Maria's open letter

A 'blog' - what is a blog though? This is an open letter - or rather a literary/nonsensical/pseudo-intellectual amalgamation of stuff. Completely random things. My texts, other people's quotes... inspiring images/ideas. About everything I like... and about writing itself. It started in 2012 when I first moved to London, as a way of keeping my family and friends up to date with how living abroad was treating me. Little by little, however, it changes personality and becomes something else - this was when I moved to London a second time. You'll notice a different style emerging in the last two years, and I like to see a bit of my life's journey through this blog. It used to be called 'Dear London' because London was what originally inspired me to write this open letter, but it makes more sense to call it 'Maria's (me) open letter' - one I only write every now and then - when I remember. Or when I don't. Is that a blog? Not entirely sure. I say it is. Sort of.

[maria-aguiar511]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFArFx4za0k)

[maria-aguiar511]

To be in love with love itself

To be in love with love itself – I knew someone who was permanently like that. A lost cause. For her, it was a constant state of being – to be in love with love itself. She wrote these words on the back of my hand in blue ink once, and even though they are no longer visible, I can still feel the pressure of the pen’s tip as she drew the words on my skin, carefully, on that pale winter morning. The words still burn, despite their invisibility. It is as though my blood absorbed them, a transparent, infinite tattoo in my soul. She had been telling me that she just couldn’t get enough of it, of love. She would try to find it in the most unusual places, when the clichés wouldn’t satisfy her anymore. She would read every book and watch every film, look at every stranger on the train in her mission to find true love. Living through other people’s lives, real or imaginary, she was hopelessly in love with love. It was irrevocable. I can never forget her sweet, crooked smile, a smile that never reached her eyes. There was something about it. She made an effort to look happy, but I saw through it. She was miserable. She was probably the saddest person I’ve ever met, and it broke my heart to see her looking for a new story to fall in love with every day of her life. She could never be happy with anyone. By wanting to live a thousand love stories, she forgot to live her own. She didn’t know how. I told her that there is nothing better than to love, and be loved in return, but her answer surprised me: ‘It’s better to love no one, than to love someone so much it tears you apart, to love and be alone in that love – doesn’t that feel like the greatest tragedy in the world? Love is chaos, love is pain. It’s easier to love the idea of it, than risk getting your heart broken over and over again, because that’s what happens in real life. How many more times will you tear it to pieces? You can’t mend it and fix it endlessly. There’s a limit. A patched heart can only take so much. It comes with a price, did you know? It’s never as good as new. How many times have you or someone else broken your heart? Have you lost count? Well, I haven’t. I decided I wasn’t going to keep mending and fixing. I would let my heart be. Still, I can never get enough of love itself. So I keep looking, daydreaming, without ever risking to live it again. It’s safer this way.’ After that we didn’t speak for weeks. I had tried to convince her that she could never be happy like this, but she told me that she could not be unhappy either. I disagreed. I told her she was unhappy. She was angry with me and asked me to leave. I said I was sorry, but that she was wrong. She needed to live again. Embrace life in all its possibilities instead of watching from the background. She wouldn’t listen. Eventually, I did leave. The words she had written on the back of my hand had faded, but their meaning couldn’t. I was a bit like her, but I wanted to live. I was in love with love, yes, but I was in love with life also. She was merely a pale shadow of a girl pretending to survive, living only in her imaginary world. I, on the other hand, couldn’t let imagination take over my life. I was terrified of it. When I finally met her again, she asked me if the words had sunk into my skin. As she said this, I felt the already-vanished words burn again, come alive, as if they were resurfacing. I looked at my hand, but there was nothing there. Only the invisible power of the words that would never leave me alone. After this, she vanished, like the words, but I could never forget her or them.

