Farewell my Musketeers, till we meet again!

Caution: contains spoilers for both books and movies…

I shed a tear for Porthos and I shed a tear for Mousqueton.  I cried my eyes out even before I even read the chapters concerning Athos.  It’s not like I didn’t know about the end of those great men; I’d had deep discussions about it with fellow readers, and often wondered about Dumas’ decision to separate them in such a way.  Truth be told, I had not read the book (The Vicomte de Bragelonne) until now, because I loved the movie The Man in the Iron Mask so much, and when I learned that the book was very very different, to the point of never having the four musketeers meet at the same time, I was utterly afraid that it would bring about a nasty disappointment for the end of the magnificent saga.  Granted, the book is not easy to come across in some places of Mexico, but I still did try to delay finding it as much as I could.

See, here’s the deal, and I’m aware that these words coming from a writer seem contradictive, but the movie is much much better than the book.  It has a few horrible mistakes, but even then it also salvaged some of the most important points that nostalgia asked the book to cover and didn’t.

Before I go into that, I have to point out three things:  one, although I do not agree with how some of the characters were portrayed, I fully accept that the acting was phenomenal; two, I absolutely hated Louise de la Valliere, and that particular book within the book drove me insane; and three, the actual reason I prefer the movie is the image of the musketeers putting their heads and their swords together for one final great cause (namely the final scene in the Bastille).

All right, so I shall start with the actors… or rather, I will start with my most important question to date:  why can’t anybody get Athos right? Athos, the most beautiful, noble, poignant man on Earth, why is it so hard to portray him as *that*? (I’m talking about 1993 to the day, cos that’s when I was introduced to the saga.  I have seen pictures of the earlier actors, and am willing to admit that Van Heflin or Powys Thomas might change my mind if I ever come across their Musketeer movies). Today, everywhere you look, there is always this cocky, arrogant dude; drunken a great deal of the time, and very mean to the servants…  Now, Kiefer Sutherland did a good enough job, somber and full of grief and very strong and powerful, and he got the noble part down right!  His acting was especially good, it was only his looks that did not agree with me (he *is* a handsome fellow, I’ll give you that, but he’s just not Athos); for me, Athos is all about the black hair and dark* eyes.

(Super-quick side note: yes, the 1993 Disney movie will always be high in my esteem, nothing I say here will take away anything that that movie ever gave me.)

Athos is a perfect model of man and literary character, even though today, as I *am* a bit more mature than I ever was in my teens, I am able to see beyond the tragic-hero facade and notice that the reality of the age (the time period, not his or my age) tended to create heroes from men that would relentlessly kill someone if they made fun of their swords or clothes or beards.  To die in a duel was as magnificent as to die in combat, so, just to make sure the Universe gets this right, when I say Athos is the perfect man, I do not mean I want a man who will fight anybody for just any reason just like that.  Defending me form something big would be cool, but not fighting someone because they made fun of his shoes or something, got it? Right, moving on.  For these, characters, the Three Musketeers, it was all about keeping their head up, even if the nasty things other people told them were true.  I suppose it was mostly like that for every other man of the time.  Considering that, they were noble and valiant, and as literary figures, work phenomenal!

Oh, and John Malkovich, whoa there!  He is a magnificent actor, no question about that, but in what head was it ever imagined that he was beautiful and noble and somber?  Well, he is a good final-days Athos, which basically means the last two months of his life, when he suddenly gets old and dies at 62, right after hearing that Raoul died…  Other than that, no.  I still love him as an actor, mind you all, but no. Just, no.

Oh!  And there is a brand new series that I’ve been meaning to watch (and for me “brand-new” could be anything from out yesterday to a cool show from the eighties that I just discovered, so bear with me here), The Musketeers, from the BBC.  I saw the pilot the other day, and found so good that I can say that I will give Tom Burke a chance.  Capaldi is this close to dethroning Tim Curry, too, so yay!  The others are not bad at all, and I’m quite keen on watching this first season that just ended.  Then I might have a little second part to this entry, who knows.

