, he is obliged not only for the ornaments, but for the necessaries of life (that is to say, for food as well as raiment) to all the other creatures; strutting with their blood and spirits in his veins, and with their plumage on his back: for what has he of his own, but a very mischievous, monkey-like, bad nature? Yet thinks himself at liberty to kick, and cuff, and elbow out every worthier creature: and when he has none of the animal creation to hunt down and abuse, will make use of his power, his strength, or his wealth, to oppress the less powerful and weaker of his own species!"

[L364 by Mr. Belford/ Clarissa p. 1123 by Richardson]]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/12/25/5pd6wm_xmas Tue, 25 Dec 2012 01:17:16 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/12/25/5pd6wm_xmas Christmas eve... Now it's really been a while. I've started many entries, but each time I ended up erasing all I had written. Don't really know what's wrong with me. Actually, I was really blue the last few months. And whenever I'd acknowledge that fact I felt the need to erase it. Not really sure why. I've never been good at lying to myself and even less to fight off melancholy.
I'm finishing the nameless book... And so eager to drive off to familiar landscapes of snow and frozen beauty. Maybe that's what I'm struggling with. Desire and fear often come entwined. Perhaps there's a bit of shame too, for not being able to live up to my own resolutions. But this my life, this is all I got, the least I can do is respect it properly as to enjoy it as much as I can, don't you agree?
I'm reading Clarissa since a while ago, and it's addictive and terrible, just like watching a collision of trains in slow motion. You gasp and yell and are crushed by the anguish and impotence, yet there's absolutely nothing to do. I know the end before I even passed the first page. Not only that, I also know Lovelace actually betrays the girl as she feared.
This is a wonderfully complex book. The depth of characters is dazzling and the whole structure of letters is just overwhelming. Besides, you have this painfully seductive masculine hero (antagonist??), terrible and irresistible at the same time. I'm at awe as to what Lovelace awakens in me. I despise him and yet it's impossible not to be drawn by him in such a strong way. Clarissa, on the other hand, is one of those perfect female characters, pious and good, such as Emily, but a lot less generous and approachable. She's way too severe and, as Marianne, she's a stranger to her own desire...
It's funny, I'm a feminist, yet I have a soft spot for libertines, which in fact are the incarnation of everything I despise in masculine cultural constructions. I guess this is because I'm also a liberal and a romantic, thus passion and freedom are the qualities I respect the most.

