It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a girl between the ages of 14 and 99 years must be in want of a Mr. Darcy. It’s also universally known that about 4/5 of all texts related to Pride and Prejudice begin with some variation of the novel’s fist sentence, so I hopped in.
I should also explain that, while this generalization works just fine for aesthetic and stylistic purposes, it doesn’t exactly correspond to the truth. There certainly are bazillions of girls who do desperately look for their Mr. Darcy in some sort of imaginary world with which they dress the real one, but there also are quite a few who don’t, and they might or might not be very angry to be mixed in the same bunch as their opposites. In case they do get very angry, they WILL get VERY angry and defensive, something around the lines of not being submissive, being realistic and not following trends (a.k.a. social hysteria), but I’ll get back to this soon.
Anyway, I used to be part of the first group of the second group, the ones who don’t dream about Darcy and don’t get very angry. The thing is: social trends/hysteria is only worthwhile when it’s about the Beatles, and being independent and different can sound very cool, so I guess this accounts for most of the non-Darcy girls. But it was none of that with me.
I simply never managed to fall in love with Mr. Darcy. Two versions of the book read (English and then Portuguese), movie watched some thousands of times and still no sign of the slightest dreamy demeanor or starry-eyed infatuation. Nothing. No empathy shown, no sympathy developed; I guess this was it. Jane Austen, say what you will about her importance (and I won’t deny it), simply failed to create characters that could by any means make you feel drawn to them. At least when it comes to Darcy… Dude was built on nothing but other people’s NEGATIVE opinions of him and then suddenly you’re supposed to like the guy because he was, you know, decent! This changes his image as an asshole, but it doesn’t really suffice to generate instant noodle love. Ok, Colin Firth is kind of a looker, and Lord Larry was hot as, well, Lord Larry, but this still wasn’t enough to bring my head over my heels…
This isn’t totally important, anyway. It merely serves to show my own experience, which led to me writing about Fitzwilliam Darcy and the endless, timeless horde of worshipers that drag behind his wet footprints. There is an undeniable trend among the feminine portion of Modern society that seem to rely too much on the idea that this guy is a perfect prince and their ideal match, no matter what.
No matter how different everybody is, among ourselves and to Elizabeth Bennet, whom we’re left to suppose, by the end of the novel, to be Darcy’s ideal match. Perhaps, then, what was so much of a non-stimulant for me actually works as Darcy’s biggest appeal: he is not really much of a well-defined/developed character. We don’t really look at him as omnipresent buddies of an omnipresent narrator who called his chaps for a glimpse of the story. So not only can’t we trust much of what is said, we don’t get much of restraint. By the time we realized the little that was known of him was actually wrong, even more room appears for us, the readers, to think of him as whatever we want.
Therefore, Austen has created enough space for every girl to project her ideas of what an ideal match should be on an already good canvas (Rich, handsome, faithful, quietly kind, nice house and rich. Uhm.) A timeless, limitless piece of customizable hunk. The perfect guy made to meet your needs, and all that in such a subtle way you won’t even realize that most of him is just a projection of your own desires.
Ok, I might have gone a little too far on rhetoric and forgotten reality. It does sound a little bit creepy, and all girls seem to agree on his best assets: his so perfect and wonderful and like every guy should be. But that’s where I also find ground to my assumption that Darcy is totally customizable: perfect wonderful and desirable are much generalized concepts that exist in different shapes inside individuals’ heads and personalities. And to prove that this is so, I call upon YouTube comments on every possible Pride and Prejudice video, internet forums and many of my friends and family. Including two of my best friends forever (who have decided to marathon me with Darcy overload, btw).
But there are those who still don’t fully trust his gentlemanliness, faithfulness and righteousness. Now this is about the opposite trend, made interesting because it opposes a certain trend (duh), the one of the non-Darcy girls. If he is so easily adapted into perfection, why is it that some people simply don’t care? Well, maybe it is because some people don’t care for romance, or Regency Era, or idle gentry, or books at all. Or maybe these girls have a negative tendency when analyzing Darcy as part of a certain zeitgeist. And I do have a feeling, based on Historical documentation of women’s rights, costumes, clothes, occupation and thin cultural production, that no matter how romantic a man Austen’s narrative can make Darcy seem to very fertile minds, he was not, by any means, the kind of guy a woman of our day would like to have around…
So, being such an inherently patriarchal and perhaps even violent man, how come women get around this and create their own model of perfect prince on the Darcy structure offered by Austen? They don’t care about all what’s socially new and free? They don’t care about their jobs and liberty to do so much? Or do they think that their modern Darcy is not going to be like the Regency Darcy? Perhaps I could ask somebody this, but that would be awkward. Plus, I’m almost positive that no, what they want is someone who combines old-day politeness and smoothness with present-day openness, not a print copy of 200-year-old men.
