-My mother fucked Mick Jagger-

Lady grey

2012-02-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

S an I alone in the apartment late at night, dressing up in voluminous silk gowns pretending we're the girls from a Tim Walker shoot for Vogue Italia. Mother's been friendly, the little we've seen of her since we got here. I don't know what she does when she's gone and I don't ask, it doesn't matter as long as she's happy.

She keeps a framed picture on her nightstand, the same black and white she has in our house in Los Angeles. It's the only one I've ever seen of my grandfather, an old man dressed in black with a fur hat on his head, standing in a snowstorm in the middle of Moscow's Red Square.

Every time I see it I think of what she wrote in her diary.

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I've made up my mind. I don't know if it's because of that family I saw, the freezing little girl and her parents on the platform, but I know what I have to do. I always imagined I would be able to escape not just in body but also in mind, but the memories and the guilt have been tormenting me in a way I never thought possible lately. I have to tell T somehow, I only wish he will understand and not judge me by my weakness. It would kill me if he did, he's all I have right now.

The girl that never sleeps

2012-02-14T18:51:00.000-08:00

The serenity of a voluntary insomnia at 3 a.m., getting out of bed and walking silently barefoot over algid floorboards; standing by an open window with the February winds blowing through your clothes, glittering city streetlights like a starry winter sky outside.

New York is my sanctuary, the complete opposite of the mental institution that is Los Angeles and my home. I can breathe here, the air seems lighter somehow, my footsteps less strained knowing I don't have to put on the mask of popular convention wherever I go.

They say you can never run away from yourself and maybe it's true. Maybe this is all just a dream, but in it I get to be whoever I want and I'm not yet ready to wake up. The taste of disinhibition is just way too sweet. Come with me if you like.

The first snow

2012-02-09T08:03:00.000-08:00

This weekend S is coming to see me in New York along with a snowfall. They're both a welcome change. Mother is mostly out, I spend my days walking around the dark apartment in my nightgown or aimlessly wandering the streets alone, looking at people and fantasizing about their lives. I feel I could write a book about it.

And then I remember a late autumn years ago, we were about to leave the house for the winter and go back to the warmth and sunshine in Los Angeles. I was eleven, the forests surrounding us had just started to change color, it looked like a giant fire. My father was closing up, I was outside waiting by the car and suddenly there they were. First one, then a dozen then thousands and thousands of little snowflakes painting the trees and the ground in a sparkling white.

I remember how I wanted to be there with Carl. His parents had been screaming at us for what we had done to him the night before, Belle and I, and they left shortly afterwards. It was the last time I saw him before that night in the Gauloise haze, and nothing scared me more than the blank expression on his face. For years to come it was almost the only thing I could remember about him.

Nothing changes everything's the same

2012-02-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Someone must have told Carl about my giveaway. His casual attitude and the distant tone of his voice would have scared me if I thought he had read it himself. It's late when he calls, I can almost hear Chloe breathing in the background through traffic noise and telephone wires.

"How is she?" I ask, imagining her dancing barefoot on black marble floors. I'm not mad at her, she didn't know, I just wonder if she sits next to him by the fireplace like she did with me. "She's fine" he says, then tip-toes around the subject of the jacket. He wants me to keep it but won't say why, and maybe it would have mattered if he had found the right words but he doesn't, and now it's all too late.

So for those of you who have asked me if I'm serious: yes I am. I'm giving the jacket away, I want one of you to have it and I'm not going to change my mind. Take it or leave it.

x

The giveaway

2012-02-03T15:32:00.000-08:00

First night in New York. "Let's go out" mother yells in her most upbeat tone while frenetically running around the apartment, pulling back the heavy velvet curtains and exposing the dust on the floors. I'm digging through the closets for something to wear when I find it, the French Connection jacket Carl bought me in London for my 19th birthday. He said it reminded him of me and I brought it to New York the same weekend only to forget about it, until now.

When I first saw it I wanted to throw it away, but I quickly changed my mind. Not because the memories of him and us changed color but because I realized I can finally give something back to you, my sweet readers.

With that said, I'm giving the jacket away. I have to decide who gets it somehow, so here's what you'll have to do if you want it:

1. Follow my blog.
2. Publish a post on your own blog with a link to mine and a brief motivation as to why you should get it.
3. Post a comment here or send me an email (avystn@gmail.com) so I can look at your post. I'll choose the one with the cutest motivation sometime next week.

By the way, it says it's a British size 10 which is an American size 8 or a European size 38, but I normally wear smaller sizes than that and it fits me fine. Just send me an email if you're unsure.

Now to look for a much needed wine-haze along 5th Avenue. Hugs and kisses.

♥

Gunshot wounds

2012-01-31T15:12:00.000-08:00

It didn't work. "Meet us at Alcove" Chloe said when I called her, and there they were: her head leaning softly on his chest, his left arm wrapped close around that 24 inch waist of hers, girly porcelain hand in ruggedly masculine hand. It felt like watching Dior's first post-Galliano haute couture collection, something inside me just wanted to collapse right there on the pavement to be flushed down the drain into the sewers.

I had to go somewhere else, anywhere else. Carl called me twenty minutes later. "What the hell is wrong with you" he said, evidently annoyed. I screamed at him, something about not wanting to ruin a perfectly good illusion of a dream that may or may not be coming true sometime in the future. I don't think he understood.

Back home I asked mother if I could go with her to New York, she laughed before she realized I was serious. I need to get away from this city for a while, away from this plastic surface I keep scratching without ever finding anything underneath.

I'm not angry, just tired.

They tell me I'm doing fine

2012-01-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

I wish I could send flowers to each and every one of you. Thank you darlings. I'm fine. Chloe called to ask me where I went, I lied and said I left because I was tired. "Let's get together tomorrow" she said. "Me, you and Carl". I had to say yes.

It's funny, I keep hearing people say how their biggest regrets are the things they never did. I think about it every time a stranger catches my interest and I have to decide whether to tap them on the shoulder or not. Nothing scares me more than a clear view of the future so I hardly ever do, not because it's easier but because that romanticized image of what could have happened is so hopelessly inciting.

And I want it to be the same way with Carl. I want it to be so that I can see him again and carelessly drift away, fantasizing about us together like in a distant dream, alone on his bed in the dark listening to Let it bleed as if for the first time. Tomorrow I'll know.

Goodbye my love

2012-01-28T15:54:00.000-08:00

Looking into his eyes suddenly feels like something I've never done before, even though that's not even close to the truth. We've been here many times but not like this and I don't listen to a word he's saying. He's handsome in a blue Jil Sander sports jacket, I'm imagining his reaction when I tell him. He goes to the bar to order another round of drinks, I watch him from behind wishing he'll turn around and smile at me.

My heart dances on a frozen lake every time I think of what to say, how things are about to change, and then I see them. Him and Chloe. They're on the other side of the room just under a spotlight, she kisses him and he runs his fingers through her chestnut hair.

The last words my father ever said to me were "no happy endings, Avy". He used my name, he didn't call me flower or angel like he used to do and I should have known it was a sign that things would never be the same again.

Is it getting better, or do you feel the same?

2012-01-25T12:11:00.000-08:00

Carl. Mother hasn't approved of him since that day I came home from school and said I was in love with an older man (I was 9, he was 10). I was intrigued by his quietness and communicated with hasty lipstick kisses on the door of his locker. Sometimes he walked me home, sometimes we sat together on his bed in the dark, listening to Let it bleed. When I modeled endless skirts and dresses from mother's wardrobe he looked away every time I changed, a perfect little gentleman in gray Diesel jeans and a scarf carefully wrapped around that boyish neck of his.

I don't know when he fell for me, he never even told me that he did. I noticed it gradually and pushed him away, this was years later and we had just started talking again after what I did to him that dreadful summer in the country house.

Now I feel I need him again, and not just as a friend. I only wish I knew how to tell him that.

How do you see me now?

2012-01-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

I have this thing about not falling asleep naked, which may or may not have to do with how Marilyn died. This morning I woke up in black Dolce & Gabbana, relieved that even in my slightly drunken state of mind I apparently managed to remember.

Last night with S, first at my house where mother in one of her better moods treated us to petits fours, brandy and champagne. "What are we celebrating" I asked between sips. "Oh, just life" she giggled. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Later at a noisy bar S made me explain why it's been months since we last talked. I think I yelled something about being envious of her and Henry, and she said "but you have Carl". I've never looked at him that way, but now I can't get it out of my head. What does that mean?