I always said I'm a knot of contradictions, but this only proves I'm true.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/08/23/5l21f6_light_in_the_night Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:21:15 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/08/23/5l21f6_light_in_the_night Citati's making me insane. I love the dear boy insanely and we're old buddies. I first fell in love with his writing and thinking through "Il male assoluto" - which was delightfully perfect- and when I saw "La luce della notte" in a bookstore was really thrilled.
This book is like drowning in the whole of mankind history in a heartbeat. He reflects on mankind's greatest myths from ancient times to nowadays, digging the truth behind them in that wonderful writing style of his I love so much.
I was amused. Just yesterday, before beginning this book, I was reading "Die Gunderode" -finally!!- and had a smile plastered on my face through all the last pages in which Bettine tells Karoline of her history lessons in such a wonderful way, going from one conquest, invasion, marriage, birth, to the other, the fall and rise of every empire, family, heroes, everything in just a couple of lines. I thought: I wish my history lessons were like that. Though I can't complain, I had the most wonderful history teacher in University, though she just focused on Chilean and Latin-American history. She made me love history. That history, I mean. Ancient history's easy to love if you're a romantic as I am.
This winter has been odd for me, and terrible too, in a way. I've been the whole season sick, one illness after the other. At the end, even the medications made me sick. If I think about it now it's funny, I can surely enjoy the irony, but a couple of weeks ago it wasn't amusing at all, it was a bloody nightmare. I went to see Tannhäuser feeling so suffocated that I almost fainted during the first act. I went anyway, I'm not willing to go on missing on the things I love just because I'm sick. I've always been a sickly person anyway. I'd be the most perfect romantic muse if I weren't a feminist *chuckles* I can only be my own muse and romantics always wanted their girls sick, ungraspable and silent. It's such a contradiction how much I love those guys in spite of that. Still, there are some I can't forgive.
Anyway, this year, for the first time, even though I love winter, I just want spring to arrive soon. Hopefully I'll get healthier then.
I also had the surgery. It was perfect and a lot faster than I expected. It's been two months and I'm perfect, in a couple of weeks I'll have the last check up with my doctor and that's it. I can live normally already, exercise en all. But I still have to wear the bandages for 30 days more. Now I can wear ballet bras in size S. It's incredible! However, I don't look like a boy no matter what. Nobody would get confused if I take off the top at the beach. I'm not as flat as I wanted, but still, can't complain.
I'm writing, but with much trouble, I need to force myself to keep the rhythm. I still can't believe how much Albert's death changed my life in that aspect. Nonetheless, I love to write, and am much joyful when I manage. I just don't care about publishing and all that anymore.
What can I say, my life's been pretty quiet these last few months. Mostly, I've just read, tons and tons of books. Never before did I manage to lose myself like this in what I love. It's been alright. Once in a while -more than less- I look around and realise I'm lost, but I don't care, as A said: To be lost you have to be in a place you don't want to be. I'm not like that, it's just sometimes I have not even the slightest idea where the hell am I...]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/06/17/5ibgt8_golden_dust Sun, 17 Jun 2012 02:36:29 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/06/17/5ibgt8_golden_dust It's been ages... My life really changed after Albertini's death, just as I thought it would happen.
I still write, but not obsessively anymore. And besides, I realized if he's not at the center of the story then I can't really get lost in it. I still try to move on the way I said I would, but the spark's not there, damn him! But well, I'll finish the novel I'm writing at neutral zone and then I'll ran to that familiar landscape once more. Who cares about resolutions and all that!
I still miss her a lot. And I have a new kitty that reminds me a lot of her. Her name's Kyoko, as in Mogami Kyoko. I thought maybe the names I love, such as Albertina, are actually a bit behind the terrible fate of my beloved ones. So I wanted something cheerful, something that would be positive and full of energy yet strong at the same time. This kitty arrived to my side just a few days after Albertina left me. A week at most. My mom found her starving outside her clinic. She was so tiny and dirty. She -also- fitted loosely in the palm of my hand. And she had an uncanny resemblance to Albert. She's white too, but completely, while Albertina had an ear and her tail in grey. But their faces and expressions are really similar. She's a sweet delight for me. And though at times she also makes me feel an intense pain because she reminds me of my little love, she's made it all a lot better.
But these last months were pretty tough because of another one of my cats. Alastor fell ill straight after Albertina died. He somehow consumed himself so quickly. Lost more than half his weight, and from being the biggest and strongest cat of the neighborhood, he became so frail and small. It was terrible to see. He couldn't jump and could barely walk, after being so active all these years.. We thought he had a problem with his spine and were ready for the surgery when we realized because of a new exam that the problem wasn't there. At the end, even though we tried everything, we couldn't find out what was wrong. Because of the symptoms and how he looked at the end we just ended up guessing it was a bone cancer that extended really quick, it didn't really matter, we knew there was no way to save him, so we just did everything we could to make his last time the best. I'm not really sure if it was right, because at the end he had to use a collar and I had to fed him tons of pills, give him droplets and vitamins and apply lotions on him everyday. The last days I just took off the collar because it wasn't helping and he wasn't even moving anymore, so we took him to Ale and put him to sleep. It was hard, because he fought til the very end, even though he was so sick. My mom tried to comfort me saying we had done everything and beyond for him, but that doesn't really eases the pain, right?
So, the same day Alastor left us, we decided to do something I had always avoided. We took in a kitty as a temporary home while she finished her cancer treatment. I've rescued cats for ages, but even though I'm involved with some animal organizations, I've never offered my home as a temporary place for their cases, mainly, because I love cats and can't part with them once they've been with me for a while, specially if they're weak and I've had to take care of them.
This cat was a white darling from a complicated case of cats abandoned in a house that was going to be demolished. Since she had been living outside for a long time, she had cancer on her ears. She's been with me for more than a month and though I've tried everything to help her, she progresses really slow. I had to put a collar on her a couple of weeks ago, because every time her ears were better, she'd scratch them until they were rags again. Now she can't do that, but she's depressed, with an eye infection -which thankfully is better by now- and with a bit of a cold. She's a scaredy cat and my 6 kitties terrorize her, so she's isolated. She's pretty stressed out. She reminds me of Kuro a lot. So I know that maybe I won't be able to help her much, besides taking care of her ears. I'm more humble now and know there are things beyond my power no matter how much I might struggle. Even though I know, I just hate it! And it doesn't mean I have to accept it quietly.