As I think I might be done with Athos, I will speak of Louise de la Valliere, because I did thank her last time for the insights she gave me about love… the insight is this: do not be like Louise de la Valliere if you ever want to find love! Ever!  Granted, she never really said yes to Raoul, she was cornered into being called his fiancé, but seriously, all of that fainting is not cool.  OK, so I know women used to faint a lot in those days, cos if they ever got excited or scared they would utterly stop breathing because of their bodices (apparently that’s how men knew they were absolutely feminine, meh) (Pirates of the Caribbean taught us that in modern times, remember?), but no…!  All of that softness and innocence, even though she knew she was delivering her best friend in the world the worst pain of all, unbecoming!  Yes, softness and innocence are pretty nice in a young woman, but not while torturing someone else, cos she never even had the decency to talk to him about it and break her compromise…  Everything would have been different if she’d just told him she didn’t want to marry him, cos then later she was just being the victim, and that’s seriously wrong… As for Louis XIV and Phillippe, I said it then and I say it now: Di Caprio was the best choice ever to play those parts!  I like the movie better in that, because it really shows you more of the hidden brother, whereas in the book he’s just in and out (or rather out and back in) in just a night.  Shame, because that’s the moment when Dumas should have said Musketeers Unite! you know?  That’s the way I kind of play it in my head: after he’s taken back to the Bastille, all four of them go back and rescue him, and then the movie plays out a bit in my head and the saga is over.

But I have to go back a bit into how Louise and Louis partake into each other: he only falls for her because she’d admitted openly that he’s like the Sun for her.  She knows the dude’s a womanizer.  Did she ever think it was for real? True, that was a time when the most wonderful thing for a lover was to kiss the tips of the fingers of the other’s hands, so it takes them like forever to get physical, but still, didn’t she notice that he’d get tired of her eventually?  Well, but of course she noticed, since she did tell D’Artagnan that she’d have her punishment soon enough **right at Raoul’s grave, by the way**…  So, if she knew that, then why did she stick around?  Like I said, yes, she gave me insights all right: be honest when you love, with whatever type of love it is, and don’t go making people think that you feel more than you do… and learn to walk away if the situation gets bad.  Seriously, I do not agree with Raoul’s reaction: she was not worth it, at all!  Not worth living for, and definitely not worth dying for, either!  He should have walked away as well, walked back into his own life and into someone worthy of all he had to give… 

And those are actually the reasons I had been stalling reading this book for so long… because I knew I would not agree with the ending that Dumas had chosen for my friends from adolescence.  It hurts to know that even with all my complaining and rambling it is one of the best classics out there and that I have to make my peace with it anyways.  It hurts to know that I can’t even say that I didn’t like the book, because truth being told, I did like it almost as much as the previous two!  It is impeccably written and it draws out the psychologies of these great men in a way that another writer could not have done half as well.  It also depicts the time with no softening or misgivings.  Yes, he makes some mistakes with dates and places here and there, but if we consider it from the point of view of Literature rather that History, it satisfies both Story and History in an enchanting way.  In all probabilities, maybe he just didn’t dare to over-fictionalize that part of history (or rather legend), to the point of getting characters together for actions that didn’t really happen, and he might have had his reasons for that.  For whatever else, he knew these characters for years, and he might have also have kept their deaths apart because it would have hurt him too much otherwise if he hadn’t…  It is a known fact that he spared Aramis in a later revision of the text, so perhaps I could be right?  I myself cannot envision killing one or many of my characters in a major battle like that of the Bastille in the movie, and even Rowling went for showing as few as possible of her character’s deaths (some might disagree with me, but if we consider the amount of characters that died in that last battle at Hogwarts, I might also be right in thinking that she knew they had to go there but that it would be too painful to describe each event).  So, who knows?  Maybe there are letters in which he talks about this to somebody; maybe there is a diary with an alternate ending somewhere.  Maybe we will never know.  And just maybe I have to make my peace with it.

… and will probably have to repeat it as often as needed till I believe it.

So, for now,

“Athos –Porthos, farewell till we meet again!  Aramis, adieu forever!”

-D’Artagnan as he died…

Thanks for reading me today, in all my pain about my latest good-bye…  I wish you all a wonderful weekend and plenty of laughter and love.

Cheers!

*Or are Athos’ eyes blue…?  I have a serious problem with this…  You know that Elton John song, “Your song”?  “So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do, you see I’ve forgotten if their green or their blue…”? Well, that’s me all right, and they can be the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen and I could go on a month and still have no idea what colour they are… really, just one more thing I have to make my peace with, only this time with myself!