Kids

2012-01-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

I thought I heard children's laughter from the dining room but it was just mother chattering on the phone. I suppose it's better than the silent drinking, but I'm uncomfortably aware of how fragile those moments really are. I've never seen her fall apart, but for as long as I can remember she's slowly evaporated, which in a way is so much worse.

We've never talked about it of course, it would be useless even if I wanted to. I know that something happened to her years ago, on that trip with my father, but he protected her and kept quiet. All I have now are the little traces and clues she left in her diary.

78-11-24

Today we stopped for an hour at a small station somewhere close to the end of the world. We weren't allowed to go out so we watched the people through our smudged windows. I saw a family, a mother and a father with their little daughter, and I started to cry. T asked me what was wrong but I couldn't bear to tell him. I know how he left his family behind too, and I have no right to be more tormented by it than him. What I'm certain of however, what I saw so clearly through that window, is that I never want to put a child into this world. I could never live with the notion that some day they would be left all alone.

Uncommon people like you

2012-01-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

I feel I need to tell you about sleeping with Chloe. I could write volumes on the subject, but I'll spare you everything but the little details. Her quiet, almost imperceptible breaths, the only distinction from history's most beautiful lit de parade. The way my cream white silk sheets wrap around her slender body, reminiscent of the Pietà. Yesterday she wore her perfect skin and a pair of purple DKNY panties underneath, her striped Tsumori Chisato dress carelessly thrown on the floor next to my bed. No one can undress like her.

It's nothing sexual of course, although the image of men always fades a little in her vicinity. Carl dated her for a while, but he must have failed to notice her hair in the early sunlight (glowing chestnut waves across the pillow). If he had, I would have had no one to drive me around during those sleepless summer nights, and it would have been harder to imagine Chloe untouched and pure, waking up next to me with a smile on her thin porcelain lips. I wouldn't trade her for anything.

A little too late

2012-01-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

This silence sounds like lava floating slowly under the floorboards, ready to erupt. I know I should be somewhere else when it does but where would I go?

It wasn't always like this of course. Memories of other times sometimes echo in the walls, I remember hiding in my room as strange people came and went late in the evenings. When the noise from downstairs got too loud I would call Carl and ask him to come over. We would sleep in my bed, fully dressed (we were 10-11 back then), and wake up to a deafening silence in the morning. I would hold my breath as I went down to find mother and her friends asleep in the living room, empty wine bottles shimmering of sunlight through a light pot-smoke haze.

And I remember Carl asking me about my father. Why wasn't he there to take care of me? I defended him but deep down I felt it too. I couldn't admit it to myself or anyone else, but that was the first time I recognized a fault in him and the first time I felt abandoned.

This is me ashamed in that A&F T-shirt, illustrated by Ivette at Little moon lover ♥

The thousand of you

2012-01-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

For most people, the new year is a chance to start over again and forget all past mistakes and grievances. For mother it's just another reminder that she's not young anymore. For a week now she's been walking around the house like a zombie, dead quiet, systematically emptying her Madeira bottles one by one.

I'm afraid to say anything so I keep quiet too, pretending I'm fine when in reality it wears me down seeing her so sad. I'm afraid of what will happen when she can't hold it all inside anymore and her history blows up in both our faces. I know of so much that she's never told me, never wanted to talk about and nervously denied that one time I dared ask.

But then I wake up and I see that there are 1000 of you now. The love I keep getting from all of you means the world, it's that chance to start all over again and a reminder that there is a light that never goes out. Tell me something I didn't know about yourselves and make me smile once more.

Big fish

2012-01-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

I remember a hazy evening in someone's little apartment downtown, in the height of a summer that felt more like spring. We were young, most of us had just started drinking and some tried to smoke unfiltered Gauloises cigarettes in the hopes of looking a little like Sartre or Jean Luc Godard. Unsuccessfully of course.

Chloe had left me behind to go home with a hockey player, I sat on the floor zipping red wine from a tall beer glass when I saw him. Most people look attractive from behind, but when they turn around you can only wish that they hadn't. It ruins the enigma and those childish dreams of love at first sight.

He was standing by the book shelves across the room, talking to a girl in a dark green velvet dress and stiletto heels. She was laughing at something he said, he turned around and looked me straight in the eye from 20 feet away through a vibrating crowd of mumbling people. It was Carl.

This was years after those warm summer nights in the garden under the stars, I hadn't seen him since then and it felt like breathing under water. He could have destroyed me right there and then but didn't. I never dared ask him why.

Surviving a storm

2012-01-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

Finally back home again, not from hell but somewhere close to it. Another night of listening to self-indulgent ramblings and moronic discussions about nothing at all. How can such rich people be so desperately uninteresting?

Mother talks for me, apparently my nodding and fake smiles don't do it for her. "Avy wants to study", she says, glancing at the Tom Clancy novels on the bookshelves. "She's considering law, such an ambitious girl". It's a lie, I nod again but no one bothers to ask any questions. They don't care.

I come to think of Carl, he would have fought this war for me with his subtle sarcasms. After three glasses of wine I call him from a dark room in the attic. He calms me down with his warm voice, asking me about tonight's outfit and how I wear my hair. "I think we'll be leaving soon" I say just as mother comes to tell me we're spending the night, me in the son's room of course.

I consider sleeping in my YSL dress but decide not to wrinkle it. "You can borrow something from me" he says, so I end up in my panties and an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. It's the ultimate embarrassment and I dream about snow storms.

Make believe

2011-12-29T19:26:00.000-08:00

When mother first moved to Los Angeles she tried to make friends with families that were everything she aspired to be. On the surface, she left her hippie-self and the people attached to that lifestyle in New York, but she's the kind of person who will never grow up and become "normal", whatever that is.

For New Year's, she invites herself to one of those families and orders me to go with her. "Please behave" she says, which means I have to act perky and humorless, smile at their stupid jokes about "normal" people and listen to their dorky son talk about life in college. Mother will try not to drink too much while making me seem like the perfect daughter, cutely dressed up in pink and with just the right amount of make up on.

The whole evening will taste like vomit, one you have to swallow over and over again, and I will have to think very carefully about everything I say in order not to offend anyone (that would be very easily done if I wanted to) or seem strange.

And then, as the new year begins with fireworks and champagne, mother will hug me and say she loves me, and I will forget the charades and the fake smiles and say I love her too, just because that's how I wish things were between us. I will grab her hand and hold it, and for a moment I won't think about who's no longer there, like he used to be, protecting me from all that's evil in this world. It will be a happy moment, but it won't last forever.

Fairytale of LA

2011-12-25T15:47:00.000-08:00

Mother refuses to play Christmas music on her stereo, so we spend the day listening to psychedelic rock from the 60s. At last a redeeming feature. After lunch I finally call Carl. I tell myself it's just another way of passing time, but in reality I've been thinking about it for weeks. When he answers on the third signal I wish him a Merry Christmas and then nothing. I'm lost for words with so much to tell him.

"What's this" he says, "Avy Stanford with nothing to say?" It's so perfect, he always knows just how to talk to me. I can do nothing more than hang up, no matter how much it hurts, inside and out. I've never been good at breaking hearts, but with him I do it all the time, unintentionally.

It was all so different back then, in the garden under the stars. So much bigger.

Melting of the ice

2011-12-22T15:06:00.000-08:00

"I'll be home over Christmas", mother says on her way to the kitchen. It's not what she had wished for, it's never been a secret how much she hates sunny California this time of year. She grabs a bottle of tonic water from the fridge and sinks down next to me on the sofa.

I don't know why she won't go to New York like she would have wanted, but she tries hard to act as if she's not disappointed and asks me that question again, her head slightly tilted to the left: "you love me, don't you"?

I'm not supposed to answer, so I change the subject and ask if anyone will be joining us. Hernan still comes and goes and mother's mood changes accordingly. "No" she says, "you're all I have". She grabs my hand and holds it for about two seconds. I guess that's a start.

Memento non mori

2011-12-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

Chloe knows what it means to dress up so she came to me in her best YSL and smokey eyes Friday night, light as a feather without even trying. When she paints her lips red as blood she shoots you down harder than any heroine from the French Nouvelle Vague. Sometimes I think of what could happen if she only knew how to use it.