It certainly is funny for someone to watch all this happen around oneself and don’t quite get it. As someone who didn’t really fall in love with him, who simply didn’t care to project her own ideas of perfection into Darcy (there are, you see, many other fictional characters around… ;) I find it extremely entertaining to feel all the mania that goes on with this old trend, but I can’t say it’s totally bad. Of course, some aspects of such deep idealization can be negative, but that happens with our without Darcy.
Mr. Darcy, plain as he may be, ends up reflecting a certain social spirit, anxiety and belief that is shared by many women at the same time they conserve their individual ideas THROUGH Darcy. And that’s awesomely interesting. Also, it has just struck me that he may be the most feminine of all imaginary creatures around, and somehow it does make sense that a man built by millions of women should end up being a little bit of a weird phenomena.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Saturday, 31 July 2010
fact(oid)
I need to get used to facts. Looking for them, processing them into meaningful data and then using them to back arguments or even possibly come up with whole new ideas. That is important if I mean to communicate effectively and powerfully, but it is also important if I mean to develop plans and concepts within my own head (and then, perhaps, communicate it to others, haha).
I’m such a Sophist, and I assume that must be bad. My Sophism leads me to create numerous empty arguments to explain why this isn’t actually bad, but nah, the world doesn’t operate that way and if I want to work with everyone else, well, I ought to learn the (Socratic) rules of the game.
Damn. Creating funny arguments on silly topics just for the sake of idiotic mindfuck is such a cool pastime. Oh well, the wonders of being an adult…
(jk, there's a lot of fun in this sort of factual activity, too. Being a humble explorer isn't as empowering as being an absolute monarch, but it’s sometimes a lot more beautiful.)
I’m such a Sophist, and I assume that must be bad. My Sophism leads me to create numerous empty arguments to explain why this isn’t actually bad, but nah, the world doesn’t operate that way and if I want to work with everyone else, well, I ought to learn the (Socratic) rules of the game.
Damn. Creating funny arguments on silly topics just for the sake of idiotic mindfuck is such a cool pastime. Oh well, the wonders of being an adult…
(jk, there's a lot of fun in this sort of factual activity, too. Being a humble explorer isn't as empowering as being an absolute monarch, but it’s sometimes a lot more beautiful.)
Life on Mars (plus two other songs)
I sometimes wonder if there is life on Mars. And when I do, I hope there isn’t. I’d like to have a place and call it my own, all the rules and facts UNDER me. But maybe this wouldn’t be worthwhile and the forces that keep me going would disappear. Maybe I’m not enough for myself.
I have once wondered who I am. The girl with the mousy hair or the script writer? Am I a character inside some broader, incomprehensible movie, or am I the director with god-like powers to create my own small, ersatz story?
Perhaps, as George Harrison once sang (and many before him, but shamefully he’s the only one I care about), it is within me - it is myself - and goes on without me - bigger than me. But alas, these are two different things. I have totally shrunk Harrison’s meaning into my own self. It’s not about life, what I wonder. In the end, it’s just about individuality.
You can’t have one without the other, of course, they go together like the horse and carriage, because life as a broader movie is made of character-individuals, yet we won’t exist if there isn’t a life for us to live. But they are not the same, they are a couple, and none is bigger or more important than the other. They are two sides to a same coin, so then I wouldn’t survive on an empty Mars. There is no escaping, and that’s fine (when it’s not sad, but that’s just sometimes).
And if the individual’s inherent dependency is fundamentally necessary to its existence (through life), can’t we at least shyly wonder what it would be like to live as individuals who aren’t so essentially unique and distinct? Which part is designated to others inside the movie, and how do they write their own script? How do they do it, how do they perceive it, how do they feel?
I sometimes think that I’d like to see what others see, but I quickly shun these thoughts because they make me run away from myself. They lead way too smoothly into thoughts of living somebody else’s life, of abandoning my individuality and assuming that of someone else who exists inside the same movie as me. And that can’t be, I would never allow myself, being the iron fist ruler that we all have to be.
But I shyly wonder, still, and life would be a lot more chaotic, a lot less fluid and careless if we could jump from individuality to individuality. Some would fight for the right of being a certain other, and then they would be abandoned, and the movie would stop happening. If the movie ever stopped happening, individuals wouldn’t survive, to live and to be lived by others. Without the limits of self, characters can’t survive, and therefore they wouldn’t have a script to follow or a paper to write on.