The right to wish for romance back

There are moments in life when all a girl needs is a kiss from a good man… and that is perfectly all right, as long as she knows that once it’s satisfied, or merely passed, she can just move on and carry on with her life.  There will be times such said good man will stay with her forevermore; there will be times he’ll just float by.  There will be times he won’t even comply.  Sadly, there might be times as well when she’ll realize he’s not such a good man as she’d thought, and then she’d better move away.  But the key here, and hear me right, is that she continues down her path, either to keep searching or maybe enjoying the new company, it’s all the same: she should still keep walking, wearing a beautiful smile and taking pleasure in everything else there is to see in life –either still searching, or now accompanied…!

Oh *blush*, I wrote this as part of a dialogue between my characters, hehehe, but it just went on and on and on and I realized that it was exactly what I wanted to say to so many people with whom I’ve had the “Romance: real or not?” conversation (and with many that have ever given me the “You must love yourself before asking someone to love you” speech). I actually wrote this weeks ago, with no idea whatsoever that what happened to me last weekend was going to happen, so it now makes it all the more poignant for me to post it… maybe to make it very clear to the Universe that *this* is what I believe, and that I am more than ready to put a full stop to the recurring heartache that my life has developed into...  So, I will keep writing now from the moment I broke the character monologue… and here goes!

And all this I write to say, folks, don’t keep love away from life! Don’t judge a woman because she might need companionship at one point or another.  To need romance is extremely different than needing friendship or nurturing love from parents or family.  It’s not that one is “deeper” than the other.  In fact, there is not one “deeper” love at all.  Love is love in EVERY way, it just changes shape depending on the chemistry it creates (or lack of thereof) between the people involved; and the fact that a woman needs romantic love every once in a while does not make her weak at all, or incomplete, or should be classified as “having feelings of low-self worth”, or such said things.  A woman needing romantic love is merely HUMAN, something society has forgotten ever since romance was pegged as an illusory thing, as a fantasy image that people cling to when they’re unhappy with their lives… Well, it’s not: it’s real and should be brought back to life… Dating should come back, flowers should come back, being the best person for someone we fancy should come back…  Wait, that can be misunderstood…  Let me expand.  New paragraph please :)

See, here is where we erred, when it was stated that dating is a masquerade because a person only puts on their best face to awe someone and then shows his/her real face when they have them under their spell…  What are we?  A bunch of nincompoopy loser jerks? No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no…  As if “morning face” was a bad thing, or being angry at something or having a bad day meant being a bad person… the idea of “now showing the real face” seems to convey that letting the other person see the “real you” means showing a really bad person that lies underneath the “good face” shown on the date… BUT unless the person is actually evil, then the “real them” should not be bad at all!  If the real person is indeed evil, or truly horrible, then he/she would be pathological and should not be considered into the normal (so to say) standard of what dating is usually like, is it?  I mean, we’ve all got our horror stories of the person who only wanted to date us for sex or for money or for whatever, but I refuse to believe that that is the majority of the population…  I mean, most of us are really okay guys, aren’t we?  People who are searching for what’s best for them in the world should not be put down just because they had a bad day one time, nor should they be classified as to “having shown their true face”.  And in any case, it should never be that we look better or act better on a date than we do at home just because we want to impress someone…  It would be better that we always strive to be the best person we can be, but for ourselves, not for others… and then, when we do meet someone we fancy, then we would want to show them that beauty: we should be proud to show them the better person we’re becoming or have become.

That’s what dates should turn into, a pleasure to be ourselves because we already love who we are, and show that person happily to others…  That’s why romance is real, because it came from real emotions and real desires to follow-up on those emotions…  and just the fact that the world is so sexed-up today –don’t get me wrong, I like sex as much as the next person-, it should not mean that sex has to stop being romantic altogether…