She saved my life once. I carelessly mixed some pills I found in mother's bedside table with too much alcohol before going out, and ended up collapsing on the dance floor. Chloe dropped everything, forced me to throw up and fed me water till I threw up again. When we got home she sat next to me on the floor all through the night, keeping me warm and awake while the shivering slowly wore off.

This time I just wanted to be close to her so we lit a fire and shared a bottle of wine in the dark. When the morning approached I told her I was cold, so she stepped out of her dress and gave it to me. It's her way of saying she knows how nothing makes me warm like her naked porcelain skin.

And all I can think of now: why don't moments like those last forever?

No one's gonna fool around with us

2011-12-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I'm on the bus, a man in his 40s sits behind me, talking to someone on the phone. He's speaking in a foreign language so I don't understand what he's saying, but I can hear he's crying. People around him are trying not to listen, uncomfortably looking away, out the windows. I know what they're all thinking, just like me: lucky man, he's feeling something.

S calls in the middle of it, I don't answer. Instead I send a text message to Chloe, telling her to dress up for tonight. At least then we can pretend like we're somewhere else.

Closer

2011-12-10T16:41:00.000-08:00

I wanted to call him today but didn't, ashamed of my egotistical reasons. He deserves better than to hear me rant about this misguided jealousy. I am happy for S, but that's only a part of it. The feeling of running into them earlier today downtown, him looking good in a black leather jacket, her looking happily in love. I went home, began dialing his number but stopped myself, mother's words echoing in my mind:

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I don't know where we are anymore and I'm starting to lose track of time. It's getting darker and colder, and it's not just the seasons changing. We're mostly reading and sleeping, when I'm not thinking about how I really feel for him. He's so pretty but I'm afraid that my love is selfish, that I only love him because it makes me feel good about myself.

Yesterday a tall rugged man approached us as we sat in the restaurant. He didn't know any English but we soon understood that he wanted to buy our jeans. And suddenly I was brought back to reality, realizing how incredibly privileged I am. My stupid problems seem so trivial compared to the poverty we're witnessing all around us. But then again, I guess things are never that easy.

I wanna be adored

2011-12-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

I call him Carl, he has another name but I stopped using it over night years ago. He never asked me why. Lately he's let his hair grow long, and when he wears the dark gray D&G jeans I bought him for his birthday he looks really handsome, in a Milo Ventimiglia sort of way.

When I'm down I sometimes call him and he picks me up with his car. We usually just end up driving in silence, and he makes me feel safe again just by looking at me in the rear view mirror. I guess it's my way of remembering a time when it felt like nothing could ever get to me, and of forgetting how all that suddenly changed.

A memory

2011-11-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

10 am, I'm violently pulled out of a nightmare as mother calls me from New York. I hadn't even noticed she was gone but it must be important since she brought her eggshell colored shirtwaist dress and her most valued pearls. She tells me she'll be away for the weekend and asks if I mind looking after her flowers. Of course not, I say, knowing she's really talking about something else.

4 hours later: for a while I was relieved to be out of my dream, but it haunts me even as I'm awake. Something is slowly catching up with me, something we never talk about, but for some reason he's still in love with me. I think I need to see him again soon.

She comes from foreign lands

2011-11-26T06:16:00.000-08:00

The sound of silence echoes through the walls. Chloe is on the naked wooden floor in my room, flipping through the pages of an Italian fashion magazine from the 60s. "How is it possible to miss a time you didn't even live in", she sighs, running her slender fingers over a black and white picture of Penelope Tree. I tell her I never do but I'm lying. I don't know why but my mind is elsewhere, and those hypothetical discussions about what life could have been like, "if only...", usually end in strange places.

Chloe looks up at me for a second, then returns to her magazine. If nothing else she looks fantastic in her little Calvin Klein nightgown. Transparency is my favorite color.

Dolly Rocker Girl

Another deadly sin

2011-11-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

The worst feeling has been eating me up all week, ever since I saw S smiling and laughing with Henry. It's not that I'm anything but happy for her sake, but all I can think of is how I'm not her, how I'm still alone. I loved someone years ago and maybe that's all there is, maybe no one will ever hold my hand like that again or know what I'm thinking of just by looking at me. That fear grows slowly inside me and I just can't shake it.

What frightens me even more is knowing how mother was just like me when she was my age. She had a heart made of glass and I wonder what happened to her to make her so distant and cold. I wonder if it could happen to me too.

From her diary:

78-11-18

Another day passes, another austere scenery on the other side of the windows. T sleeps a lot and when he's awake I ask him about his childhood and he asks me about mine. We have so much in common, both having escaped from something we never called home, but he's still evolving each day and I envy him for it. I keep thinking that what if these are the best times of our lives, what if this is the adventure I will forever be comparing everything else to. The thought lingers in my mind as I try to sleep, and sometimes I dream about having to say goodbye for the very last time. It's summer and he's standing there in the evening light, looking at me with those eyes, not saying a word. We both know that nothing will ever be the same again, that nothing can ever be better. And then I wake up.

To die by your side

2011-11-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

Friday night, S knocks on the door at 7 and we barricade ourselves in my room together with her Limoncello and a bottle of red Amarone wine. In the livingroom, mother and Hernan are dancing closely to Claire de Lune. It looks like a plane crash.

Later we bump into Henry at Underground, he instantly recognizes us and drops his umbrella drink on the floor, all over his new Diesel shoes. S pretends she's over him but an hour later I see them talking and laughing together. He strokes her cheek gently with the back of his hand, she giggles and does that nervous thing with her hair.

I told her not to fall in love, but watching her in Issey Miyake and the glowing lights I change my mind. She just looks so happy.

S in wonderland

2011-11-16T23:14:00.000-08:00

Earlier: S calls me from the airport, I act unaffected but I feel my heart racing as she speaks between breaths. It's the first time in months I hear her voice and I imagine it's changed somehow. "I have five bottles of Limoncello" she says excitedly. "What are you doing this weekend?"

Later she calls me again from her family's limo-like SUV her father sent to pick her up, and she tells me about how she's finally realized she has to start providing for herself and create her own life. It's so adorable I just want to cry.

Homecoming queen

2011-11-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

Just as I was once again finding it hard to breathe inside these wall papered fences, a hand written letter from S lands on my bed. Just as I was thinking of running away somewhere - anywhere - I open her envelope with its round little postmark from London and read about her longing for home. Just as I was running out of things to hold on to, the scent of her perfume evaporates from the light pink letter paper and fills my system with a reminiscence of closeness.

She's coming back home.

Picture from rouge fox via Vivienne Mok

Runaway train never going back

2011-11-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the roof of our house, under the stardust late at night, I come to think of what he said about flying. He told me about his childhood and how he would climb up on the roof of his family's house and just sit there alone for hours. The sky would change over his head, summer clouds would come and go while he listened to the silence and the whispering wind in the trees behind him. He said he felt free and imprisoned at the same time, like the heavens were open if he had only had wings to fly with. He told me how close he came to trying anyway, that maybe it would all be worth if just for that hundredth of a second where you defy gravity.

Under the stardust late at night I can feel it too, and it makes the blood freeze in my veins.

In mother's diary:

78-11-15

We're on the train now, after two whole days of controls, questions and phone calls we were finally allowed to leave Moscow. I lay awake at night just watching him sleep, listening to the sound of him breathing and the steel tracks beneath us. We could be going anywhere, I wouldn't care, just being close to him is enough, but I wish I could get over this quiet anxiety. I see it in his eyes sometimes when he looks out the window, as if he's not really watching that harsh landscape that's rapidly passing outside in the dark. His mind is somewhere else and I can't go there with him, at least not yet. If he would only let me in, but I guess I'm not making it easier by never asking what he's thinking of. Maybe tomorrow.

All hallows

2011-11-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of living in this city of angels is that it's Halloween all year round. Not that people here are like living dead, but they're all posing as something they're not. The sad part of it is that walking down Sunset or Melrose, only the dressed up street performers seem to know and accept the fact that their pretty exteriors are fake.

This year, Chloe and I pretended we were old fashioned models, wearing vintage Chanel and dark sunglasses, smoking menthol cigarettes using mother's old Breakfast at Tiffany's style holders. We wandered the crowded streets arm in arm, fantasizing about a long lost era, and I missed my father. I drank too much cheap Russian vodka in another naive attempt to forget, by now I should know it only makes it worse.

Hernan woke me up the next morning, asking if it was a pleasant dream. "You were moaning". I only remembered the smell of gasoline and the birds, that minacious cloud of ravens silently circling over my head in the dark.