If I could, just for a moment, ever know how is it that others live, then everything would go wrong. Even my problems, my wrongness, everything. So I just remain amazed, watching the multitude of others that exist around me, each one of them a life like mine, a character as me; each writing their own movie, living the same one. And no matter how much I can sometimes wish for a still Mars, all these strangers are what allow me to be myself. To be alone there, I’d have to be together with them.
I have once wondered who I am. The girl with the mousy hair or the script writer? Am I a character inside some broader, incomprehensible movie, or am I the director with god-like powers to create my own small, ersatz story?
Perhaps, as George Harrison once sang (and many before him, but shamefully he’s the only one I care about), it is within me - it is myself - and goes on without me - bigger than me. But alas, these are two different things. I have totally shrunk Harrison’s meaning into my own self. It’s not about life, what I wonder. In the end, it’s just about individuality.
You can’t have one without the other, of course, they go together like the horse and carriage, because life as a broader movie is made of character-individuals, yet we won’t exist if there isn’t a life for us to live. But they are not the same, they are a couple, and none is bigger or more important than the other. They are two sides to a same coin, so then I wouldn’t survive on an empty Mars. There is no escaping, and that’s fine (when it’s not sad, but that’s just sometimes).
And if the individual’s inherent dependency is fundamentally necessary to its existence (through life), can’t we at least shyly wonder what it would be like to live as individuals who aren’t so essentially unique and distinct? Which part is designated to others inside the movie, and how do they write their own script? How do they do it, how do they perceive it, how do they feel?
I sometimes think that I’d like to see what others see, but I quickly shun these thoughts because they make me run away from myself. They lead way too smoothly into thoughts of living somebody else’s life, of abandoning my individuality and assuming that of someone else who exists inside the same movie as me. And that can’t be, I would never allow myself, being the iron fist ruler that we all have to be.
But I shyly wonder, still, and life would be a lot more chaotic, a lot less fluid and careless if we could jump from individuality to individuality. Some would fight for the right of being a certain other, and then they would be abandoned, and the movie would stop happening. If the movie ever stopped happening, individuals wouldn’t survive, to live and to be lived by others. Without the limits of self, characters can’t survive, and therefore they wouldn’t have a script to follow or a paper to write on.
If I could, just for a moment, ever know how is it that others live, then everything would go wrong. Even my problems, my wrongness, everything. So I just remain amazed, watching the multitude of others that exist around me, each one of them a life like mine, a character as me; each writing their own movie, living the same one. And no matter how much I can sometimes wish for a still Mars, all these strangers are what allow me to be myself. To be alone there, I’d have to be together with them.
Friday, 30 July 2010
I can make it. Or maybe I can’t. But I’ll have to try doing it, one moment or another, or else I’ll forever live with the feeling that I don’t know. That I’m not sure of what I can and cannot do, what are my limits, that tomorrow I’ll discover the truth. That I’m not yet ready and by no means sufficiently prepared to face the task.
Living is a serious business. Or maybe it isn’t. Some make a lifetime worth of profit out of it, others just can’t quite be as successful as expected (By others? By themselves? By certain standards?). It’s not definitive, though, so one has to wonder why it’s so serious. (The ant does die at some point, after all, no matter how much profit she has made during summer.) Perhaps it’s because life is so present, so offensively here and now that it becomes a serious burden.
Perhaps it’s because it’s so possible and blank that the one who has received it cannot fight the need to make something out of it, creating endless seriousness for said life. Perhaps, even, it is the fear that has faced the dream that makes living such a grave thing, this goddamn delta between two things that are outside the margins of our river. Life is a variable and no matter what others say or what evidence shows, it is always your responsibility to make something out of it. You, the jury, will judge and execute this. Such a serious business.
Other’s will screw me all over. Or maybe they won’t. Life really isn’t just ones business; everybody wants a piece of your success. And you always want a piece of theirs. The kiss is the eve of the spit, and kisses are so sweet it is impossible to go by without them. You are not your own judge, others will judge all the time, even if just inside your head. There’s something so weird about being someone, about having been given a life and carrying it around with so many others walking around you, their lives in hand too, nudging you gently – and not so gently -, from time to time. They are just like you, but they are themselves, and all what they take from you, they’ll give you back, somehow. All of it. Love.