I have to make a little tangent here…  So, the liberty of sex, then… I have had so many talks about this subject with so many people over the past few months that it’s starting to make me feel like a preacher. Lol.  (I guess). (Yeah, why not? Let’s try and look at it from the ironic-twist point of view).  So then, yeah, lol.  Ironic twist: I do not believe in religion.  I am not a moralist.  I am not a goody-two-shoes.  I am a woman with needs and desires just like anybody else; I support the need of women to maintain their beautiful-being status while they also do career and brainy stuff.  Like many others, I also believe that the world has become so sexed-up that it’s just not as enticing anymore, and girls have to run around half-naked just to prove that they can compete, but that’s where the respect is lost and women get separated into two categories: the easy ones and the respectful ones.  The easy ones have a hard enough time feeling that they’re not lovable enough, and the respectful ones have to sit there and pretend not to care when the men around them gape at all the other girls but won’t touch *them* (the respectful ones) because they respect them too much...  I’m saying this out of both my own experience and from comments I’ve heard from women of many ages and many nationalities...

More tangent... I think that because I’ve been overweight because of my medication for such a long time, it’s hard for me to let go of the pain of not looking the way I wish so I could be sexy-stylish without looking easy... the thing is, even overweight, I love my body, and I love it when people notice I have a good body, and it is important to me that if a man is interested in me then he shows me that he appreciates me visually, but that hardly ever happens... (oh, me me me, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!  Sorry about the egotistic rant there, I have a point, I promise). Because I tend to fall for really amazing guys who have direction and a lot of brains and usually a touch of that geekiness that I find so appealing, I try to follow their signs and when I feel that they feel the same way then make my move and it goes so wrong...  God help me, were I dare to show my cleavage or my legs and they “respectfully” avert their eyes... I lean forward and they lean back. (Er, not physically, but as in terms of taking that scary I’M INTERESTED step...).  They go with “You’re so beautiful and so smart and you deserve someone great”.  Yes I do, and I was going for you, you dummy.  The only one time I actually went for “Let’s have sex now” I was greeted with a very uneasy “Are you crazy?”. Granted, I was not aware that that one time he had actually had sex with a close friend of mine just weeks before, so I guess that I should not take *that* one too personal.  (Oh, and note: I am not talking about one-night stands, I’m talking about the ones I truly find interesting, attractive and amazing. Period.  The ones I am worth having by my side.  Double period.)  OMG I feel so Carrie Bradshaw now going all sex-talk on my blog...  I should have stayed in bed and kicked my heels in the air as I typed instead of getting all British Library(—ish?).  Maybe next time, lol.

So, back to the (secondary) subject: just because sex has become so important (or rather, so open) in every-day life, it does not mean that dating and romance should be forgotten...  It would just be healthier if it was a combination of all three...

Just to close, let’s go back to go back to the “deeper” love thing: it’s always a contest, isn’t it? “A mother’s love is deeper because she carries and nurtures”, or “A father’s love is deeper because he provides and protects”, or a grandparent’s love is deeper because it’s tenderness, or a sibling’s cos it’s strength, or a friend’s cos it’s chosen and unconditional...  I could go on and on...  But I won’t. I want to finish this with a statement:

Love is LOVE. Period. It is all the same.  It comes in different shapes and sizes and colours and textures, but it is always deep.  Love means deepness.  Love means it IS.  And it can end and it can start just like anything else in the world. But when it’s there, it’s there.  When you love someone as a parent, as a friend, as a partner, it’s love all the same, even though the physical and biochemical responses to each are so different between them.  Love is love.  Take it and enjoy it and live it.

Oh, that was a whole paragraph then...  Good...  Well, just add to that the next statement: if it hasn’t been transformed into love yet but it’s underway, then take it and enjoy it and live it all the same...  I mean, cos I was talking about dating in the beginning of this entry, and we obviously can’t fall in love just like that while we’re dating, but there is a reason for the “deeper” love subject to have been inserted here.  It’s not that out of the blue...  Well, it’s out of the blue box, true, cos I started writing the first bit of the blog (the one that was mean to be part of a dialogue) from something Peter Capaldi said online about the Doctor not flirting with Clara because he wanted to take the Doctor’s love back to that “deeper” love he showed in the original series... so I wrote the dialogue!  Lol.  He just made me be in the right place to order some of these ideas, and I truly respect the man greatly ;)... Not because I disagree with him about the idea of what “deeper” love is (and in fact am glad to know there won’t be flirting involved this season), does that make me less eager for tomorrow evening to come around...  But I to close up (again) let’s just say that the process of finding love should be just as beautiful as having it already, and there are plenty of people out there who deserve to be happy as they search for love.  It’s the same than with all kinds of happiness really, that’s why I spoke of the path on the first paragraph: so many lines have been written about this, in all times and all places, the key is enjoying the path...  Oh, the key to happiness is a matter for another entry, maybe someday when I’m not so much on page three but at the beginning of the document?  I think that if I could just get over that whole “Academic writing stresses me out” I could even write a whole essay on it, given the amount of things I’ve learned about happiness in my life...  That makes me feel good.  I wish the same for everyone else ...  OK, I have to close now...!