What else? I'm extremely sick right now, though hopefully getting better soon since I've been taking antibiotics for a couple of days by now and I also had a shot. I need to be better soon because I'll undergo surgery in 15 days -more or less-
Finally, I'm getting a chest reduction. Yay for me! I'm a cup DD, 88 cm of chest. Now I'll be a cup AA!! No idea how many cm of circumference is that, but I guess it must be a lot less.

About my readings, I've been stuck since months ago with "Over her dead body" by Elisabeth Bronfen. It's one of the most impressive books I've read in a while. I love it, but it's a bit complicated and repulsive at times, which is why it's taken me longer than usual. I've lost the respect I had for lots of authors and painters I loved thanks to this essay and their awful views of women, though it's not really they fault, but culture's, still...]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/02/28/5cncnw_albertina Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:33:06 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/02/28/5cncnw_albertina Last week my life broke to pieces. I attempted to write about it, to register what was going on in here, to preserve my fragmented memory which always tends to fog and to capture the feelings that were roaming devastating everything inside of me. But I couldn't. It's still really hard, but I force myself, as I force myself to sleep, wake up, eat, shower and do all the little things that somehow manage to glue some sense of coherence and movement to our existence.
Albertina died last tuesday. It was nightmare, my most frequent nightmare come true in the most ridiculous and abrupt way.
I'm really silly, you see... I know things work this way, I go everyday with that certainty tattooed on my chest and blurting as poisonous arrows from my mouth. I'm the kind of person that in a meeting, when hearing someone die, says: But what's so weird about that? The strange thing is that they managed to stay alive until now. That's it. I believe life is a miracle with all odds against it. An impossible...
However, at the same time, I'm a romantic, and a Fichtean one. I believe in will. I believe that's the most wonderful thing in us, which hold us higher. So I think if I go against a wall, I'll eventually break it in spite of it being made of titanium. I'll probably die doing it, but I'll leave a mark, I'll weaken it, I'll make a change. So, I tend to naively believe that I can defy everything, even death, my sweet old friend.
Albertina was a ray of sunlight in a dark room. A tiny pool of light in which I curled each night and day. I love her like I've never ever loved any of my animals, and I've had thousands and adored them all. In fact, she was among the beings I loved the most in my whole existence, never mind the species. She made me so joyful. I just had to steal a glance at her, listen to her calling for me while she grew bored as I wrote for too long or even remember her napping face or watch one of the 400 pictures I had of her in my cel to smile and forget everything else.
I knew how much I adored her and was terrified to lose her, but I had promised her I'd do anything to keep her safe always. And I'd have given my life without a single thought in exchange for hers.
Because she was so tiny, spoilt and a bit clueless, I was really overprotective. Was always chasing after her and didn't let her go out at night. She trusted me completely, to the point she'd let herself fall off chairs just so I'd rush over her to catch her in the air.
She was the cutest thing ever, playful, affectionate and even grumpy at times. I learnt to become a kitty just for her, so I'd crawl at her height and hide behind a corner to jump on her as she walked by chasing a butterfly or planning mischiefs.
Sometimes we took naps together and then she'd get impatient and woke up meowing so I got off the bed and laid in the carpet to play. Then we'd lay face to face on the floor and she'd caress my face so softly with her paw before crawling to my neck to bite and nib at my hair.
I was the whole day stealing glances at her, searching for her everywhere, talking to her, placing sunblock on her tiny nose and her pink ears. I was in love. Seriously! Everyone home was terrified that she'd get lost or something might happen to her, so when she managed to escape at night to chase bugs, which she loved, it was a whole military operation to bring her back inside again when I wasn't around.
I don't think there was ever a cat so adored, cared for and protected anywhere. Since she was like a dream, as a caricature of a dreamed kitty, like those of vintage illustration cards with a butterfly on their noses, everybody loved her. Ale was crazy about her, and when we took her to controls, she always laughed because everybody who saw her asked right away if she was up for adoption.
I rescued her from a tree in a abandoned house just before a storm last winter. She was small as a dot. Fitted loosely on my palm and so skinny, dirty and hungry she didn't even move. Wherever you left her, there she stayed until you picked her up. That didn't last long though.... She knew how loved she was, so soon she turned into a delicious spoilt princess.