"Yes, I guess it was".

In my dream I wore a wedding dress, under the white silk sheets in my bed I was naked. Chloe had already left.

Soon, Dolores

2011-10-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

One of the things I remember: beside my father in his car, never in the back seat, driving in the middle of the autumn night with street lights like pearls in the darkness. He would be calm and make me calm and we would be the only ones fighting against the evils of this horrid world. Just him and me past fields and forests in the dark, going out and away from the metropolitan lights and the people, further and further until everything was black. On our own but not alone, not running away but searching for something bigger beyond the city borders. We would never find it but the dream of it being out there somewhere was enough, and the feeling of closeness would invade my system as he looked at me.

I remember the serenity when we would pull over somewhere and just breathe together. It follows from the absent need of saying anything at all, when everything has already been done and the rest is silence.

But above all, I remember thinking that maybe these are the finest moments of our lives, that maybe nothing will ever be better than this. It scared me back then and it scares me know, as I come closer and closer to knowing whether it was true or not.

Confusion

2011-10-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

Mother is happy again, her roller coaster mood changed from Für Alina to Twist and Shout in an instant. "Hernan is coming over for dinner" she says as she passes by in the hallway, her Jimmy Choo heels clicking rhythmically over the marble floor. I spend too much time in bed but I lack the energy to do more. At least my orchids are flourishing, taking care of them is about as much work as I can put up with.

When Hernan finally comes around at 9 PM he kisses mother on the cheek, then looks over at me with those dark Mexican eyes. The perfect cliché, I can't believe it works on anyone, even mother. Later we're alone for a minute, I turn to him and say "you don't make her happy, so why are you here?" Smiling, he calmly answers "all happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".

I'm lost for words. How did he know that?

Down by the broken tree house

2011-10-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

One of the things I remember: staying in on a Saturday night, wondering what he was doing, who he was with. Did he miss me like I missed him, or was he out somewhere thinking of everything but the closeness we shared? It broke my heart imagining all the girls that got to come close to him in bars and on busses, brushing against his clothes, but at least I felt something and I pretend it was worth it.

Mother actually came home yesterday, like she said she would. "Where's Hernan" I asked, but she answered to something else. The little traces of mascara on her celadon skin told the story and somehow I wish she wanted to tell me about it. Maybe her pain could become mine so I'd know I'm still alive.

She gave away the secrets of her past

2011-10-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

Mother sticks her head in the doorway, I can smell the pot and Sambuca from 10 feet away. "I'm going away for the weekend" she says. "With Hernan". She sounds different, like she's implicitly asking for my permission. When I don't answer she laughs nervously and blows me a kiss.

In her diary:

78-11-12

We've landed in Moscow, all our papers seem to be in order but the security personnel have to check everything at least twice. I can talk to them in Russian, I think it makes T feel inadequate or useless. He likes to be in control, just like me, and I can see it's hurting him. I'm trying my best to be careful, for the first time in my life I guess. I don't want to step on him, he's way too beautiful. He's like a butterfly, those delicate wings ready to take him of the ground any time now.

Dreams

2011-10-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

A quiet weekend passed, over umbrella drinks Saturday someone asked me "have you ever had a dream so real you were sure you were awake". I wanted to say how I wish life felt as real as my dreams do, but I didn't want to be reminded. It's never winter in LA but when I dream of snow everything suddenly becomes so clear and obvious, in perfect focus, like it was when I was a kid. I guess it's some sort of consolation that if I can dream it then maybe I can still feel it in real life too. Maybe I can still feel something the way I once did.

Mother found me one day in her closet, reading that diary. She was furious and screamed to me I was never allowed to see it ever again. She hid it well because I haven't seen it since, but what she doesn't know is I had already copied every last word by hand. I must have known how important it was before I saw what it meant to her.

The horror

2011-10-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

I thought the house was empty, dead quiet as it was, when suddenly I hear mother laughing like there was no tomorrow. I haven't heard that plangent laugh in years, so I'm guessing she's either drunk or in love, in her very own insecure-teenager sort of way.

I get out of bed and slip down the stairs, not knowing whether to be scared or carefully curious. Before realizing I'm not even half dressed I can see the broad-shouldered source of mother's rediscovered exhilaration from the kitchen: Hernan is back. His muscles vibrate when he chuckles, I'm in my underwear. As he turns towards me and I barely manage to hide behind the wall I'm struck by a daunting thought: did I want him to get a glimpse of me?

Incarceration of the mind

2011-10-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered how you can feel so encapsulated in a huge city like Los Angeles, how this creeping claustrophobia can arise from living among so many anonymous faces, but at least I know where I got it from. Mother writes in her diary:

78-11-09

I constantly feel the need to get out of here, this town is like a prison and restlessness is my life sentence. I don't know if the cage is too small or my wings too wide, but I know I've never been more afraid of anything than to be trapped here forever. Maybe it's true what they say, that you can never run away from yourself, but I imagine I'm running from something else and that everything will be fine if I'm just free to go wherever I want.

T is asleep, we have to leave early in the morning but I'm still up. It's not that I'm having second thoughts about him, but I fear I will end up hurting him. I hope it's a risk he's willing to take.

Maybe I don't really wanna know

2011-10-01T01:33:00.000-07:00

9 PM, Los Angeles wakes up again. Chloe wants to go out but I'm sick of happy faces so I call my dear friend, the one that loves me. I did something terrible to him once years ago but he never left me. I know I don't deserve it but then again, who does?

He drives and I sit quietly in the backseat. Those flaming forests along the road are always on my mind somehow, but all that's left now is the ashes of last month's fires. It smells the same but everything else is different, as if it never really happened, as if we were never there together. Nothing scares me more now than the thought of forgetting. I try to remember but all that comes to mind is the fear of losing him, of being left alone in the rubble. Maybe I already knew.

I want him to drive until the sun comes up again, but he tells me I need to go home. I love the color of his eyes as he looks at me in the darkness.

It's gonna be okay like everyone says

2011-09-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday nights is like a theater if you just take a step back and watch the transformations happen. Young girls that started out in front of mirrors getting ready and pretty, dressing up and going out into the neon spattered darkness. They dance and drink and laugh before you meet them again on the way back home, their hair tousled, make up smudged, eyes wandering and you think in the quiet: when is it all too late? Not tonight but for good, not for them but for yourself. You look at them and you see time passing faster and faster before your eyes, until you reach that point in your life when all your choices are already made.

And it's time to wake up.

A diary - first

2011-09-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

78-11-04

I'm scared, afraid of going away with him and of what it could mean if we do. He's the sort of person I've always wanted to be, fragile, sensitive and passionate, broken down but so immensely strong at the same time. He's truly a good man and I don't know if I will ever be able to live up to that, if I will ever feel completely at ease around him. I admire and adore him for what he is, but he makes me look at myself in a way I never asked for. Beside him I'm smaller, less significant, maybe even a lost cause. For him and for me. I should gather the strength to let him go, but something inside me, a little whispering voice, tells me not to and I just can't help but listen.

The birds have stopped coming now, empty skies over our house and a silent wind in the apple trees. I love you.

Just because you feel good

2011-09-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

Saturday was my birthday, after 18 I've come to see it mainly as an excuse to call people and get them to come over with gifts and alcohol. They did, so we drank too much and went into the night in our pretty little vintage dresses and stiletto heeled shoes. Walking the crowded streets looking for a club I got a strange feeling of time relentlessly moving forward never to come back. Maybe it was the Black Russians or the menthol cigarettes, but for the first time I could feel in my own blood how no youth can last forever, not even mine.

We found a bar where we could dance to sad songs and get more free drinks from boys in oversized black framed glasses. An ad man named Fred tried his best to convince me we would be together for the rest of our lives if I would just give him one night, but I had to tell him that could never happen. Despite my sudden age angst and dedication to live at least that particular night to the fullest, there's one thing I would simply never do: sleep with a guy wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt.

Dolores, we're leaving

2011-09-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

First a forest fire and then the threat of a massive blackout. It suits my mood; outwards I might look like a power failure but I'm slowly burning on the inside. Mother is worried about her furniture and clothes even though the fire was never really near us. It suits her too.

The first lines in her diary: We've both been running from something we didn't understand, and just as we were about to settle down we're going away again. I think he loves me, maybe that's why I'm willing to do this with him. For him. It's not a good reason, but it's the only one I have. For now anyway.