I know myself. Oh, wait, I actually don’t. I don’t know my exact limits, perhaps they don’t really exist, but the truth is that I’m not yet fully acquainted with all my own details. I know how to be, to simply be, but I don’t know what being means, I don’t know what doing means nor do I really know what saying something is, not at all. But “simply doing” ain’t gonna cut it, it’s not enough. It kills the feeling of regret, of being completely lost, the buzzing “or maybe” inside my head. But it doesn’t explain shit to me, and that’s kinda not cool.
But I’ve GOT to do it. Because I can, because I want, because I said so. I need to do without explanation, test before analyzing, act without so much worry because this sort of thing eats you up at some point. No one ever has much time to actually analyze any of the tests, attempts, first trials, but all are (un)lucky enough to have others do it for them, dead or not yet dead. Not that this is important. Life really is serious, I can make it. Anyone can; everybody does, in fact. (And I’ll want a fancy tomb, too). But there’s this delta - dreams and fear, birth and death, others and self - that can be filled with kisses and spit; beauty at every spot.
Living is a serious business. Or maybe it isn’t. Some make a lifetime worth of profit out of it, others just can’t quite be as successful as expected (By others? By themselves? By certain standards?). It’s not definitive, though, so one has to wonder why it’s so serious. (The ant does die at some point, after all, no matter how much profit she has made during summer.) Perhaps it’s because life is so present, so offensively here and now that it becomes a serious burden.
Perhaps it’s because it’s so possible and blank that the one who has received it cannot fight the need to make something out of it, creating endless seriousness for said life. Perhaps, even, it is the fear that has faced the dream that makes living such a grave thing, this goddamn delta between two things that are outside the margins of our river. Life is a variable and no matter what others say or what evidence shows, it is always your responsibility to make something out of it. You, the jury, will judge and execute this. Such a serious business.
Other’s will screw me all over. Or maybe they won’t. Life really isn’t just ones business; everybody wants a piece of your success. And you always want a piece of theirs. The kiss is the eve of the spit, and kisses are so sweet it is impossible to go by without them. You are not your own judge, others will judge all the time, even if just inside your head. There’s something so weird about being someone, about having been given a life and carrying it around with so many others walking around you, their lives in hand too, nudging you gently – and not so gently -, from time to time. They are just like you, but they are themselves, and all what they take from you, they’ll give you back, somehow. All of it. Love.
I know myself. Oh, wait, I actually don’t. I don’t know my exact limits, perhaps they don’t really exist, but the truth is that I’m not yet fully acquainted with all my own details. I know how to be, to simply be, but I don’t know what being means, I don’t know what doing means nor do I really know what saying something is, not at all. But “simply doing” ain’t gonna cut it, it’s not enough. It kills the feeling of regret, of being completely lost, the buzzing “or maybe” inside my head. But it doesn’t explain shit to me, and that’s kinda not cool.
But I’ve GOT to do it. Because I can, because I want, because I said so. I need to do without explanation, test before analyzing, act without so much worry because this sort of thing eats you up at some point. No one ever has much time to actually analyze any of the tests, attempts, first trials, but all are (un)lucky enough to have others do it for them, dead or not yet dead. Not that this is important. Life really is serious, I can make it. Anyone can; everybody does, in fact. (And I’ll want a fancy tomb, too). But there’s this delta - dreams and fear, birth and death, others and self - that can be filled with kisses and spit; beauty at every spot.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
beaver love
Yeah, well, I got into the college I wanted to get. It feels as if I had to repeat it to myself all the time, because it really hasn't sinked in yet...
Never before had I felt this kind of happiness. (Are there TYPES of happiness, omg, just to make this life a tiny bit more complex, really?) I think I might be feeling calm, I think I might be felling excited, I think I might be feeling like a sailor about to go out on a ship that will travel many seas and visit many lands, I might even be confused!
One feeling, though, is quite constant: I am currently the world's smallest person. There is so much beyond me (actually, around, because this is not a linear feeling, it's a spatial one), so much that I can roam through and see and discover and do, so many things to learn and work to do. And also, I am small because I am not just myself, I was helped by so many people, it's never just me, it's always about others supporting me. And needing my support, or a payback for what I received.
This was a quite personal choice, to go for that one college. Probably partially a subconscious compensatory mechanism to deal with me pre-adult-who-needs-to-choose-a-future-and-go-according-to-some-rules-and-expectations drama. So it's a peculiar and fresh event, reaching a goal that was so uncommonly mine.
Uhm. I'm confused. And I'm sure the thrill for the prospect of both having fun AND working hard will temporarily leave when I go through a couple of nights without sleep. But, as soon as I can notice, it will already be nostalgia! Wow. Carpe diem does sound reasonable...