Oh, as I thanked Capaldi for spurring me with his words, I also want to thank Cordelia and Louise de la Valliere, because they too gave me good insights on the matter from the pages of two amazing Classics...

Much love to all, of EVERY kind available!  And blessings and happy days and nights ahead!

Cheers!

On social evolution, hopeful stereotype deletion and an evening full of growth

So, in the same evening I met an (X nationality) war veteran who insisted in making fun of me for “working” at a very touristic spot (South Bank, in view of the Tower Bridge), even though I’d told him that I was writing some notes because the view inspired me; a very energetic 30-something Mexican-American who is all about finding ways to help people exploit their abilities to get to their goals even if they have to look for alternate paths (yes, I asked for her email, got another ally on my business planning, yay!); an impressive 40+ Welsh special-needs secondary school teacher whom I fell in love with a little bit (though it could have just been a biochemical reaction based on his grazing my knee in a fit of over-gesticulation) (well, and because of “British-nerdy-teacher type” thing, lift your hand who didn’t see that coming!) who delivered us a super-intelligent take on social integration and deletion of stereotypes; and an (X nationality) historian who insists that everybody from any country is pretty much the same as their co-nationals (but gets uber-irritated when someone says “Yes, I know this or that is true cos I saw it on The Tudors/Spartacus/Rome/ect.”) (I get the irritation, I just don’t agree with the double standard), and who also tried to feed us a lot of stereotypes about his own country.

This has been a very interesting evening indeed…  I have to say that I had first written both nationalities of the people with the negative points of view, then I realized that this post was a way to vent about the so-called historian and I decided to stick to my prerogative: see the good in people, in this city, in this PLANET, because we are all so different anyway, wherever we’re from, that it’s best if we just let go of those things that might annoy us from other people.  Even those who stick to their beliefs such as that because you are in a touristic spot you should not have your nose stuck in a notebook (yes, sir, the Tower Bridge *can* be inspiring enough to make someone write stuff in a notebook), or that historians have to be objective and recognize social evolution only in academic environments but socially they should advocate to stereotypes because that’s what’s expected in society (his own words, not mine), even those people ARE in a path of learning, of opening even if it doesn’t seem so at the moment…  they might get it or not in this lifetime, but in the end it’s really about not letting it get to *us*, cos they are not actually harming us with their beliefs, only we can let it get to us or not!

I know, I know, freedom of thought…  If he wants to believe what he said, he can of course! On the upside I told him he seemed (and that I hoped I was not wrong) very intelligent, and then asked him why didn’t he use his powers for the greater good (bring consciousness to people about social evolution), to which he replied that it was not his mission to o changing people’s minds about history and society.  Again, perfectly acceptable.  Maybe I am the one who has to change her paradigms about what historians actually do?  That’s what I told him, but although it was not my intention to be insincere, I admit that I am having trouble processing my own words: it is a paradigm that I am not ready to change, nor even want to…  He said I was being an idealist… er, where have we heard that before?  Then I suppose “Perfectly acceptable” goes inserted in *here* for me now.

I acknowledge that everything I’ve written here I told them four also…  well, except the falling a bit for the Welsh, but it’s not like he’ll ever know…  would he?  He’d have to look me up in the meet-up page and Google my name and come across this thru the blog of Facebook, but what are the odds of *that* happening?  Or are there…? Lalalalalalala, no idea…  Um, yeah, I’m only writing this for the literary purposes of the blog…  There you go!  Easy-breezy, now I’m off the hook.