A girl like you could use a break

2011-08-30T02:38:00.000-07:00

Friday, as the hurricane sweeps in over New York City, I'm in my bed worrying about mother. I never do so the feeling surprises me, but I know I recognize it from somewhere. Maybe it's the idea of not knowing what you have until you loose it, that for all the times I've fantasized about her being out of my life I wouldn't really want it to happen.

I'm watching CNN when I remember one of those fights we had, some stupid argument over nothing at all, and her leaving for New York in a cloud of rage. I remember imagining a plane crash and the reporters on TV telling the story about the ungrateful daughter who lost her mother and would never be able to forgive herself for her part in it. The daughter that had asked for it to happen and then couldn't handle the consequences when it did.

And then, the sound of keys in the lock and mother's voice piercing through the silence. "Sweetie, I'm home" she shouts from the hallway. I don't think I've ever hugged her so truthfully.

Discovery

2011-08-19T15:43:00.000-07:00

I came to think of it just now, eleven I was, it had just happened. Mother tried to comfort me as I cried day and night, I failed to understand how she could be so calm. Everything was silence, as if no one had noticed a fallen star. It made me very angry.

Some day, it must have been a couple of weeks later, I suddenly felt the urge to dig into mother's closet. I buried myself in the soft fabrics, stopped breathing and pretended I was dead too. An hour went by, then two. Mother's voice calling my name from outside, I flipped through the shoe boxes and there it was, in the midst of Prada heaven; her diary.

They were born and then they lived and then they died

2011-08-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

Friday night after too many shots of tequila I fall in and out of sleep in mother's king-sized bed. Through the darkness I hear the silent breaths of a girl, her warm skin under silk sheets, little reflections of a distant light in her dark green eyes as she looks at me.

Laying next to her I try to encapsulate the feeling of touching her, but the only thing left in the morning is her smell on my fingertips. She's gone, I still see her in front of me, what she's wearing, her smile, but I've forgotten what her body felt like under my trembling hands.

All these things that end and that I try so hard to hold on to when deep inside I know it's no use. I wish I could get over the sadness.

Fear of the dark

2011-08-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

It's when I fear the darkness the most that I realize it's never really dark here.

***

Going down to the silent dining room in the middle of the night I sometimes remember mother having friends over. They're all stuck in the early seventies, unable or unwilling to let go of the past. Over endless bottles of expensive wine they tell their stories again and again. How they used to live life to the fullest, being constantly on the road or on the run, sleeping in Hyde Park just to see some concert the next day. Always high, never fearful.

I envy them, thinking that my youth will never be like theirs, never as romantic like a true dream of freedom. I will never see the Beatles or the Stones in some club in London, I will never live in that era, and whatever I can do now will never be good enough, never as rebellious or real.

And in the morning, as I pass that same empty dining room it suddenly looks so sad. Stains on the table cloth like fading memories, broken glasses like a shattered image of the past. It's so quiet, and I think of mother's friend and their lost lives. All they have now is a clouded memory, no matter what they did then they're here now, older than me, closer to the end.

I still have my youth, and still, whatever I do with it I will grow old too, and all I will have left is a stain, a broken mirror, something that were and will never come back. It's slowly getting darker.

Live forever

2011-08-05T00:54:00.000-07:00

Another week, another seven days that just pass by outside these prison walls. I hardly notice time when I'm alone, but the house still smells of oak and vanilla. Occasionally I put on one of mother's silk blouses and pretend I'm famous, but no one is there to see me so I undress again. From the balcony I can see all the work that has to be done in the garden, the work Hernan is supposed to do. I close the doors and the curtains behind me and concentrate on breathing.

The lush flowers in mother's bedroom window never die because they're made of plastic.

Empty spaces

2011-07-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

The house is empty and silent, a handwritten note on the dining room table: I'm going to New York over the weekend, there's food in the fridge.

Luckily, there's also a large amount of alcohol in the liquor cabinet and a set of Chanel dresses from 1974 in the closet. It sounds and smells like a Friday night. If only S were here, we'd have pillow fights in our underwear (like girls do) and drink all our stupid problems away. Her being away is like a constant phantom pain in my amputated heart. I try to fill the void with other people but no one is as close to me as she is.

No one is as close.

It's just a shot away

2011-07-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

Today is Mick Jagger's birthday. Mother pretends like it doesn't matter but drinks an extra glass of wine when I'm not watching.

When my father first left New York and came to Los Angeles he brought his Rollings Stones albums and the clothes on his back. Nothing more. He found a city with the shiniest of surfaces where everything seemed so perfectly polished that there couldn't possibly be any room for sadness or grief.

He already knew that nothing ever is what it initially looks like, but it was still going to take some time before he realized that with LA it wasn't just a few scratches in the armor. The whole city was rotten down to its very foundation, and true ugliness can never be completely covered.

Sky high in the airwaves

2011-07-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hernan hasn't been around for over a week. I know it gets to mother because she doesn't play her Beatles songs anymore, like she does when she's happy.

Sunday I wake up from a violent dream. From downstairs I hear Shostakovich's Nocturne playing on the stereo. I go down in my nightgown and see her crying, an empty bottle of Chateau Margaux on the Persian carpet. Do you love me, she asks as I sit down next to her on the sofa. Of course I say. I'm a terrible liar but I can't say I love you because I have to when she looks this frail, like a little bird or a butterfly. Her hand in mine like a cold porcelain doll's.

Outside a warm wind pushes through the garden carefully, as if it lacked momentum, as if something was missing. Our flowers are slowly withering.

Pandora's unopened box

2011-07-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

Another change, another journey away from the status quo. This time it wasn't according to his plan, but one has to take chances too, right? New York had been everything he had dreamt of, but he couldn't shake that eerie uncertainty: what if...?

People had first come to California looking for gold, this was more or less the same thing. Falling in love like that is not something that just happens, it has to have a reason. He had never believed in fate or a deeper meaning to the things that happen in life, but this was in a way bigger and more profound than anything he had ever seen or felt.

He remembered something his mother had said when his family went through the toughest of times at home: you will never regret anything more than the chances you never took. Nothing will sting more than wondering what could have been if only...

Los Angeles laid open before him, like a clouded dream.

Terror in Silver Lake

2011-07-19T20:17:00.000-07:00

With S. in Italy, I spend more of my evenings with mother. She's in her LC4 chaise lounge with a glass of rosé wine in her hand, moaning like a teenager. I looove this chair, Le Corbusier is just the best.

For a second I contemplate asking her about his Plan Voisin from the 1920s, where he wanted to tear down everything old in Paris and replace it with gigantic housing towers and scattered green areas, following a grand geometrical master plan developed in his theoretical writings. The dated and old fashioned city had to give way to the new, and the new meant more traffic and less space for people to move and live like human beings. It reminds me of downtown Los Angeles.

I glance at her, all cuddled up in her $3,000 chair with a childishly happy smile on her face. Le Corbusier was a terrorist I say before I realize she doesn't know he was a person and not a brand. She looks at me as if I was an alien and says well, Osama could never make a lounge chair like this one.

On a lighter note...

2011-07-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

I would never claim to be a fashion blogger and I don't want to be one, but that doesn't mean I don't care about clothes. I do, and very much so, simply because... why wouldn't you? This world can use as much beauty as it can get, and if you don't care, how can you ever expect anyone else to?

With that being said, I've created a profile on Lookbook, just to be able to share some of the worldly things I find beautiful. The rest of me is in the words I write.

Changes

2011-07-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

I remember finding that journal for the very first time, I was twelve and another autumn had just begun. I sat on the floor in the library all through the quiet night, hypnotically reading. As I got to the part where he decided to leave New York and move to Los Angeles I cried as silently as I could so mother wouldn't hear. It was a painful reminder of what a good person he was, and what a poor choice he made.

Now, years later, I can also see how all those choices affect us throughout our entire lives. Nothing he ever got was what he really deserved, except maybe for a daughter that loved him more than anything. And I'll never know if he thought it was worth it.

When I'm standing on my own

2011-07-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

Some of you might wonder how I know all these things about my father's life from years before I was born, and the simple answer is I've puzzled it together. He told me much himself, but he also kept a journal and when we weren't together he would write me letters. I've forced myself to go through everything he ever wrote and saved, just to be certain I'll never forget anything.