Yeah, I'm confused. CFOUNESD. But that's alright (Mamma) (:
Never before had I felt this kind of happiness. (Are there TYPES of happiness, omg, just to make this life a tiny bit more complex, really?) I think I might be feeling calm, I think I might be felling excited, I think I might be feeling like a sailor about to go out on a ship that will travel many seas and visit many lands, I might even be confused!
One feeling, though, is quite constant: I am currently the world's smallest person. There is so much beyond me (actually, around, because this is not a linear feeling, it's a spatial one), so much that I can roam through and see and discover and do, so many things to learn and work to do. And also, I am small because I am not just myself, I was helped by so many people, it's never just me, it's always about others supporting me. And needing my support, or a payback for what I received.
This was a quite personal choice, to go for that one college. Probably partially a subconscious compensatory mechanism to deal with me pre-adult-who-needs-to-choose-a-future-and-go-according-to-some-rules-and-expectations drama. So it's a peculiar and fresh event, reaching a goal that was so uncommonly mine.
Uhm. I'm confused. And I'm sure the thrill for the prospect of both having fun AND working hard will temporarily leave when I go through a couple of nights without sleep. But, as soon as I can notice, it will already be nostalgia! Wow. Carpe diem does sound reasonable...
Yeah, I'm confused. CFOUNESD. But that's alright (Mamma) (:
Thursday, 31 December 2009
To the ones responsible
I’ve known Luiza for the past 12 years or so. One could even say we’re close friends, even though there’s been a good share of fighting between us, undercover. We talk a lot, that’s for sure, and after all these years there’s nothing that she can hide from me. I am Luiza, you see, but I’m writing this as another person in order to try to achieve an objectivity impossible in any other way. (Blessed may be Horselover Fat, and his own self Philip K. Dick, for he has shown me/us this path)
You see, I am here because I don’t fully trust her. She’s sometimes too harsh on herself, and a little bit not self-confident enough, at times (even though we’re working on that and I am proud to say that the results of late have been quite satisfactory). She was silly enough to feel bad for not listing concrete examples of things she’s done, or for not having taken part on any Olympiad like many other students (she finds them disappointingly similar to school tests to be worth the time, you see)! Thankfully I managed to convince her that none of these things mattered to her that much and that having been able to win inertia and start doing things (not the things done, themselves) is the real pride of her life. Teens, go figure.
That’s a funny thing about her, and everybody else, actually. She used to compare herself to other people way too often, and then try to fit into any sort of pattern she could recognized; even though we eventually erased this approach’s code from her brain, she still faces some difficulties due to a nasty thing called habit. (I truly hate it; she hates it too but has to deal with it. It is boring and keeps people from looking at things differently, and therefore discovering new things all the time. Because, you see, the real happiness, the thrill of living is not in knowing stuff, and understanding how they work. That’s rewarding, certainly, but Luiza secretly wishes she were able to erase every memory of head instantly, so that she could discover things over and over again and laugh for no reason at the wonderfulness of it all. She does it during subway trips, mainly, and having accompanied her though all of them I can attest that, boy, they were remarkably amusing every single time, in every single way, be it Physically, Musically, Sociologically or even Politically).
I’ll never forget a conversation we had once, during her trip to the school. She’s learned a lot more from her time talking to me on the way, and talking to people on the corridors before classes than during classes themselves, and even though she’s sort of ashamed of this “bad-girl behavior”, she’s proud of the community she was part of for those three years, and I am saying it now for her.
But anyway, as about the talk: she had just finished the Advanced School of Nuclear Energy, and was still trying to deal with the Nervous Shakedown (in capitals because it’s a reference to the mighty AC/DC song) of not feeling like she actually belonged there. It’s not that she didn’t learn anything, far from that. All the fields that work with help of nuclear energy, and she actually got back to school with a lot of information to theatrically share with her friends, try to awe them like she was awed, but people there seemed to be going somewhere quite different than her destination, and that silly little teen actually questioned her abilities.
That was a silly behavior imprinted on her by silly people who wanted her to care about what they said of her and to obey all what they said, to be silly like them, but we managed that, as mentioned before. That talk was an important part of the process, when I convinced her that, hell, she needn’t like Physics like her peers, that she could be the only one to like the lecturer who wittily said science was not just about doing math without feeling like a criminal and, hell again, she could go around aesthetically pleased by Marlon Brando in her own way, not her grandmother’s. She felt like being put into a much larger box after that, and, well, you’re welcome, Luiza. Finally she understood the true pleasure of singing “My Way” with Frank Sinatra at the top of her lungs.