The night before she died, she was at my bed, as usual, and after a while I opened my door so Poli, Aiko and Jesper could join her. They all slept peacefully for a while and then I fed them downstairs. When I went to take a shower, just before going to bed, she was sleeping in a chair on the bath, so I wrapped her in my towel and left her tucked in. She loooooved that.
The next day she fell of my mom's window frame and died. Or at least, that's what we think. I fed her early as usual and opened the windows downstairs like every day so they'd all go out to sunbathe and play in the garden. Then I worked like crazy until lunch, and after I ate I went up and leaned on my window to see if she was sleeping down there, which was her favorite place. There she was, but when I called her, she didn't look up and I knew something was wrong. I ran downstairs and when I got there she was already dead. I couldn't believe it and truth is I'm not so sure about all that happened. I think I cried and yelled and then my mom and J-kun came and I'm not sure... She had no injuries and she was in the same position she always slept at the sun. But there was a tiny trail of blood coming out from her nose. I was in my room the whole time and didn't hear a thing, and I was always on the lookout for any fights or anything. I had just seen her a little while before.
I think the first I thought was that it was impossible. Nothing of it could be real. I didn't understand. I had done everything in my power and even more to protect her, I had become obsessed and the laughingstock of everyone, yet I hadn't been able to save her. I hadn't even been able to be there when she left me. I couldn't say goodbye as I did with Medora. It was such a cruel mock of fate or whatever.
I had often thought I wouldn't be able to live without her, and the day after it all happened, when I was a bit calmer and could actually think about it, I thought I should have kept quiet and just slit my wrists or something to die with her. But I was in shock. And I'm glad I didn't do something so stupid. But thinking about her alone kills me. At least then we could have gone together and all that. Now, I know this is ridiculous. I'm a non believer, so I know she wasn't there anymore by the time I found her, it was only her body and so it wouldn't have made a difference if I laid by her side hugging her.
Still, it's so hard without her. I knew she made me 'happy' but I had no idea the extent of it. These last days have been hell. I've been taking lots of pills but still most of the time I can barely breathe and I've never cried so much in my whole life. I keep having nightmares and all the time I'm looking over my shoulder to catch a glance of her or comment something to her. I seem to hear her meows and I never thought something could hurt like this. Everything reminds me of her. Since we spent so much time together she had become an element essential in my surroundings and the void she left behind is immense. The world seems such a sad and desolated place without her...
I can't write, can't read, can't nap, can't do anything but playing PS3, which manages to distract me a bit. I actually can't imagine something giving me pleasure or joy. My life became such a desolated landscape from one moment to the next one. If I think of any of the things I used to enjoy or love, they seem totally worthless now. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to write again... because right now I just can't even think about it.
I realized, there were so many things I thought were important, so many dreams, desires, worries or joys I had, and they were nothing!!! Last week was my bday and when blowing the candles I wished, as always, to be able to become a really good writer, published worldwide. Now I just realize how stupid I was not to wish just a single day more with her by my side. I'd give everything I have just to see her eyes staring at me once more, all my books, my clothes, the novels I'm yet to write, the ones I wrote in the past.
Her eyes were light blue, really pale you know... but sometimes, they'd look completely black, like a well without bottom.
Somehow I had assumed just because I wanted to, and because I tried so hard, we'd grow old together. I never before thought about wanting to grow old with someone, living together.
In fact, one of the main reasons I wanted to buy the apartment this year and move out as soon as possible was so I could leave the door to my room always open. Cat's hate closed doors and since I live with so many people and animals I was forced to have mine always shut. So whenever she wanted to come in or go out she'd have to let me know. I understood right away, but still. I wanted her to be able to go and come as she might want to.
It's strange how her leaving me seems to have changed so many things. I don't think my life will be the same ever again. Somethings I used to love I can't stand now. She was the best friend I ever had... and so opposite to me, so warm, cozy and cute. She was pure light. How can I go on in this endless night without her?