And sure, I was just a child at the time but already then I knew there was something wrong with this world. With so much blatant hypocrisy, deceit and pure evil everywhere around me, and with him being the only bright light on a clouded night sky, why wouldn't I listen? Why wouldn't I remember? Why wouldn't I treasure every moment, every story, every piece of information that helped me understand him a little better?

When you've only known one truly honest and good man your entire life and he's suddenly taken away from you, what can you do? How do you move on?

I don't even try, I know it would only end in tears. It's just not worth it.

Tonight tonight

2011-07-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

My darlings, please continue sending me your lovely e-mails, they are the hallucinatory drugs I run on for the moment. If only they were real letters so I could drown in them, what a glorious suicide it would be. Printing them on paper and getting ink stains on my light colored clothes just doesn't give that same romantic effect.

It's a glorious night by the way, so quiet and calm. I should only sleep when the sun is up.

Just like girls

2011-07-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

This summer seems unusually hot, but maybe it's just my longing for rain that makes me forget. S and the boy she's into are here, she's once again refused to see him on her own and made me promise to go out with them later. His middle name is Henry, he dresses like a Backstreet Boy but has a sweet voice and sincere green eyes.

Mom's already out, we raid her closet for the perfect designer outfits. Henry is on the bed, helping us choose. Try that one instead he says, just to get another glimpse of us in our underwear. S giggles, I play along.

After deciding on combinations of Prada (shirt), Trussardi (jeans), Comme des Garçons (dress) and a splash of Chanel Nº 5, she and I take our Singapore Slings up to the roof. I pretend I need to smoke but it's a lie to get away. I never have to smoke.

How will I know if I love him, she asks. He will break your heart I say, so try not to. She looks sad and I immediately wish I could lie to her. Cynisism has a way of making you inexorably truthful.

So close/so far away

2011-07-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

He was never one who enjoyed talking much about himself. It was partly a result of his upbringing in a country where you were implicitly supposed to keep a low profile, but also a realization that actions speak louder than words.

Be that as it may, he still wanted to know more about this sparkling woman, so after telling her his life story (at least that's how it felt) he wanted to listen to hers. It had to be good, he thought, what he had seen and heard so far seemed close to perfect.

As they strolled past some of New York's most distinctive landmarks, she told him about her childhood, about her family that always wanted to escape from Russia but never managed. She had left on her own as a teenager and was now all alone in a strange country, just like him. And what was more important, she had left her home for a purpose, to go to the land of her dreams where her heart and mind had always longed to live.

Before they separated that first evening he suddenly realized he hadn't asked her where she lived. Was it close, could he visit her the very next day, maybe it was just a few blocks away?

He asked her.

Los Angeles, she said.

I'm only happy when it rains

2011-07-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

I would be lying if I said I wasn't in some sense drawn to darkness. When someone tells me the songs I listen to make them sad I say "...and that's why I love them". I guess you could blame it on circumstance or heritage but I don't complain, and frankly, I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all. This is the only way of living I know, I've always found different kinds of beauty in the things that are hurtful.

You could say It's my way of surviving.

When the darkest of nights comes upon me I look to the many little stars that light up the sky. Right now there are 700 of you, one hundred for every deadly sin, and I love you all equally. Thank you so much for reading, and writing ♥

Blessed states

2011-07-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

4th of July, mother drags me out to celebrate my dependence on her, or maybe her independence from me, I'm not sure. She's not drunk but looks at the fireworks like a child, like they really meant something to her. They did to me too, once, but then I grew up and the world around me changed into something I had trouble understanding.

We used to go out, the three of us, hand in hand and just be quiet. The sky above us would explode and I remember feeling immensely liberated and hopeful. My father would squeeze my hand, so lightly it was barely noticeable, but it always meant that everything would be all right in the end.

And now it seems like a fairytale, slowly evaporating from my memory like the ideals we once held as sacred. Nothing makes me more afraid than the thought of forgetting, nothing more sad than seeing what has become of the dreams we once shared.

Shine a light

2011-07-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday night, just after a dinner for three in silence. I finally get tired of my misguided jealousy and call a dear friend I don't see as often as I should. He used to love me, I ask if he wants to pick me up with his car. Sure, he says, where do you want to go? It doesn't matter I say, just bring that CD.

He knows what I mean and shows up outside our house twenty minutes later. Can I sit in the back seat, I ask.

We drive for hours, past fields and forests that haven't yet burned down. I can smell the gasoline, just like I could years ago in another car, but this time I'm not afraid. I don't need his protection like I did back then when he was someone else, someone older. He looks at me through the rear view mirror, I turn away so he won't see me crying to the song we're playing over and over again.

I think you're the same as me
we see things they'll never see
you and I are gonna live forever

The deadliest of sins

2011-07-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Who am I to need you when I'm down?

Forgive me father for I have sinned. This is my confession, safely outside the walls of the condemnatory church, far away from the ears of the priests. I'm saying this to you, my dearly departed father, because I know how much you detested the sin of envy. Given where you came from I understand how you felt, and every time I find myself being jealous of someone I want to make it up to you by asking for your understanding and forgiveness. It's all that matters to me.

I'm looking at mother, seeing how she acts around Hernan, listening to how she speaks to him. What they have is not love, not even affection, but something cheap, sordid and soulless, and still I can't help but envying it, just a little. I guess it's the closeness, having someone to talk to and confide in, even though I know he's paid to listen. I should call it sad, but as I'm thinking of you it bothers me even more, because I've been feeling so very alone ever since the day you left me.

In nomine patris.

She's not in fashion

2011-06-29T04:40:00.000-07:00

Maybe, maybe it's the clothes we wear
The tasteless bracelets and the dye in our hair

My friend Chloe is the greatest thinker I know, she produces memorable quotes to an extent ordinary people could only dream of doing over a lifetime.

Tuesday night she visits me, we're sitting on the roof of our house as the reddish sun sets over Silver Lake. She has to work in the morning but I convince her to stay a little longer, just so we can pretend like time doesn't pass.

When Marilyn Monroe died, she says, Lee Strasberg inherited her entire wardrobe. It must be like owning a fashion museum.

Wouldn't you want to wear them?, I ask.

She doesn't answer, instead she's quite for a minute before she says ...and they claim nothing ever changes for the worse. Imagine being Lee Strasberg today, Lindsay Lohan dies and leaves you all her clothes. Wouldn't that be just like a big fat slap in the face?

New York stories

2011-06-22T15:37:00.000-07:00

They talked for hours, she listened to what he said and looked him deep in the eyes when he spoke, as if she was trying to see what he was really like under the surface. They soon left the crowded sweaty room and walked together through the late New York night. She seemed to know the city like the back of her hand and showed him places he would never had seen without her.

Maybe, he thought as they walked, this is when everything starts over again. Maybe this is when everything finally falls into place.

He had always been a cynic, but one that thought it was somehow the easy way out. Somewhere beyond the liars, fakes and frauds there just has to be something real and true. There has to be someone who is honest and worth loving the way he wanted to love.

That's what he hoped for as he held her little hand in his and listened to her breathing in the summer air. He let his guard down for the first time, so it never occurred to him that when something seems a little too good to be true, it almost always is.

A memory gone missing

2011-06-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

I hate being reminded of why I resent my mother. It's just so much easier to live in the illusion that everything is fine, and it takes weeks of pretending to forget it all over again.

This morning I woke up with the memory of a dress I loved but hadn't seen for a long time. I think I dreamt about it but I couldn't remember when I last wore it or where it might be now. I went through my closet, then mother's, then back to mine, but nothing. Mother has a way of being curious and asked me what I was looking for, so I told her.

Oh, that old rag, she said. I threw it away. I guess she saw that I got upset and said but darling, it was all worn out, and it wasn't even a nice brand.

I wanted to tell her that I didn't care about the brand, that it didn't matter if it was worn or torn or even unwearable. I loved it because of what it represented, for all the memories it carried, for who I used to wear it with.

I wanted to scream to her that a person like that must have no soul, but I was afraid she'd take it as a compliment.

We'll go where people go and let go

2011-06-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Whatever makes her happy
Whatever makes it alright

Saturday night, S and I are back in that same house where she had met a boy the week before. She had called me earlier in the day begging me to go out with her, saying she wanted to see him again but wouldn't go alone.

As we're dancing and drinking she's constantly looking over her shoulder, trying to find him in the crowd. After an hour he shows up, gives her a kiss on the cheek and a pink rose with a black ribbon. We leave shortly after and end up on a playground under the stars. He starts undressing her and she lets him, never taking her eyes off me as if she's silently asking for my approval. As I kiss her on the neck I whisper in her ear is this really what you want?, and she doesn't even blink.