It actually is a strong guide on her life, to do things her own way. During the course of this tuff year (year ended on the night of November 27th, when she finally stepped out of the bigger box to no box at all, with the help from the guys of AC/DC) she realized (and this was pretty much on her own, after being metaphorically almost beaten up to death by adversities) that there’s no use on trying to walk with boots that aren’t her own. They hurt and keep her from walking anywhere.
We also agreed that it is of extreme importance to find a personal reason in everything she does. It contains the premise “Never do something without meaning and pleasure”, but they’re not directly and totally correspondent. It also implies searching for a reason in the things that aren’t born inside of her, and it has worked very well up until now, because like that she ends up incorporating a lot of cool things to herself. Things done true to the heart can never be wrong, and they always come out sweeter than expected.
We still haven’t agreed on whether it is a good idea to kill the constant feeling of “I could have done better” or not. While it can be rather depressing at times, it seems to be an important gear of the mechanism that impels her forward. Feeling like she could do more with her time on earth, right now, trying her best to do all the crazy stuff she wants, like learning Quenya, the elvish language, or building up the courage to make (and use) costumes for herself and for orphan kids, helping her friends more often and building a motorized trolley so she can go around with her stuffed zebra like Calvin did with Hobbes. Dreaming is really important for growing, in the Luiza-Mechanism, and not feeling totally fulfilled is necessary in order to dream.
That doesn’t mean, however, that she fears failing. It used to be the biggest dread of her life, but that was reaching a preoccupying point where it kept her from jumping from Dream-World to Real-World, so I stepped in and killed that monster. It was big, stinky and spit fire from its mouth, but after a mighty battle from the depths of the world to the top of the highest mountain, I killed it and emerged victorious as a White Wizard.
She is a funny girl. Without the big, stinky monster she feels like she can do a lot of things, but I try to hold her back a little because she might end up with way too much to chew and then have to spit everything out. She’s prone to choosing gargantuous projects that she never finishes, like becoming a rockstar or teaching quantum mechanics to kids from her neighborhood (apparently, institutions that organize don’t need someone without a degree helping them… not a very cutting-edge approach). But they all basically come up when she thinks something can be improved. She finds it a little bit way too much thinking ahead of her and her abilities, and yes, she usually finds herself dealing with things far more complex than her reach. Someday, maybe?
I believe this need for fixing is rather funny. She still thinks she can change the world, but I will let her live with that belief a little longer, some good things might come out of that. But, in the end, I get sad with her when we see young people, friends even, being wasted by a system that’s far to shallow to care, or when we see a democratic machine that kills democracy. All the mouth-to-mouth attempts haven’t shown any effects up until now, but she dreams of the day when the world will be able to rebuild hierarchy with fewer stories
I guess I can say she is some sort of a rebel, but right now I can hear her screaming and asking me to explain this clearly. She hates being called a rebel without a cause, no matter how charming James Dean might have been. It’s just a reflex of her need to question everything (thanks to Plato and his idea of ascension, badly mixed with a random e misplaced-in-time contact to Descartes, backed up by a natural tendency to not accept things people told her and the potentialities of filling time with dialectics). She likes doing things her way, as mentioned, but she also likes doing things herself, direct action as the main tool for a more democratic and articulated world. She also dreams of the day when she will build a time machine and visit the French Revolution, just to take notes on how things were done and how they could be improved, come back and do it herself.
(Note: that is one of Luiza’s delusions. After a life of reading Sci-Fi book, I’ve learned all the unsolved problems and paradoxes of time travel, but at least she can dream. One day I’ll tell her to settle for the comments by Historians and documents left behind.)
I can’t finish this by saying she would be happy there or contribute to the community. I hope you can decide that, as the whole angst of having to choose a career and a place to live for the next four years could be diminished by this help. It was already softened by submitting to a process that cares about how she thinks and what her priorities are and so on, not just what Brazilian students are supposed to go through, testing upon testing. This will change some day, but up until there, I hope my attempts to clarify Luiza’s… existence were useful.
Sincerely,
Luiza Pepper (Luiza Cabral's alter-ego)
You see, I am here because I don’t fully trust her. She’s sometimes too harsh on herself, and a little bit not self-confident enough, at times (even though we’re working on that and I am proud to say that the results of late have been quite satisfactory). She was silly enough to feel bad for not listing concrete examples of things she’s done, or for not having taken part on any Olympiad like many other students (she finds them disappointingly similar to school tests to be worth the time, you see)! Thankfully I managed to convince her that none of these things mattered to her that much and that having been able to win inertia and start doing things (not the things done, themselves) is the real pride of her life. Teens, go figure.