(By Maria Aguiar, 5 February 2016)

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The Crossing

There was something about graveyards, she thought, as a wave of freezing wind moved down her spine when she was crossing the old cemetery in the village. There was no way around it, unless you trespassed on the farmhouses’ lands, and risked being bitten by the vigilant pastor-dogs, ‘and that is not an option’, she muttered. She loved dogs, but feared them too, for some inexplicable reason. She had never even been bitten. Nothing other than her high sense of self-preservation could explain that illogical fear. Still, she knew those dogs were very territorial, and without their owner’s presence would not hesitate to attack any unknown trespasser on their lands. ‘That’s what they were trained to do, anyway.’ But the graveyard. Why was there a graveyard you simply couldn’t avoid to get to the Archives? She hated that village. She hated everything it reminded her of. After all, she had moved to the city for a reason – it’s been years (how many? Fifteen? Twenty?) since she had even put a foot on these old grounds. So many memories she would rather forget. But the graveyard. So dark, as though it was always dusk time, an eternal twilight. The sun never shone above the graves, hidden in a purplish darkness. Still, fresh green grass and blooming flowers covered the grounds, and made the isolated church look like a happier place, now that it was springtime. ‘All these bodies buried underneath me’ she shuddered, ‘how much suffering these graves have witnessed, from crying mothers and fathers, and widowed husbands and wives, and sad friends’. Generalities, though, were not helping her to feel any less tense. The cold energy of death lingered all around her, and she was afraid of the silence witnessing her shaky steps. ‘How can people like graveyards? They are so unbearable’ she wondered, considering Satanists and death-worshippers. Graveyards were alive with dead bodies; she could feel them under the earth, breathing out death to the flowers that bloomed above them. She knew death was natural, but the grotesque aspects of it were too much for her. And this was not inexplicable like her fear of dogs - her unconfronted trauma would forever trigger her imagination with the darkest nightmares and fears, which would come to life in cemeteries and direct encounters with mortality.   ‘There’s a reason I avoid funerals, or hospitals, for that matter’.

(By Maria Aguiar, July 2015 - 1st published February 2016)

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The intensely excessive brain

Excess is always derogatory, pejorative, excessive being its qualitative term, losing nothing in its inherent negativity. Perhaps that explains my preference for a different term, intensity, and intense as a quality, since it allows for both positive and negative associations. It sounds better if I say that I feel intensely rather than excessively. It sounds better, but it’s not true. The only way this could be true was if I’d say that I feel so intensely, so deeply, that feelings overflow and become excessive. My brain explodes with thought, my heart bursts in pain, my eyes drown in tears, until I become so exhausted that I fall asleep. This is as excessive as it gets. Less excessive would only give me insomnia (only?). I always get too involved in everything I do, and it seems impossible to let go: over-thought feelings, over-dreamt ideas, over-felt sensations. I cannot give just a little bit of myself; I either give everything, or nothing at all. My heart has to be in it - completely in it, for every life project. If it isn’t there, it won’t work. It can’t. Yet, by being there in its totality, it becomes impossible not to feel that the project is too much my own life. I obsess with it, I become terrified of it. I live it. Feeling so intensely that it becomes excessive, it is much easier to crush the core of your soul, to destroy your heart piece by piece. Feeling so intensely that it becomes excessive - so utterly unnecessary, a creator of imaginary tragedies and psychological freak outs. So excessively unnecessary. Intensely so. Yet, it’s me. I could never write without it.

(By Mari a Aguiar, 1 February 2016)

[maria-aguiar511]

Wise words by Pablo Neruda #pabloneruda#wallpoetry

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Self-motivation-anti-procrastination kind of text

We all want something. We think we can make a difference. That life has meaning. But we never seem to get up and prove that we have what it takes,  To really show we are working towards that one goal. We may dream big, and tell others about our dreams, Tell ourselves, imagining different, magical scenarios As we prepare to fall asleep. In the silence of the night, in the darkness of the room When we are left alone with our thoughts and dreams, Who can say it’s impossible? Who can make us believe that we cannot reach just a little bit higher, A little bit farther? In those moments, we laugh in the face of destiny, Intently trying to pull our feet back to the ground, While we keep them flying high above. Still, when the moment of truth comes, How many of us can really do it? How many of us linger in the skies, Falling every now and then with a broken wing, But then mend it? We see them flying again and again, no matter what it takes, How many more falls and broken wings and bones. They don’t give up. They don’t quit. They are driven by their one goal. They do it. How many of us do that? We know we’re strong enough. All of us have fallen and been broken to pieces, But each piece can be glued back into place. We can be fixed.  So, the question is: After all this life-work of mending and fixing, Are we entitled to give up? What’s the point of giving up after going so far? No point. Just a waste. Don’t let that happen. If you truly believe life has meaning, Don’t let the world miss out on whatever it is you have planned for it. You can only make a difference if you work hard, And if you don’t waste your life-project By getting lost in the way, and quitting. When you see the finish line, run towards it. Do not walk, do not pause. Run. It’s right there. It’s still some miles away, true, But you can see it now. So run. 