Her touch is so soft, but it's her determination that makes me shiver. I've never seen her like this, the pale moonlight makes her glow like an angel.

A defining moment

2011-06-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

What a moronic question, he thought to himself. Who doesn't like Mick Jagger? But then again, this is America, maybe he's not as popular here as he is in Europe.

The woman's voice in his ear was like a sudden gust, putting him completely off balance for a split second. Not because it was sweet or special in itself, but because the words it carried talked to him like nothing before. He had never believed in fate or the predestined, but this just had to be something out of the ordinary.

He turned around slowly, savoring the moment, somehow knowing it could define the rest of his life. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the music or the liberating atmosphere in the crowded room, but he imagined he had never seen anything quite so beautiful.

California dreams

2011-06-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Last night, mother announced that she has hired someone to "help out around the house", as she put it herself. He turned out to be a 200 pound Mexican package of muscles in his early thirties called Hernan. Mom presented him to me as I was having breakfast in bed. He smiled at me with his perfectly white Hollywood teeth, his bare tattooed over arms glistened in the late morning sun.

I'm guessing this is not the first overly rich but lonely woman he's ever been hired to "work" for. After lunch he drove away in his brand new Porsche Cayenne, and the only one that had eaten anything by then was me. Mom came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, her hair puffed up, the purple Lanvin silk chemise put on inside-out.

This is the true beauty of Los Angeles.

What about us?

2011-06-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've always known that God is just an excuse for all the evils in the world, my father taught me that. He told me that whenever something bad happens, something we didn't plan for or wanted, we can always blame it on fate saying "the lord works in mysterious ways".

Being certain of that is a mixed blessing. It means you can be in control of your own destiny, but also that there is no afterlife. And then what?

Yesterday S joined us as we were going out. Just looking at her I could see she's beginning to have the same insight, but without the darker side. She only wants to enjoy life and not be afraid of how she will be judged or rejected in heaven. She looked amazing on the dance floor, as if she had done it her whole life; flirting with the boys, moving like an angel in a twirling skirt. I hope she never starts thinking about what happens when we're all gone.

Not a mean spirit, not a kind soul

2011-06-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

I'm terrible at being mean to people, and I seriously consider that a weakness. I can be cold and distant but never openly unkind. On the other hand I'm equally bad at showing people my honest affection, no matter how much they deserve it. I sometimes come off as arrogant when I'm really just a little apathetic.

Mom came home late last night, I was still up when she staggered in around 1, crying and smelling of alcohol. Amidst the frantic sobbing I picked up a word or two and read between the lines to understand the context. Someone had called her "old" over drinks, a remark that's more than a slap in the face when it comes to my poor mother.

I really wanted to say something comforting, just because I had the upper hand, but I could only think of one thing as I buried my head in her white Givenchy overcoat and gave her a technical hug: this cashmere is so incredibly soft.

Start spreading the word

2011-05-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

My father found New York to be everything he ever dreamed of and immediately started fantasizing about his future life there. He had always thought he would stay there forever, but fate wanted otherwise. He never planned to fall in love and if he hadn't he would probably still be alive. But then of course I wouldn't exist. It's the little things.

He had wandered the streets looking for a job and a place to stay when he was picked up by a group of young musicians living in Brooklyn. They took him in on the promise that he would work as a manager for them, finding gigs and establishing contacts with people in the recording industry. For a foreigner who didn't know anyone in New York he wasn't the obvious choice for the job, but he didn't complain.

During the following couple of weeks he spent more time at parties than he thought was humanly possible. One had the theme "black & white" after Truman Capote's legendary ball, people walked around in heavy clouds of pot smoke in their underwear and elaborate Venetian masks. He had the time of his life.

At 3 in the morning, as he was spinning around in the middle of a crowded dance floor, someone came up to him from behind, put a light hand on his shoulder and shouted in his ear: Do you like Mick Jagger?

Through the Haze

2011-05-21T11:12:00.001-07:00

It's a late winter's night although you can't tell by looking at the skies or the moon - I just feel it underneath my clothes. New year's eve, my father and I are driving through forests that have yet to burn down. We're not going anywhere in particular, just away from whatever's behind us, whatever we left in those cold stone houses along the endless LA boulevards. He smiles, we close our eyes just to see how far we can come without watching the road. On the radio we hear reports from New York, the ball is about to drop in Times Square. Soon it's 2005, my father's been dead for 5 years.

I wake up in my bed, it's so silent. The air around me is on fire.

Killing a flower

2011-05-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

Since last November I've had a purple orchid in my bedroom window, placed in a small Lalique crystal vase my mother bought in Paris. It was as graceful and elegant as a piece of Dior jewelry, but I never cared enough to water it. After a couple of months it started shedding its sculpted flowers, but as long as it was alive I could think of it as a reminder that I'm a good person. I convinced myself that I loved it and secretly hoped it would be enough, but of course it wasn't.

The last dried out little flower fell off today as I watched it from my bed. It looked like a statement, like a public suicide in front of the people who never cared and never bothered to listen. Is that who I am?

I went outside, called S and just sat there quiet with her broken voice in my ear for an hour. I would never let anything happen to her, my beautiful little flower.

Hold me closer

2011-05-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

S came to me in the middle of the night to cry her heart out, I held her in my arms for hours and kissed the salt off her slender neck. She said it was because I'm the only one she trusts, and added: I know I can be at my most miserable with you because you never cry. I guess it's a compliment.

As her tears dried out on my shoulder and she fell asleep, I noticed the sun coming up as if nothing had happened. It seems the world is too busy to care about what's fair and what's not, and it feels as if nothing will ever change. Justitia isn't blindfolded for the sake of impartiality, she is so that she won't see all the shit that keeps happening to innocent good people.

Don't look back in anger

2011-05-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Another drunken Friday night in an atmosphere of sweat and flashes of colored lights. I'm in the middle of a vibrating crowd but all alone inside my spinning head, as I see Chloe joyfully wrapped up in the tattooed arms of someone she's never met before. We're dancing on rose petals to our favorite songs but I'm caught in just one intrusive emotion, the little thorns they forgot to pick out: how long will this last?

Another shot of Tequila to push it all away, it's slowly working but fragments of the thought linger: when everything is over, what were these nights really worth? I'm there in body but not in mind, I can see myself moving but the feeling is another, distant and detached. Tomorrow it's just a memory. I drink more than I should but I need to numb myself.

Slip inside the eye of your mind
don't you know you might find
a better place to play
You said that you'd never been
but all the things that you've seen
will slowly fade away

The boy that held my hand just an hour ago comes to me through the smoke and asks: how are you feeling? The expression on his face when I answer I don't feel anything is one of confusion and fear. I see there's no point in trying to explain that it's really a good thing.

All quiet on the western front

2011-05-11T12:05:00.002-07:00

Sunday was a weird one even without the alcoholic fumes and Cuban tobacco slowly evaporating from my clothes. Mother kept quiet all day, we had both lunch and dinner under a tensed and total silence, with her glancing up at me from under her hair whenever she thought I wasn't paying attention. She's never been good at hiding her disappointment and I've learned not to ask what's wrong. I'm implicitly supposed to figure that out anyway. I knew she wanted me to say happy Mother's Day but I wasn't going to give her that undeserved pleasure, so the cold war continued.

Right before midnight, as I had watched her attentively reading Bonjour Tristesse on her pink baroque sofa for well over an hour, she finally got tired of waiting.

Haven't you forgotten something dear, she said in staccato with her eyes still nailed to the book.

Is it that time of year again, I asked rhetorically, striking a theatrical pose. The almost invisible smile on her face died instantly when I said happy birthday mom.

I guess it was cruel, but I just couldn't help myself.

Give me liberty or give me death

2011-05-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

New York, 1978

As a new and better part of yourself is born from the ashes of the past like a phoenix, does everything you ever were before that moment instantly die, never to come back again? That's what my father had thought and hoped for, as the new and improved person that he now was walked proudly along the streets and avenues, under glittering skyscrapers and clear summer skies. In his head echoed the words of Emma Lazarus.

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

He wasn't tired, he wasn't poor and belonged to no huddled masses, but he was desperately yearning to breathe free. For all of his life he had dreamed of this moment, of this city and its lack of discrimination, judgment and envy. And for the first time it was real, he was actually there, he could touch the buildings, lie down on the pavement, smell the flowers in Central Park.