Oh, and the two negative people were neither British nor Mexican, I’m not hiding nationalities to *either* of my advantages, lol… I think that this second London experience has led me to be able to see even more clearly the two sides of the coin I’m made of: the stuff I love and dislike about both countries, why some of it affects me more than other things, how can I get both experiences to work in my favour instead of having one stall the other while I’m trying to focus on a particular point of my healing/creativity/evolution path/etc…  One thing I know for sure, everything does come at the right moment, and the right moment tends to be when you have prepared yourself enough to receive it; so from now on and forever, I wish my life-path to be such that I can always be preparing me to receive amazing things, wherever I am!  That means a lot of healing!  And evolving!  And love, please Universe, love!  And I have to say this one last thing before I fall asleep (cos my eyes are closing as it is), and that is, um, this was to be originally a fb status, please do not ask me how would I have shortened it at all!  Lol…

OK, eyes closing now… kind readers, much love to all, and happy evolving ;)

Cheers!!

¡Felíz cumpleaños Mamá!

Because of what learning means to me and her,

Growing up as we evolve, ageless in the infinite tide

Of counting years backwards, forwards and sideways to expand

 

A mighty Teacher that once came,

Souls that swiftly paired with Words

And soared into the winds of Thought

 

A Teacher, yes, I’ve said she’s been,
Through many lifetimes long ago

And in this lifetime then we’ve seen

How much the growth has brought us close

To hope, to yearn as it might seem,

To now be friends in all the lifetimes yet to come

 

And all the challenges that have been fit

I have succeeded most, it shows

The training feels now best complete

And I can gain my feet and wings

Human as I know I am

Have passed the test and now must fly.

 

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

This is a poem from my Cassandra to her mother Acacia…  But I know that I wrote it for MY mom, and I won’t even try to hide it!  I love you Mom, you’re my teacher and my friend and I wish for you all the light and blessings you deserve!

(Este es un poema que mi Cassandra escribió a su mamá Acacia…  Pero yo sé que lo escribí para MI mamá, ¡así que ni siquiera voy a intentar ocultarlo!  Te quiero mamá, eres mi maestra y mi amiga, ¡y te deseo toda la luz y bendiciones que mereces!)

Por lo que aprender significa para mi y para ella

Creciendo al evolucionar, sin edad en las olas infinitas

De contar los años para atrás, para adelante y hacia los lados en expansión

Una poderosa Maestra que vino un día,

Almas que se juntaron a través de las Palabras,

Que se elevaron entre los vientos del Pensamiento

Una Maestra, sí, he dicho que ella ha sido para mí,

Durante tantas vidas del ayer

Y en esta vida hemos visto, pues

Todo lo que el crecimiento nos ha acercado

Para esperar, desear al parecer,

Ahora ser amigas en todas las vidas por venir

 

Los obstáculos que se me pusieron para bien

Los he pasado, casi todos, y se ve

El entrenamiento parece haber acabado

Y puedo recibir mis pies y alas ya

Humana como sé que soy

He pasado la prueba y ahora tengo que volar.

 

¡Feliz cumpleaños Mamá!

The entry about re-finding myself...

I will keep this short and sweet for today…  In a way just to cheat time and be able to post again on a lovely Friday, in a way because there are so many things going through my head right now, that it’s getting harder and harder to concentrate on a particular subject and write many page son it, lol!

I like my head, do not get me wrong, and I love the voices that inhabit it! (Right now the three loudest ones are my dear Thomas David Bloom, trying to make me focus on Iar, Thalía gently reminding me that as long as she isn’t fully rounded then I cannot move on, and the Doctor.  Yeah.  I know he’s not mine, but what the hell, I’ve embraced the character for Mani’s super-secret project and now she’s talking really loudly in there too (have I enticed you enough about this project with those few words? Doctor Who Imaginarium.  Subscribe. Totally worth it.  OK, enough advertising, I’m going back to the post.)