[maria-aguiar511]

Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss

Virginia Woolf, D2

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'Lights will guide you home'

Wavy brownish water sang rhythmically as I walked by the Thames from Temple to Westminster, splashing golden rays in every direction. True, I could have just taken the tube in Holborn, but the sun was out - I felt the London calling, the cry of a city bathed in sunlight that wouldn’t be ignored. No, I couldn’t make myself go down the deep, endless tube tunnels too hot to bare, where no natural light is able to penetrate. Not today. As I walked on the grey stony pavement, with no predefined route, my mind was elsewhere, lost in the little white unlit bulbs that paint the margins of the river with pale, romantic light every night. Those little balls of light - so simple, so cosy, somehow so full of life, even whilst unlit. They have a magic of their own, each small bulb holding a story, a private narrative of the everyday encounters and passers-by on the sidewalks. How many tears and smiles, or even indifference, have they witnessed? People sitting down, pausing, or trying to swiftly move past the crowds of by-standers that sometimes gather by the river for no other reason than to view the water, which may remind them of an ocean far away. I was thinking of traumatized soldiers and the Great War, of the right angle to work with in the dissertation, of the writers’ inability to deal directly with the terrors of the war, and the narrative strategies employed by them to mourn indirectly over a tragedy they couldn’t understand, because they wouldn’t accept. Yet, the light bulbs took me to different places, and made me forget my original thoughts altogether. I was mesmerized, hypnotized, imagining beyond the lights. I then longed for something I couldn’t quite name, something new and old simultaneously, known as well as mysterious. I lived a thousand lives then. My mind travelled, created and recreated all at once. I was myself, and various others, all as I walked by the wavy brownish singing waters of the Thames. The light bulbs guided my imagination, and after a long pause, the writing had to be done. The lights fixed me - Coldplay, then, had to be in the title. The lights guided me home, and inspired me to write again, after a long time of hiding away.

(By Maria Aguiar, June 2015)

[maria-aguiar511]

The Summit

‘Look up’ Why? There’s nothing. ‘You’re not seeing it. Try harder’ The sky? ‘Well, it’s in the sky, but it’s not the sky.’ That cloud? The semi-transparent one? ‘No. Open your eyes’ I can’t see anything. Can’t you tell me what I should be looking for? ‘No. I already told you to look up. That’s as far as I can go. I can’t describe it to you, you’ll miss the great effect of seeing it for the first time, with no expectations to prepare you for it’ Was that how you first saw it?  ‘Yes. I found it by accident.’ It’s not the sky, not the semi-transparent cloud, not that swallow.  ‘No’ There’s an airplane too. ‘Try closing your eyes again’ They’re closed. What now? ‘Forget everything you saw before. Start afresh’ * The mountain. Is it even a mountain? ‘You see it?’ The purple summit. The semi-transparent cloud is painted around it. It... It comes out of nowhere. It’s not even attached to the ground. ‘Do you know what it is?’ No. I’ve never seen the like. I’m not even sure I’m seeing it properly. ‘That’s because there isn’t anything quite like this’ But what is it? Magic? ‘If dreams are magic, then yes’ Am I dreaming? ‘Why, of course. Can’t you tell?’ But... We’re up in the summit now. How did we even do this? Are you sure this isn’t magic? ‘You’re the magician then. It’s all in your head. You control it.’ But how did we end up here? How can I see myself down there, looking up? Have I gone mad? ‘We’re all mad when we dream. Welcome to the top of the world’ Wait... Who are you? ‘Oh, I was afraid you’d never ask’ (By Maria Aguiar, 20 April 2015)

