Ok, fine, but now the unconscious must distort dreams’ meaning to make it through the censorship. So often dreams are not what they appear to be.

Last night’s dreams definitely didn’t make it through the censorship. There might’ve been a conflict, but NOT one I am aware of.

You see, when you start feeling bitter it’s because -it seems at least- that there is an ironic injustice in what has happened. —-

Whenever something frightens us, it fascinates us at the same time. You end up going too far simply to prove yourself that you are capable of it. When F met P, she knew that there was something to match herself against. The prospect seemed sometimes overpowering, but fear itself can be a sweet sensation. And so, even though she had the feeling that there was a struggle between them and that she ran the risk of failure, it was a challenge she couldn’t turn down.

I’ve finished Francoise Gilot’s “Life with Picasso” today, will start “Loving Picasso” the private journal of Fernande Olivier tomorrow. Feel a bit guilty, as I did sympathise with FG

One of the things that stops me from feeling at home is having all my books packed in the loft. You so get used to going, picking a book on the shelf and re-reading things you love. There are books you only read once, but you still keep and there are books you keep going back to. Things you know by heart, a sort of short list for reference (scared to realise how wacky mine is). Never read a book I didn’t want to keep.

You’d think you can find everything you need by searching the web. You can, indeed, and I should be one of the people to support this. But searching inside books on Amazon, downloading an ebook and scanning thorough Project Gutenberg is nothing like flicking through a book, a scruffy print you read so many times.

I do judge people for the books they own (not something I could help doing, even if I wanted to), don’t know if I get it right, but that’s not the point –

Anyways, one of the things I thought I remember from a book was something like “the best thing you can do for love is not call it love”. Looked everywhere and guess what? Everyone calls it love. Lots of articles on the web about how beneficial “labeling your emotions” is – and that’s exactly the opposite of what i had in mind.

Hmm, even worse now, the mindfulness meditation in yoga which seems to help me a lot, supports the same thing: the link between Buddhism and modern science = labelling your emotions! Talking about how you feel, makes you feel better. Putting your emotions into words – paradoxically upsetting me, as I truly believed we didn’t have to do that.

Neural evidence for why “mindfulness” — the ability to live in the present moment, without distraction — helps here. Very interesting article, glad there’s a place in our brains to be blamed for this! It does make sense, so I guess, with scientific evidence now, it’s time I let yet another of my rather interesting theories go –

Well, if it wasn’t love, it was a lot like it..
Don’t (say anything)…. you’re spoiling it!

Feelings into words, happy labelling everyone!

I talk about my interests a lot. Don’t need questions, I just volunteer information. Why? Because I think it is, or may be(come), interesting. And because I like to share. You see things differently: don’t talk about your things unless someone shows interest (don’t want to bore people with random, crazy things they don’t care much about, do you?) And how do you show interest? By asking questions, as

Not asking questions indicates a lack of interest

Generally acknowledged, no point in saying anything different. Not that I would, as it does make perfect sense, I won’t argue against it.

Never looked at things like this – I thought you discover new interests, *by listening to your friends talking random s£!t. Some stuff might even appeal, and you can always shut them up if it gets annoying. No risk then, I though, free to volunteer all sorts. You’ll be told to ufydyg jjd if it gets silly (always appreciate this when it happens).

Wrong, Didi. It doesn’t work like this. I can see why and I’m learning. Good job I have this site – I should probably save some of my stories for here. Lots more to say on this, and I’ll probably be rambling about it for years.

Back to Baudelaire now. A poet and an innovator, and not a merely translator of Edgar Allan Poe, as I sometimes say just to annoy him. And because we live in a small world (or maybe because our interests are interlinked and therefore make it small), having mentioned Allan Poe, I now have to add

Delacroix, the poet in painting, a very appreciated friend, but NOT a close one after the Fleurs du Mal scandal

Wagner, for having admired him and helped his recognition

Gautier, to whom, you may already know Baudelaire dedicated His Fleurs du mal

Manet, a dear companion, encouraged to resist and follow his talent despite all criticism. Interesting how, when Olympia (nude prostitute) provoked the big scandal (as prostitutes do!) B. worked privately to support M, but offered no public help (as friends don’t!)

And, of course, always photography –
Nadar, one of his closest friends, with whom he shared a lot (including mistresses – couldn’t help it, we all love a bit of gossip!) and an interest in photography
Small world, right?

I won’t go on and on about Les Fleurs du Mal now. It’s Le Spleen de Paris I want to ramble on. Le Spleen de Paris is the retold version of Fleurs du Mal. The flowers of evil again, but with more freedom, much more detail, and much more mockery.