So, as it stands, I’m seeing London for the first time through the eyes of David, not just Cassandra (Cassandra is always there in my head anyway, but she’s smart enough to know when to let others carry the reins of my fingers cos in the end it’s all about the way all the characters from each story blend into the story itself, right? So they have to interact organically, that means I have to listen to each one of them individually every once in a while…) (For those of who need reminding, Cassandra is the character I created to escape my teenage angst and then grew to be the heroine in my 5-book saga Pentacle, consisting of Iar, Tuarth, Airt, Deas and Aethyr, the five elements in the Wiccan religion…  it’s been ongoing for –oh Jesus, geez oh God- 21  years now.  Have not been able to write the first book, but working really hard on it!  I have finished, however, La Sombra Detrás (that you can get on Amazon Kindle… more advertising, hooray!), Wideawake, which I finished last Old Year (that’s New Year’s Eve in normal-person terms) and am currently editing, and Cuentos de la Azotea, which I finished about two years ago and I’m almost done editing to upload on Amazon Kindle in about seven weeks ago (that was the original dealine, lol)…  but Pentacle is the origin of it all, it is the reason I started writing in the first place, and I have way too much love for it to give up on it just because I have so much trouble keeping the timeline straight.)

OK, after that brief writer’s bio, and for those of you who might be new to my way of writing, the parenthesis within parenthesis in my paragraphs mean thoughts within thoughts or digressions.  The over-use of … and sometimes …(…)… means that I have soooo much to say about something but as of yet cannot find the words to express it, or simply that I want to leave an emotion hanging so that you beautiful readers can get the full longing or confusion or whatever it is that I have expressed with words…

And now back to the post:  I sort of wanted to reintroduce myself, because every once in a while you sort of feel like you don’t really know who you are or if you’re still in the right path, and it’s not so much that I’m having doubts now, but more like I need to ground myself within myself, if you all know what I mean…  I think I let myself go too much, trying to explain myself to the world, and I think I went too far trying to describe who I am, which means that I lost focus of who I really am not to the world but to myself…  which are basically the same person, cos I don’t want to be two-faced, but there is that little bit more inside of all of us that makes the little click when we know that we’re fully who we want to be both inside and outside, and I’m not getting that click…  In fact, I feel that in my need to find answers and to appear humble I fell into the “helpless” side instead.  I noticed that singularity the other day when I realized that I have always wanted to be considered as “very wise for her age”, and instead I am the one that in many workshops is being told that I am so young and still need to learn more and end up being offered insane amounts of help and advice on how to love myself better and accept myself as I am.  Note: I am of the belief that we’re always learning, always, always, always; and that to stop learning is to stop evolving…  So, when I say “wise for her age” does not mean that I want to know all and I don’t need to learn anything more; it just means “wise for her age”, simple as that.  Also, a few weeks back I said to a friend: “I finally am in a place where I can say that I love myself the way I am and I really like everything about me, give or take a few pounds (take rather than give)”, and she took it that I meant that only a few weeks ago did I arrive to that moment when I actually loved myself AND that I also had decided never to change anything about myself ever again.  How did she get to that conclusion?  No idea.  When I asked her she said that it had only been the way I’d said it.  I think I’m beginning to understand what she means, because the other day I was telling a friend that I felt that a guy I saw on Tinder was too much of a party person for my taste because of the amount of pictures he had surrounded by friends and drinks, and she said that that only meant that he was a social guy and that I was being judgmental.  There were other Tinder-related conversations like that, about how I could not judge how attracted I could be to a guy by just their picture…  But, isn’t that what Tinder is about?  Seeing a person and judging, not the person themselves, but if they’re attractive to you or not?  Anyhow, the other guy did have about 8 pictures, all party style, and I am not a party person, so I had to swipe no, right?  So why does she say I’m judgmental?  It’s all in the way I say it…  Finally learning!

This is what I’ve realized: when I try to assume a non-too-brainy attitude so people don’t think I’m looking down on them, I overuse the Uhm and the dazed look and appear needy and frail, hence the “learn to love yourself” routine and/or the exasperation from others who need to move quicker in life than I do (this applies both to physical and metaphorical movement).  When I try to explain anything, ranging from one of my stories to whatever scientific, literary or philosophical theory I think might apply in the conversation, my eyebrows shoot up Hermione-style and right-then-and-there I’m pegged as serious, so then people act surprised when I act out of character (i.e. say something funny or get excited about something), or tell me that it’d good that I’m finally loosening up (I have been described as too uptight).  Oh, the Hermione thing, my sister says that I like it, even though I complain a lot about being considered too serious… but she’s right, I love it!!  Even though she’s not quite my character, that’s actually Tonks, but that eyebrow thing has been mine for as long as I can remember, so when I saw it on-screen it was like, baam! Love that character!