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A story of uninspiration

So uninspired tonight... But I feel like writing anyway. About anything, just to get my mind off things. What things, though? My head is such a mess, as always, so much going on all the time, a crazy, never-ending process of thought. I could freudiarize this for the fun of it, but then again I don’t like Freud enough to compare my thinking processes to his theory. I oppose the notion of trying to limit the scope of my brain to Freud. In fact, no one ever should. Sorry Sigmund, I just needed a kind of scapegoat tonight. For some reason you were the first thing that popped in my head. If only all this thinking would lead to brilliant ideas, or even achievements. But no. So far, nothing. Just this terribly sad text - sad because it’s about nothing, there’s no context, no story, just an empty page of random thoughts loosely connected in writing. Only because I so terribly needed to write. Sudden as thunder, a physical need of letting it all out takes control of my body, of my mind, and I can’t rest until I find a notebook or anything that allows me to get rid of whatever it is that’s about to explode in my head. All needs to go. In nights like this, though, I don’t even know what it is that needs to leave my brain. I can’t quite put my finger on it; it’s so deep and hidden and far away. But I know it’s there, even if I can’t tell what it is exactly. Like one of those muscles that ache slightly, but constantly, so you can’t stop thinking about it because even if it doesn’t hurt much, it bothers you that you can’t lose it. Sometimes writing makes me see it, even reach it, and hence it helps me deal with whatever the problem or thought is. It doesn’t solve anything, but it helps me hit the breaks and have a rest. I needed just that now. I couldn’t reach it though - could I? Or maybe I know only too well what it is about and can’t accept it because I know it’s wrong. So wrong that, indeed, you can’t even write it down and face it so directly. Hit the breaks. Stop it. Lower it down. Focus on the crazy amount of work you need to do. In the meantime, there are a thousand blank pages waiting for your complaints.  So, this is uninspiration. Sorry about that. I started typing because my brain ordered me to. I had no choice but to comply.

[maria-aguiar511]

The 36 questions (TEASER fragment)

´Oh. Right. So…’ he made a nervous gesture with his hand, passing it over his silky hair. ‘I like everything about you, for no logical reason, and for every reason. It’s irrational but I honestly cannot begin to tell you that even before we ever talked, I was happy to spend my commuting moments with you there, in a shared silence that I knew you were aware of. Your eyes smile wide even when your mouth doesn’t move as you look at me, there’s a particular glow in them, as though they’re set ablaze, emitting warmth. When you’re thinking of something far away, the glow disappears, like a window closing. There’s nothing like the feeling of you looking at me, though – it’s like you can see all the way to my soul, as I said before, but that doesn’t scare me anymore, because there’s something about you that immediately invites trust and comfort. You’re witty, beautiful in every possible respect, and you know what you want. You are ambitious, intelligent, funny, and incredibly kind. I don’t know; I just love everything about you. And I know that I could grow to love your faults too – even if I’m yet to discover them. I want to discover them.’

[maria-aguiar511]

A morning thing

The suspense before opening the window when you wake up, and looking at the sky, hoping to see the sun shining outside. You pray quickly as you pull the black-out up to see the large blue and at least a pale yellow glowing and glittering. Drinking that first coffee of the day in complete silence, in the warmth of the sun, for the spot you’ve picked strategically is the one receiving all the rays. You close your eyes and enjoy that moment of a dream-like world before you have to face reality again. That moment is yours to savour. Even if the sun isn’t shining, no one takes that coffee moment away, unless they want to make sure you’ll be in a bad mood for the rest of the day… Today the sun is bright, pale yellow, if such a combination is even possible. And I’ve accidentally tripped as I brought my coffee cup to the strategic spot and had to clean up all the mess before I even got to enjoy it. I absolutely hate wasting my precious morning creative fuel. Let’s please go back and do this all over again. I’m still not ready to start this day. Go back to bed and wake up again. Maybe there’ll be a change of scenery.

(By Maria Aguiar, 8 April 2015)

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Chaotic unity

Sometimes chaos let’s a bit of order in, A moment of clarity Certainty of vision. You’ve reached a decision. Let us freeze that picture, that precious moment Of decision-making. All the pieces fit together at the right time, One by one illuminatingly adapting, changing, framing… The fog disappears You can see it, almost touch it for a second That precious moment You’ve reached some essential truth If only so briefly But you have. You saw it, and knew which way to go. Order, unity, obvious clarity. Then chaos returns. But you still have the memory of that unity to remember and cherish… You never know when it will come again. But that ‘maybe’ it will Is enough to keep you going. Unfreeze the picture now: a decision was made. Order in the midst of chaos.