She'd sleep in the weirdest and loveliest positions...



Teasing Abi...

]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/02/16/5c0dqk_waltz_of_shadows Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:22:29 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/02/16/5c0dqk_waltz_of_shadows I'm writing regularly again -as it should be obvious by now- hence my absence from this lovely journal I hold so dear to my black lil heart.
Besides that, I've been trying to finish FFXIII, which I had put on hold more than a year ago, so I can start playing the sequel which I got fanatically the same day it was released. It's ridiculous! I stopped playing that game because I didn't have time when I was in chapter 11. So close to the end! Now I'm a bit more relaxed so I manage to squeeze just the right amount of time to play a bit each day. I was surprised to see Raines was alive, and pretty sad to see him die for the second time just moments afterwards.
Speaking about that, the "Recollections of the last days...·" by Trelawny wasn't as bad as I thought. In fact, it seemed quite fair to me. I mean, Shelley spoke worse of Byron in letters than Trelawny did in his book. Even if sometimes he was a bit ill intentioned in his words, when it came to his books he was completely objective and honest about his admiration. I liked that.
Still, this book was hard to read, it saddened me a lot... and I had thought I couldn't get sad reading about the same thing for the hundredth time. I was mistaken, of course. While I read -once more- about Shelley's drowning and the burning of his body by the sea, Byron's decay and the total failure of the greek campaign, it depressed me a lot.
I told my lil devil -I've read about Shelley's death so many times, but each time it's like living it.... I mean, feeling it all again.
He stared at me and said -You didn't live it, ever.
He's right. He mocked me just last night saying I need to understand they're not my friends, they died long ago, we're generations apart.
I know that. It's just that when I read something I experience it completely. I remember in one of the books about this subject, can't really remember which one, the writer, who had been present at Shelley's funeral, said they had forgotten to burn incense with the body and therefore the smell was terrible like that of a barbecue. I actually smelled it, I still feel it on my nostrils. Trelawny described it completely different, but I don't trust him much. He wrote the book 20 years after it all happened and memories tends to get embellished and idealized with time.

After that I read "Natsu no hana" by Tamiki Hara, which is a novel in first person about the Nuclear bomb and Hiroshima. This is a subject I've read about a lot too. So it doesn't shock me too much nowadays. None the less, it's terrible to read about the experiences of the ones who went through that hell. I've read great journalism about this subject, such as "Hiroshima" by Hershey. The great thing about this particular novel-biography was that it was written by someone who was actually at Hiroshima at the time of the bomb and he describes wonderfully in a cruel yet poetic way the period before the bomb with the fear and uncertainty; the day it fell on the city, the horror and confusion; and the weeks after that, when healthy people started to get sick, the weather went insane and all that.
This is such a powerful book and the effect is quite devastating, even for someone like me who already read a lot about this subject. But well, I already wrote about it for work, so I won't get into it here. Anyone interested can read about it
here, in spanish though.