Twenty years after the end of an ideal European brotherly revolution (1848 will say a lot if you’re Romanian) he wrote poems such as “The Eyes of the Poor”, a note on what progress and modernization of Paris meant, on poverty levels and on how incommunicable the thought is.

Are you into Baudelaire and oxymoron poetry? Or maybe just interested in poetry in general? NO. You’d love the Eyes of the Poor though. And now that I think about it, maybe a few more.

I prefer biographies and real stories to fiction. What do you do if the biography you’d love to read hasn’t been yet written?

Wonder how I knew Lhasa was such an interesting person before hearing hardly anything about her. Except she died. I find her fascinating, love her songs and I like to believe I understand some of them. Always thought that poets, photographers and talented song writers have got interesting stories to go with their poems, photos and songs. Had to do my bit of research to find the stories behind some of Lhasa’s songs. If I were talented I’d write or/and take photos to tell a similar story, I think. [honest, no chance of ever being able to sing].

Take songs from The living road, for example. She wrote most of them when living in Marseilles ( L lived there for 2 and half years and learned some really important things that helped her in the future). Surprising how songs about things-that-everyone-goes-through can be so very personal!

I’m 31 and I think that in your late 20s you start to learn that there is a choice that you have to make: either you go your own way, or you go other people’s way. And if you go your own way, you have to start listening to yourself and trusting yourself and there are a lot of reasons not to do that. And there are people who would rather you did not do that; and there are a lot of situations which intimidate you from doing so.

Lots of situations intimidated her and I know what starting to push back feels like; just because they’re rather dark and there’s so much sadness in these songs, it doesn’t mean they can’t be hopeful and exciting. It feels as if there is a turning point, a need to make choices while staying true to yourself.

I love Anywhere on this road – it’s about living abroad, about speaking another language, of one’s name sounding different, about breaking hearts and the absolute need to keep on keeping on.

You’ve travelled this long
You just have to go on
Don’t even look back to see
How far you’ve come
Though your body is bending
Under the load
There is nowhere to stop
Anywhere on this road

Some think you’re brave if you keep going and don’t look back. Truth is there’s nowhere to stop, no choice but to go on really, and definitely not brave enough to look back.

I’d like to go travelling across South America. Argentina – Chile – Peru – Colombia – Venezuela is my plan. There’s a Didi way of doing it, so here’s goes:

embarrassingly old fashioned, say just weird reading list
explore a Latin America you know (ideally quite a lot) about from books
take loads of photos
“photograph” what you see in your notes

be spontaneous, capture your very first impressions
no melancholic reasoning, but go with the initial perception -
capture what your eyes see before your brain alters everything
into boring concepts

get lost
be there with your subjects
notice, question and let the world change you.

The notes should always be true to yourself and your photos should (at least) look analogue. Because anything else would just be wrong. You need dream like, blurry, candid, vivid and meaningful images (and, as usual, I don’t just mean photos).

Quick check list to get the planning started:

The biggest mistake you can make is to think there’s anything political about this trip, or about the reading list. It’s to do with the man Che used to be before the revolutionary was born. A travelogue where the main concern is the next drink & bed, a diary of times to fall in love and fall off your bike, laugh, be hungry, and change, change, continuously change. Not a moment of cynicism, as he didn’t go back to edit the original. He does say at start: I’ll leave you now, with myself, the man I used to be…

This trip doesn’t trouble my mind too much, plenty of time to think about it. I’s the other one we spoke about that makes me wonder. No doubt each experience changes who we are, and you may not like the comparison, but

Anyways, the danger is that, dreaming of all these exciting trips, I’ll pass by the brooms on the high street and I won’t notice how cool they are!

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Yes, Dust of Snow by Frost. Robert Frost.

Wish I had time to write on wishes, probabilities and (…). Copy and paste will do for now, as I have to get off the train.
…………….

You’d think there’s no such thing as a photographer of snowflakes. Well, there is. Quite a few and I really hope to write on one. Soon.

Happy was born sometime mid 14century from hap “chance, fortune”. A great majority of the European words for happy at first meant lucky (that’s true all the way from Greece to Ireland and Latin’s no exception).

It scares me to think how closely related happy is to haphazard. Even more so if I think of hazard, which actually is the old hasard- game of chance played with dice.

I saw “Another Year” last weekend (hmm, bittersweet comedy? Not sure. I know of the bitter bits, but then the sweet parts, only make the bitter, BITTER. Brilliantly scary (again, no idea whether such expression exists or I just made it up). Supposedly about friendship and happiness, it was so real, so British, so sad. So bitter and so true.