(By Maria Aguiar, 1 April 2015)

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(No subject)

An ode to several no’s and don’t’s… (This isn’t one though) No subject No filter No idea Don’t think it Don’t say it Don’t write it When being myself is taking it a step too far - that should never be the case (?) No control No self-censorship No limits Don’t take unnecessary risks (?) Don’t ignore your own advice Don’t pretend it’s not your fault when it really is Escaped the triangle. Lost sight of the remaining vertexes, isolated. No emergency break for the imagination No sleep No production. Or this text. Text? Don’t overthink it Don’t be so paranoid Don’t introvert now No do no do. Is Dada back after a 100 years? Gran-Dada. Will my next piece be surreal then? This whole exercise is complete nonsense. Exercise? Text? Automatic typing? No subject for this text No filter was used No idea what just happened. I thought it Said it And wrote it.

(By Maria Aguiar, 29 March 2015)

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In darkness

If I close my eyes I can picture it in my mind... But I can see it just the same with eyes wide open, fixing something that the brain isn’t really processing. I like to keep them open, both here and there, aware and distracted. What the eyes have in front of them is not what they are seeing. They travelled to the unknown places and are showing the brain just how deep and far they can go. How creative they can be if they choose to. Whole pictures, motion pictures, frozen pictures, all in display, painting, changing, interrupting. So vivid. Sometimes insane...    It was a dark room, with one single light. You were holding it in your hands as you lied down under the covers, but suddenly you let it fall. As you fell asleep, so peacefully, it slipped from your hands, from the soft duvet, and down to the floor. But the light did not go off right away: it lingered, albeit only for a few minutes, losing its brightness slowly, gradually diminishing the glow, until it faded, and faded into darkness. If I close my eyes, or even if leave them wide open, making the table in front of me disappear, I can picture it in my mind. See it ever so vividly. In darkness, the only light. In darkness, you falling asleep, so innocently. The light glowing, the light fading. No more light - until morning wakes you up and you pick it up again. You give it a try - it still works. The light comes on as you touch it, illuminating the shadows of your sleepy face. You realize then that even in the darkest of darkness, you can always turn on that light. It will never let you down... Unless the battery dies, of course.  (By Maria Aguiar, 28 March 2015)

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The headache of a complaining brain

It aches in my temples, it burns in my eyes, it beats in my forehead, it hurts everywhere, in the weirdest places. My brain is complaining of too much thinking, of obsessive thinking, sometimes even needless thinking, and of no sleep. Thinking thinking thinking. It works non-stop and now it threatens me with explosion if I don't turn it off. Except I don't know how to do that - it's not like there's a switch off button I can press. I wish there was. Painful overthinking. This is a well known condition, or so I believe, called brain-damage. Probable cause: the hammer of thought. Is my brain polluted? Is that why it hurts? No, that can't be it - thinking does not pollute, although it does not necessarily elucidate, either. Thinking keeps me awake, constantly occupied, and the muscle complains, like any other would if I was to exercise it too much, over-stress it, over-exhaust it. Where can I get a brain massage? I need to shut down the system and restart it afresh. It won't work like this now. It aches in my temples, it burns in my eyes, it beats in my forehead, it hurts everywhere, in the weirdest places. (By Maria Aguiar, 25 March 2015)

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An indignant letter

Dear London,

(Though not quite so ‘dear’ at the moment) Do you call this spring? I think we have very different concepts of what ‘spring’ ought to mean, unless you are deliberately joking. I’m sure you got it wrong, by mistake, and I understand it may be confusing to manage all the seasons, especially with 9 million people complaining about different things all the time. But how hard can it be to get it right? Yesterday it was nice, after the failed solar eclipse and all, but sunny and kind of warm (seriously, that’s all I’m asking for...). So, what the hell happened today? You can’t give us hope and then take it away, BAZINGA, just like that. Get rid of the fog and the clouds will you, and the cold. Especially the cold. Yes it’s ok if it rains every now and then, but this cold? Winter has decided to linger, is that what you’re saying? Why would you let him get away with it? It’s time he moved south. Now pull yourself together and please put an end to this madness. We londoners will deeply appreciate it. Thank you.

(Cold) Regards,

M.