What I really wanted to write about, was the book I read after that one and which i finished yesterday, "Shadow dance" by Angela Carter. I'm running out of books by her and that terrifies me.
This book reminded me a bit of "Love", because the characters are a bit similar to the ones on that story though the denouement in this one is a lot more tragic. This is the first book Carter published and I think that explains a lot, since it's pretty different from most of her books, and a lot harder to digest, not because of her usual complexity, but because the story's so painful and terrible it gave me a stomachache since the first page.
This is a terrible, terrible book. And Ghîslaine was a dreadful, monstrous, angelical character. She appears in the first pages and then she's absent until the end, yet her overwhelming presences pervades all the book, every dialogue, each single thought and action of the characters. She is the true monster woman of Carter, free in a non free society, and terrible punished for it, though her revenge is far worst.
So what is the story about?
A beautiful, angelical, liberal girl who does as she pleases and sleeps with whoever she wants gets punished for it by Honeybuzzard, who cuts her face making her terribly disfigured. Morris, Honey's friend and business parter feels guilty for he thinks he was the one who instigated Honey to do it.
After she leaves the hospital and starts roaming the streets like a revengeful angel, leaving only destruction at her steps, he is faced with his worst fears and gets suffocated in his unhappy apparently conventional life. His only release and that which scares him and seduces him the most is the time he spends with Honey, when he leans on a different universe full of darkness and danger.
This is a complex book, as most by Carter, and considering the title and certain lines here and there, most of the time I had the idea that Honey was just Morris Id. He accomplished everything Morris wanted but didn't dare to do and at the end, when he decides to go help Honey, he simply disappears.
As it should be obvious, my favorite characters where Ghîslaine herself, Honey -who though terrible is deadly seductive- and Emily, Honey's plaything at the moment who was incredible, strong and independent. I hated Morris, he reminded me of Lee, whom I despise wholeheartedly. I dislike that kind of characters the most, so lukewarm, coward, self-indulgent, just pathetic! Honey, in all his evilness, is passionate to the core, that alone already redeems him to me.

"They drove on in bitter silence. Morris could not keep from picturing Henry Glass's return to the empty basement, stumbling over the scrubbed wooden cradle he had hand-crafted for his child (for that was the sort of thing he did), discovering caches of small garments hidden away in drawers with female undergarments, finding on the bathroom shelf the indescribably pathetic half-used lipstick, the still damp face-flannel.
'It is all getting very sad' he said at last. 'It is a bad spring, this year. I'm so sorry for them all.'
'They are all shadows. How can you be sorry for shadows?' Honey's voice was harsh. Morris could only see the shadowed profile of the soft-fruit face and, seen in this way, it seemed not soft but a cutting edge, adamantine."

[Shadow dance / Pag. 86]

"He wanted to embrace her to convince himself she was real, snatch at her grey overall, catch her hand, but she made off immediately for another table, singing her little song. He had forgotten until he saw her that he thought he had helped to kill her.
The suddenness of her resurrection was miraculous. Lazarus, she waddled away on her creaking black shoes, moulded over the years to the shape of the horny, corny, nooks and crannies and lumps and bumps and crevices and promontories and fjords of her swollen and time-deformed feet. The grey lisle stockings swaged richly about her ankles. Her back bunched and bent with age and fat and life. She was alive.
Alive."

[Shadow dance / Pag. 161]

Now I'm reading "Danse Macabre" by Stephen King, whom though not among my very best favorites, is still one of those writers I truly respect. He writes wonderfully and has one or two books that I loved so much as to give away as presents to my beloveds one after the other.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/01/27/5b0wcm_seductions... Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:06:14 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/Angelical_devil/journal/2012/01/27/5b0wcm_seductions... I finished "Seductions in Narrative" and was really shaken by it. Though Jeanette Winterson's chapters were less traumatic. There was this awesome quote of her at some point in which she said something like -Books are cleverer than their authors... for they always contain more than the writer intended to put into them.
That's so beautifully true, and it's what dazzles me the most of the writing process. You wander trusting the story will take you to the place you need to go, and it's always exactly like that and better.
When I sit in front of the blank page I know my character will go out, but I have no idea where or what will he find there. But I know the story knows. So I go on writing freely and when he enters a narrow alley and finds a tiny door I know whatever lays behind will have meaning for the story beyond that page. It's wonderful.

Anyway, this book is one of the bests non fictional ones I've read in a while. It was pure delight and I wished it would go on forever, just like 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen', 'Delayed endings' and "Romanticism..." by Safranski. Not many books have made me feel this way in my life.