A linguistic path (a medium I completely trust) to suggest that happiness was not something you could control – dictated by Fortune, controlled by the stars, it was what happened to us, and that was clearly out of our hands. And thus does Fortune’s wheel turn treacherously And out of happiness bring men to sorrow. In other words, the wheel of fortune controls our happenstance, and hence our happiness. (C. Tales, the monk) Later, as featured in all schools of Classical thought, happiness – eudaimonia – could actually be earned. Yes, I used to have a theory like that too, a sort of system where you could save point towards it.

A happy couple planning their retirement together, entertaining friends and family, supporting their son, counselling lovesick friends. A lead couple whose obvious natural chemistry, tenderness and joy should have delighted me, managed to scare me instead.

a happiness hazard
as happiness comes, or goes haphazardly or by chance

Such a fine line between becoming a happy, kind-to-everyone-around lady close to retirement or, equally possible, a needy pathetic pisshead still trying to make sense of her life. (Sorry, Mary). All down to a game of chance played with dice and I can only hope we shall all be lucky/happy (same, same).

I have both positive and negative feelings towards most people and I quite often have feelings for both sides of an issue. Well, I guess that’s ok, as mixed feelings shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. Don’t ask me how often they are though, how often seeing many sides of a situation is seen as uncertainty or indecisiveness. I say that’s unfair (a favourite word lately) and sad.

It’s fine to have mixed feelings about some situations, but when you have them a lot, then that’s beyond normal. Then you have a problem, clever books say. If you have to choose and you see many benefits in both choice A and B, and find it very difficult, almost impossible sometimes, to make a decision, then you have a problem.

If you want to be normal, you have to repress one or the other of the conflicting sides. If your mixed feelings help you see different sides of an argument you’re fine, but if they make it difficult for you to take decisions then you have a problem.

Don’t think I am just talking rubbish, because I’m not: I’ve been reading on it. Please note that the clever name for it is “cognitive dissonance”. Hope it helps.

There’s a theory that comes with it, a funny story that says we ALL have a drive to reduce dissonance. We make our lives easy by justifying, blaming, denying or changing beliefs.

Why is the fact that you just can’t decide between co-existing contradictory feelings called confusion? Is there a theory that says what happens to the rest of us who don’t have these unconscious mechanisms to deal with reality? What about few of us who can’t (and don’t want to) repress any of the conflicting feelings?

I don’t care if it’s beyond normal – it’s fine to have simultaneous contradictory feelings about most people/things. And here it comes the beauty of exceptions – not very often, you’ll feel one emotion stronger. It’s the exception, not the rule, remember, as most situations and people create a mixture of some sort. My favourite exception wears a cool tshirt, holds my hand, looks at me and makes me forget what the other side of the situation was about and what the other feelings were (must be more, especially knowing the complex creatures that we are).

I don’t want to live my life in black and white (see below); I want to have problems making decisions. I want to have the strength of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, and accept both of them.

If you think I am mad read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Read it even if you think I’m not.

It’s fine [A/N] to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it.

(…) Meant to tell you a story, but I am not good at telling sad stories. Another time maybe.

Went to Auvers-sur-Oise to see The Auberge Ravoux (known as the house of Van Gogh). Here Van Gogh rented a very small room (7 square meters) on the top floor – the room where “the man committed suicide”, a room that was never let out again.

As I expected, Vincent’s room remains exactly as it was and luckily (or not) all visitors are allowed to step in. Amazing universe, warm light (not much absinthe that day, promise), bare walls, surprisingly peaceful – nothing to see… and everything to feel. A personal experience, glad I had my eyes open, as it doesn’t always happen.

I remember there was this flirty young French guide, scanning through the visitors while beating her eyelashes in search of a rich philanthropist to fulfill Van Gogh’s dream. And probably hers. Strange combination, it felt weird.

Some day or another I believe I find a way to have my own exhibition in a café. June 10th 1890, one of the letters to his brother Theo

Apparently, since 1890, the fulfillment of Vincent’s project has been the ambition of The Institut Van Gogh. Once occupied by Vincent, this room will some day or another host one of his paintings. His dream, I believe, is in need of a hot French girl to do the guided tour to the room no 5 at The Auberge Ravoux.

I do apologise for my cynical comments.

While most of his paintings are somber, there is still some sort of optimism, a hope that he’ll return to lucidity. Must be very upsetting to be aware of your bouts of mental illness and know of your anxiety. Not being able to work only added to the frustrations and so the depression gradually deepened. – If I go mental (which is very unlikely, just saying) I don’t want to know.

Why fulfill a dream if its owner’s not around anymore? Does it make a difference when it’s too late? Or is it ever too late for dreams? I wonder.