That’s a funny thing about her, and everybody else, actually. She used to compare herself to other people way too often, and then try to fit into any sort of pattern she could recognized; even though we eventually erased this approach’s code from her brain, she still faces some difficulties due to a nasty thing called habit. (I truly hate it; she hates it too but has to deal with it. It is boring and keeps people from looking at things differently, and therefore discovering new things all the time. Because, you see, the real happiness, the thrill of living is not in knowing stuff, and understanding how they work. That’s rewarding, certainly, but Luiza secretly wishes she were able to erase every memory of head instantly, so that she could discover things over and over again and laugh for no reason at the wonderfulness of it all. She does it during subway trips, mainly, and having accompanied her though all of them I can attest that, boy, they were remarkably amusing every single time, in every single way, be it Physically, Musically, Sociologically or even Politically).
I’ll never forget a conversation we had once, during her trip to the school. She’s learned a lot more from her time talking to me on the way, and talking to people on the corridors before classes than during classes themselves, and even though she’s sort of ashamed of this “bad-girl behavior”, she’s proud of the community she was part of for those three years, and I am saying it now for her.
But anyway, as about the talk: she had just finished the Advanced School of Nuclear Energy, and was still trying to deal with the Nervous Shakedown (in capitals because it’s a reference to the mighty AC/DC song) of not feeling like she actually belonged there. It’s not that she didn’t learn anything, far from that. All the fields that work with help of nuclear energy, and she actually got back to school with a lot of information to theatrically share with her friends, try to awe them like she was awed, but people there seemed to be going somewhere quite different than her destination, and that silly little teen actually questioned her abilities.
That was a silly behavior imprinted on her by silly people who wanted her to care about what they said of her and to obey all what they said, to be silly like them, but we managed that, as mentioned before. That talk was an important part of the process, when I convinced her that, hell, she needn’t like Physics like her peers, that she could be the only one to like the lecturer who wittily said science was not just about doing math without feeling like a criminal and, hell again, she could go around aesthetically pleased by Marlon Brando in her own way, not her grandmother’s. She felt like being put into a much larger box after that, and, well, you’re welcome, Luiza. Finally she understood the true pleasure of singing “My Way” with Frank Sinatra at the top of her lungs.
It actually is a strong guide on her life, to do things her own way. During the course of this tuff year (year ended on the night of November 27th, when she finally stepped out of the bigger box to no box at all, with the help from the guys of AC/DC) she realized (and this was pretty much on her own, after being metaphorically almost beaten up to death by adversities) that there’s no use on trying to walk with boots that aren’t her own. They hurt and keep her from walking anywhere.
We also agreed that it is of extreme importance to find a personal reason in everything she does. It contains the premise “Never do something without meaning and pleasure”, but they’re not directly and totally correspondent. It also implies searching for a reason in the things that aren’t born inside of her, and it has worked very well up until now, because like that she ends up incorporating a lot of cool things to herself. Things done true to the heart can never be wrong, and they always come out sweeter than expected.
We still haven’t agreed on whether it is a good idea to kill the constant feeling of “I could have done better” or not. While it can be rather depressing at times, it seems to be an important gear of the mechanism that impels her forward. Feeling like she could do more with her time on earth, right now, trying her best to do all the crazy stuff she wants, like learning Quenya, the elvish language, or building up the courage to make (and use) costumes for herself and for orphan kids, helping her friends more often and building a motorized trolley so she can go around with her stuffed zebra like Calvin did with Hobbes. Dreaming is really important for growing, in the Luiza-Mechanism, and not feeling totally fulfilled is necessary in order to dream.
That doesn’t mean, however, that she fears failing. It used to be the biggest dread of her life, but that was reaching a preoccupying point where it kept her from jumping from Dream-World to Real-World, so I stepped in and killed that monster. It was big, stinky and spit fire from its mouth, but after a mighty battle from the depths of the world to the top of the highest mountain, I killed it and emerged victorious as a White Wizard.
She is a funny girl. Without the big, stinky monster she feels like she can do a lot of things, but I try to hold her back a little because she might end up with way too much to chew and then have to spit everything out. She’s prone to choosing gargantuous projects that she never finishes, like becoming a rockstar or teaching quantum mechanics to kids from her neighborhood (apparently, institutions that organize don’t need someone without a degree helping them… not a very cutting-edge approach). But they all basically come up when she thinks something can be improved. She finds it a little bit way too much thinking ahead of her and her abilities, and yes, she usually finds herself dealing with things far more complex than her reach. Someday, maybe?