Um, tangent there…  so, I was saying…  when I say that I like the way I am I seem vain and presumptuous and even like I look down on others, and when I say I need to change something about myself I get the whole learn to love yourself speech all over again.   When I say I like the Universe to give me sings and show me the path, some people say that I have to be more adult, more proactive and take the reins of my life; when I say that I developed a program or schedule or timetable to work out a project then I’m labeled as square and ultra-rigid (it sometimes comes to the surface the whole powerful-science-dudes that my family are and that that’s why my brain is linear…).  When I try to be funny, even though the things I say are hilarious in my mind, I am just way over the top deadpan that people a) think I’m serious and get distressed (like a few days ago when I said I would get really horny if I saw a real working light saber), b) give me a straight forward answer (like the other day when we were taking a Doctor Who shot and I asked if I necessarily had to take out my Sonic Screwdriver or if my lipstick could work for the show cos that was easier to take out, and Mani said: “The screw driver, please, because that’s what people recognize as Doctor Who”.  I had to give him a hard time about it to save face, but poor thing, it was my face’s fault, not his…  aaaand, or c) just think I’m plain-old stupid, like the time when I said “At least the sparkles looked pretty,” when a chip of aluminum foil had gone in with the salsa we were heating up and instead relaxing people with laughter I got the loooongest lecture about how dangerous it was to put metals in microwaves.  And that’s the worst outcome, cos like that I’ve got way too many examples: about how to shoot video, how to wash the dishes, how to use a vacuum, how fold whatever, how to take a bus, how to use a key (yes, you read right: key, to a door), how to read a map…  shall I go on?  Really, no wonder I tend to think I’m lesser than others, everyone is always giving me lectures on the simplest things, and it’s all my dead-pan’s fault!  But, as they say, once you know the key to a problem, then you can use it to change it! (Or to open a door, if you know how to use it.)

Soooo, let’s just say one final thing: the one that was going to be short and sweet two pages ago (really people, if you know how descriptive I get when I start writing, then why do you even let me near a computer?)…  the key to showing my characters in all their beautiful light and glory, is to show their vulnerability, and I have learned this because it applies to me and to everyone else as well…  not neediness or helpessness: vulnerability.  The part of us that makes us go “This is who I am and I like it, I like it cos even though I want to change (and I will change) whatever thing here and there, who I am makes me human!”.  And seriously, sometimes saying you love yourself makes you really vulnerable, but it’s worth it.  I have to say it here:  the reason why I am so comfortable with myself is because I love every single inch of me, even those I want to change, inside and out; and those that I want to change are actually in the process of change, so I’ve got no reason to be embarrassed (well, my tummy and my thighs, but that just makes me a woman aside from “just” human, so I’m just striving to change it…) (oh, and a bit of my arms, but, er…(…)…) (told you).

I almost went into a tangent there.  So, basically, all I said above that people think of me, I am all that… well, except stupid… I am in fact very smart, but I can be quite silly at times.  Not funny silly, embarrassing silly.  Uncomfortable.  I lack people skills.  I get frozen in decision-making or even physical movement when I need to move/think fast…  Awkward even, and I do want change that…  it also happens when I feel like the other person wants me to really sell them something, like an idea or where we’ll go for a day trip or dinner or whatever…  I blame my face there as well: it does a little-lost-girl act that I can perfectly understand why it annoys my sister to the end of time…

OK, now THAT was a tangent…

Have to wrap up now, somehow…  well, like I said before, this is to me like a kind of public therapy…  and whatever I say I hope it goes around…  this, like anything else I have or will ever write, I hope that it helps anybody at any time needed, or else just brings a smile to one’s face…  I will break my own rule today and post like this w/o clean up, cos as far as rants go, this was the purest and whatever my fingers put on the keyboard it might be there to open my eyes in a further reading, or anybody else the message might ever apply to…  I might to a quick orthography check later on (and probably on all posts, now that this is relatively new…), but that’s it…

Have sweet dreams, a lovely evening, or a lovely day, depending on what side of the world you’re in or what day and time you’re reading this…

Much love and blessings to all!!

Cheers!