"Freudian and Lacanian accounts of femininity pose obvious problems for the reader of Heroes. Here is a young woman, Marianne, who, far from being a passive, receptive figure, commodified as an object of desire, allows her unconscious to flow in wild ways to find personification in the figure of a beautiful young man. In turn, she represents Jewel through such perspicacious descriptions as 'a curiously shaped, attractive stone... an object with drew her' (Heroes 82).
What went wrong Dr. Freud?"

[Seductions in Narrative/ Pag. 94]

"For a girl child who has been brutally propelled into the violent symbolic through witnessing the murder of her brother at the hands of a Barbarian boy, a stroll in the forest is far from terrifying. Fear is soon conquered and, with it, mobility is achieved. It is only wicked girls that go anywhere they fancy."

[Seductions in Narrative/ Pag. 105-106]

"'When the Soldiers see you coming, they will think you are the devil incarnate, riding a black horse'
'They are the devils, with their glass faces. One cannot escape the consequences of one's appearance'
'It os the true appearance of neither of you'
'But it's true as long as one or the other of us wants to believe it'
'You're not a human being at all, you're a metaphysical proposition'. (Heroes 145)"

[Seductions in Narrative/ Pag. 133-134]

"If 'a free woman in an unfree society will be a monster' (Carter, Sadeian 27), Marianne is grotesquely monstrous. Her monstrosity does not come from her self, but from her freedom to discover, imagine and explore her desire away from social constrains -the 'unfree[dom]'- of both her native home and her community of adoption. The exploration of her desire transforms everything -including her self- into something unstable and at risk, in bringing the dark side of her psyche, the unconscious, into play. Desire is within her, 'a terra incognito or the back of the moon' (Heroes 86), which acquires the fleshly manifestation of Jewel to remind her that the Other is in her, and hence the Self/Other distinction is a useless proposition"

[Seductions in Narrative/ Pag. 137]

"The lesson to be learnt is that stories can be changed, and that new stories appear after one inflicts a certain degree of perversion to already existing stories. It all depends on the point of view and the manipulative skills of the narrator, together with the new story she needs to create, of course. After all, literature can be transformative, if one is brave enough to believe in it."

[Seductions in Narrative/ Pag. 210]

"As subjects-in-process, we inhabit a constant, transitional utopian state of desire. Through our narrative seductions, we are able to imagine an alternative location of fantasy where the multiple subject that we may be can be fully explored, where we can appear and disappear, where we can temporarily articulate the desire for the Other, where we can metamorphose in a tale of becoming, the open-endedness of which will sustain the liberating uncertainties of desire. If 'all stories are inscriptions of desire' (Belsey, Desire 209), desire also transforms lives into stories, even if it remains uninscribed, elusive and excessive."

[Seductions in Narrative/ Pag. 273]

After I finished the book by Gemma López, I decided to try something really different and went for "Idoru" by Gibson, which had been in my shelves since months ago when Cami lent it to me. I don't usually like Sci Fi or Fantasy, though one could argue some books by Carter are both, same with Winterson, but those are complex hybrids, I mean more like traditional books in the genre. Gibson is the exception. I loved "Neuromancer" and "Idoru" was just as good. Of course, it didn't reskinned me *chuckles* but it was really interesting and fun. Once in a while this is alright too.

Now I'm reading "Recollections of the last days of Shelley and Byron" by Trelawny. I had this book since quite a while ago, but was reluctant to read it because, even if Trelawny is a first source to the life of two of my favorite poets, he was an annoying bastard. And I had been warned about his indulgence towards the distortion of reality, specially when it meant to revenge on Byron through his writing. Ass! I dislike him a lot, everything, from his pathetic attempt to imitate the Byronic hero, to his disappointment as a fanboy when he actually got to meet dear George, and then his departure from the greek campaign and his relationship with Mary Godwin after Shelley died. Everything's just fishy if you ask me.
But well, I'm reading it anyway and it hasn't been that bad so far, but I'm just staring. We'll see.]]>