I believe this need for fixing is rather funny. She still thinks she can change the world, but I will let her live with that belief a little longer, some good things might come out of that. But, in the end, I get sad with her when we see young people, friends even, being wasted by a system that’s far to shallow to care, or when we see a democratic machine that kills democracy. All the mouth-to-mouth attempts haven’t shown any effects up until now, but she dreams of the day when the world will be able to rebuild hierarchy with fewer stories
I guess I can say she is some sort of a rebel, but right now I can hear her screaming and asking me to explain this clearly. She hates being called a rebel without a cause, no matter how charming James Dean might have been. It’s just a reflex of her need to question everything (thanks to Plato and his idea of ascension, badly mixed with a random e misplaced-in-time contact to Descartes, backed up by a natural tendency to not accept things people told her and the potentialities of filling time with dialectics). She likes doing things her way, as mentioned, but she also likes doing things herself, direct action as the main tool for a more democratic and articulated world. She also dreams of the day when she will build a time machine and visit the French Revolution, just to take notes on how things were done and how they could be improved, come back and do it herself.
(Note: that is one of Luiza’s delusions. After a life of reading Sci-Fi book, I’ve learned all the unsolved problems and paradoxes of time travel, but at least she can dream. One day I’ll tell her to settle for the comments by Historians and documents left behind.)
I can’t finish this by saying she would be happy there or contribute to the community. I hope you can decide that, as the whole angst of having to choose a career and a place to live for the next four years could be diminished by this help. It was already softened by submitting to a process that cares about how she thinks and what her priorities are and so on, not just what Brazilian students are supposed to go through, testing upon testing. This will change some day, but up until there, I hope my attempts to clarify Luiza’s… existence were useful.
Sincerely,
Luiza Pepper (Luiza Cabral's alter-ego)
Monday, 21 December 2009
oh yes, a list
the things I would love to do. The ones that would restitute my rightful powers (:
(order nor important, relevant nor by any means meaningful)
- Write my review about Public Education in Brasil, send it to my school and to the Ministry of Education, with suggestions.
- Create a alternative model of a cool school, based on my own feelings and answers collected from other people through survey, send it the aforementioned Ministry. When they don't answer, and they won't answer properly, SPAMSPAMSPAMTHEMWITHTHATUNTILTHEYDIE.
- Write a booklet with a basic overview of the Math usually taught to us, so that people who don't like might have a chance to find out that it's actually quite nice and beautiful and alright.
- Build a led tie much like that worn by Kraftwerk members in the music video for "Die Roboter", dress myself like them, take pictures and use them in all my official documents.
- Build a voice modulator to sound like a robot.
- Build shiny, twinkly or both things to make my world look like a Christmas tree or give to people as presents.
- Build the simplest robot possible with the purpose of being programmed to roughly act like my dogs. Because my dogs are awesome, and that would be a fair homage.
- pictures
- Ionic music
- Have a pretty garden, and mess up with it for the sake of seeing how plants are in real life (not just in books)
- Study for the second part of my admission exams, but do it in a way that's mine, useful and nice (question things without feeling guilty about that, claim for a proof without feeling like a sinner). Don't panic about the lack of time and the obvious FAIL that's on the way to hit by the time the results come out.
(order nor important, relevant nor by any means meaningful)
- Write my review about Public Education in Brasil, send it to my school and to the Ministry of Education, with suggestions.
- Create a alternative model of a cool school, based on my own feelings and answers collected from other people through survey, send it the aforementioned Ministry. When they don't answer, and they won't answer properly, SPAMSPAMSPAMTHEMWITHTHATUNTILTHEYDIE.
- Write a booklet with a basic overview of the Math usually taught to us, so that people who don't like might have a chance to find out that it's actually quite nice and beautiful and alright.
- Build a led tie much like that worn by Kraftwerk members in the music video for "Die Roboter", dress myself like them, take pictures and use them in all my official documents.
- Build a voice modulator to sound like a robot.
- Build shiny, twinkly or both things to make my world look like a Christmas tree or give to people as presents.
- Build the simplest robot possible with the purpose of being programmed to roughly act like my dogs. Because my dogs are awesome, and that would be a fair homage.
- pictures
- Ionic music
- Have a pretty garden, and mess up with it for the sake of seeing how plants are in real life (not just in books)
- Study for the second part of my admission exams, but do it in a way that's mine, useful and nice (question things without feeling guilty about that, claim for a proof without feeling like a sinner). Don't panic about the lack of time and the obvious FAIL that's on the way to hit by the time the results come out.
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