Thursday 1 January 2015

Celebrate, Cherish, Bless, Try, Deserve, Be Yourself, Be Happy

I've been through change and development and sadness and joy and excitement and tiredness and despair and hope and saudade and depletion and inadequacy and abundance this year.
Just like everyone else.
Walked on cobblestones and soil and grass and concrete and bridges and towers. 
Set my feet on mattresses and pedals and altars and staircases and rainwater and planes and trains.

I've been confident and I've doubted in myself.
Just like everyone else.

I've learnt new words, of which my favourite ones are aghast, bereft, dalliance, shoal, forsake, repentance, cease, dregs, poised, sleet, fickle.

I've followed new styles and discovered new parts of the world and of me with them. 
I've completed and made resolutions.

A year in which I've (re)built my foundations.
It's all set now.
A proper list of resolutions is not ready yet, but it's going to be soon.

2014 has left me listening to this, throwing myself into the new year with a continuous line. I don't feel the ridges between the borders of December and January. I'm just the same person I was yesterday. (Or am I not? Are we really the same person we were yesterday? The person who we were yesterday hadn't lived today. We have. So are we still the same person?)
There is no cliff dividing 23.59 from 00.00, so I keep following my wake, impelled by the beautiful things I knew in this segment of time that we divided in 365 days of 24 hours.
And by beautiful I mean each and every thing I have lived.

Including these songs, soundtracking my life in the last months, that I invite you to listen to if you haven't already:


These two books I've read:
Through the Language Glass,  Guy Deutscher, about the alleged different way people think depending on their language (or do they not?);
and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer, captivating novel about a special kid investigating about his father's secret after his death, just beautiful.



These two movies I've loved:

Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho,


Kill Your Darlings

And these two poems I've loved, the latter I've just met and it's going to be my motto for this wonderful year that is here and shiny and malleable:

A Fragment, George Gordon Byron

When, to their airy hall, my father’s voice
Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice;
When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride,
Or, dark in mist, descend the mountains side;
Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns,
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen’d scroll, no praise-encumber’d stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:
If that with honour fail to crown my clay,
Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay!
That, only that, shall single out the spot;
By that remember’d, or with that forgot.

Footnote to Howl, Allen Ginsberg

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!




This is to remember and celebrate the ashes of this 2014, a year that gave me a lot but I want more, and to cherish this bliss that time has given me, I bless the holiness that surrounds me, I'm ready to knead this year, and with it I'll be the form I really am. I'll get the best I can from it, trying to deserve it, and you try to do it too.
Happy holy new year my fellows of the world!

:)

4 comments:

  1. Hi Vale, i post my favs for 2014, there are also old things mixed with new ones i discovered this year :)

    Fav Music: http://open.spotify.com/user/1166995251/playlist/3AcI24TSwsPdR0x24AO8XL

    Fav Books: The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon + A hundred summers by Beatriz Williams

    Fav Movies: Her by Spike Jonze + The Royal Tenenbaums by Wes Andersen

    2 poems i loved by chinese poet Han Dong (i can't find the originals in chinese but only english translations)

    Neon Sign

    unable to sleep, I open my eyes
    in the dark, the shape of a window
    so I sit up in bed. look (I tell myself)
    outside the sky is gloomy
    even blacker are the distant treetops
    in the air above them, there’s a neon sign
    flashing quietly in synch with the glow of my cigarette
    it’s a line of words. it says:
    “I LOVE YOU”

    Life

    life is a vacancy
    inhabited by people
    male and female
    as random as a meeting on a train
    as close to one another as these lives are

    life shakes us up
    so hold me a little more tightly
    at the station we get off, shed hot tears
    a butterfly flies in
    passing back and forth without let

    Happy new year <3 i wish you all the best!

    Hugs
    Marisa

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    Replies
    1. Hey Marisa!
      Thanks for sharing! I'm listening to the playlist and I love it, as I loved The Royal Tenenbaums, freaking out movie. I saw Grand Budapest Hotel some days ago, by the same director and equally beautiful and clever. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it! Beautiful poems too, what are the titles in Chinese? Would be cool to brush it up and see how much I can understand after so much time not speaking it.
      Happy New Year to you too and big hugs :)

      PS: I've added you to my blog links, didn't know you had one!

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    2. And I'm in your playlist! Woo hoo!! :D

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    3. Indeed you are in my Spotify :)
      Thanks for the movie, i will watch it! I'm sure you can understand they're quite simple.
      Han Dong chinese text is here but i can't copy/past bc it's an image:
      Neon Sign> http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/8362/auto/NEON-SIGN
      Life> http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/8378/auto/LIFE
      I don't mind to be in your friends blog, it's quite old blog, if you click on "the china experience" tag you can read our old memories from Beijing (written when we were there) ;)

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