He was finally free, his dream was a reality and his reality was a dream, and no one would ever again tell him that he needs to stop fantasizing about things that will never be and start facing them as they truly are. He had made his own truth, and those bastards that held him back for so long were on the other side of the Atlantic, stuck in a miserable and pointless existence until the day they would die.

He wanted to smile at that final thought, if he could only stop shivering.

From dawn till dusk

2011-05-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

The downside to waking up on the balcony of a Malibu beach house at 6 in the morning is that you might find some strange knocked out guy's hand under your YSL blouse. Other than that and the obvious consequences of drinking an entire bottle of Cointreau, I prefer dawn over dusk. Sunsets have such a melancholic quality to them, they always feel like the inevitable end of something good, like a silent fire ravaging the skies.

I've been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember, because it reminds me of the fact that nothing lasts forever. Watching the sun set is like watching time turn the beauty of joyful days into memories, and soon enough that's all you'll have left of the life you once lived.

As I made my way home, S called and told me about her cousin. She said that God must hear her prayers and let him live so that they can see each other again soon.

If only...

Enjoy the silence

2011-05-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

After a humid night of incoherent Armagnac dreams, I end up spending the day at Venice Beach with Chloe, watching myself from the outside to the distant sound of airplanes approaching LAX. What if this was Nice, she says. I want to die at the Promenade des Anglais.

I remember being barefoot in the same sand last summer, waiting in devout silence for the sun to come up. It's barely been a year but feels like a lifetime. Chloe was there, maybe that's why I asked her to come with me, but we don't talk about our memories. I want to tell her about the strangely detached way in which I recall those vibrating emotions now. I want to ask her how she felt and if she thinks she'll ever feel that way again, but I don't. Instead I keep quiet and listen to her breathing calmly on my shoulder.

I would stand there in the middle of the street, all dressed in Chanel, she says drowsily, and Karl Lagerfeldt would run me over with a vintage Aston Martin.

Narcoleptic insomniac

2011-05-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

Another hot and sunny day in Los Angeles comes to an end, one of so many that all seem exactly alike. The only thing reminding me that time passes is the potted flowers in my window, slowly dying because no one cares enough to give them the water and attention they need.

There is no band.

I'm beginning to realize that living without mom for so many months, alone in this large house, was turning me into a chronic sleepwalker. I spent too much time wearing her vintage dresses, reading her books, polishing her collection of antique dolls. Maybe it meant that I missed her, and I don't know why but since she got back I'm dreaming again, and memories of feelings I once had are coming together, fragment by fragment.

Il n y'a pas d'orchestre.

I guess you can never truly feel alive in an emotional vacuum, so as much as I blame my mother for all of her shortcomings, I'm almost glad she's home again. It's slowly bringing me back to reality, whatever that is.

A last try

2011-05-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

He spent his last night in London awake, watching the city fall in and out of sleep from the window of his little hotel room. On the streets below him walked the faceless people he would leave behind, from across the park he heard the sound of heavy trucks on the freeway, those who were going somewhere else. Everything seemed to be in constant motion, only varying in direction and sincerity.

Being awake all night had a special purpose. He wanted to take in as much as possible of the life he was about to leave so that there would be no regrets, no unfinished business or lingering sorrows. From time to time during his childhood he had always been afraid of finding that all existence was without meaning, but that would all soon be over. He had often wondered what the point of everything really was, so he thought about it again and shrugged off the nagging worry one last time.

At least that's what he thought and hoped for, but as he later would learn you can never escape from yourself. If you're constantly walking under a black cloud you will do so wherever you take your steps, however hard you try to find a little sunshine, however far from home you go.

Are you there, Dolores?

2011-04-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight: I'm back in that burnt down forest, standing alone in the midst of gasoline fumes and smoldering charcoal. I'm freezing even though the ground is still warm from the fire, a cloud of black ravens circulates silently over my head. I'm wearing an ivory white Victorian style wedding gown, a sheer lace veil covers my hair that's been carefully arranged to look like a butterfly. Amazingly, the dress doesn't seem to have a single stain on it, and the pink roses in my hands look newly cut, covered with little pear shaped raindrops.

Instead of music I hear the sound of sparks from the recent fire, instead of wedding guests a thousand stars are watching me from high above in the dark blue spring skies. I immediately know that I've been here before, but I don't recall when or why. I think I had someone with me then, I can still feel his presence like electricity in the air, even though I know we last met years and years ago.

As the severed branches around me start burning again I'm violently awakened. Mom's standing over my bed, looking at me as if she had seen a ghost. "What's wrong dear" she says, once again faking her concern. I don't know where to start so I just tell her it was a nightmare.

I guess it was, but that feeling of standing alone in the dark still lingers as well as the smell of gasoline. It's morning but I want to go back to sleep, back to that forest. Something else has yet to happen there, and I want to know what it means.

Before they make me run

2011-04-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

The first stop on his one way journey was London, where he bought more than a few Rolling Stones albums. He didn't have a record player but sat by the radio for hours waiting for their songs to come on. He had discovered music the first time he heard You can't always get what you want, but now the sound was different as well as the times.

I've been battered, what does it matter.

He wandered the streets alone, trying to enjoy as much as possible of the freedom of not being recognized by anyone. He felt like a new person, a bigger person, a better person. This was the beginning of the rest of his life, after that sad parenthesis called childhood.

It was just my imagination, once again
running away with me
It was just my imagination
running away with me

And soon: NYC.

Now you've disappeared somewhere

2011-04-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

My dear ones, how was Easter for you?

I just woke up alone and completely rested, without any noticeable traces of nightmares. My skin is intact and my heart keeps beating. S came by last night, I could tell she was upset and that all I needed to do was to be close to her, like she has been to me so many times before. Being able to give some warmth back to a person who's always been there for me felt amazing, like a weight that's finally taken off my shoulders. I even forgot about mother and her friends for a while although their music kept piercing through the floorboards all night long.

S is so adorably shy and Christian, sleeping next to me in a pair of blue jean shorts and a silk blouse while I'm in my underwear. She's the best friend I've got now that so many are not here anymore. I miss Signe, I miss Miri, and I even miss Sarah, who might have stolen a fair-haired boy from me, but at least managed to teach me some Swedish swearwords.

Those times were just memories to me up until now, but lately they have begun hurting, sort of like a rose thorn under my summer clothes. I just hope it doesn't get any worse.

Sad songs say so much

2011-04-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

Friday begins, mom's having some of her most obnoxious friends over for Easter. I'm in my room, desperately trying to get drunk off overly expensive eggnog while they're downstairs giving CPR to the early 70s. The smell of pot and Sangria intoxicates my whole system, tomorrow I have to break out of this cocoon, this sarcophagus over times well spent, then frozen and eventually lost. Even Chernobyl must be a better place than this, 25 years on, at least a more quiet one apart from the mutated birds singing for the dead.

I imagine spring flowers withering in the radioactive Ukrainian air, slowly languishing while nobody's watching. And I think of mother and her friends, fading in the very same way, except they always have an audience. The only question is: do they dare look at themselves in the mirror and face the aparent decay of their once so pretty and youthful features?

Judging by the way they're drinking, I guess not.

Pack and get dressed before my mother hears us

2011-04-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

One week and how many days? Two. Like I could possibly forget or lose count. What I instead had forgotten was that feeling of not being able to breathe, the one of an invisible pressure on my bare shoulders, like a glas ceiling everywhere I go, collapsing in slow motion. I can't see it, but it happens right before me and fills my veins with sand and rose thorns. A beautiful curse of some kind.

I'm living with someone I should love but don't, and I'm carrying the blame like a load of bricks. She's me mother but the word has lost all meaning, and to make you understand why I have to finish telling the story about my father.

Please bear with me, I need you.

A lost chance

2011-04-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

On the very last day he found himself sitting alone in an empty hallway with a one way boat ticket in his hands. The cememted courtyard outside was ful of his classmates, shining along with the spring sun in their white dresses and black suits, but he himself had nothing to celebrate. He had given in to the pressure from his teacher and accepted a series of lower grades than he deserved for his hard work, all for the sake of equality.

His calm breaths a requiem over a wasted youth, or so he felt. This was going to be his last failure, his last defeat. Never again was he going to suffer such humiliation at the hands of anyone that tried to hold him back or push him down. He didn't say goodbye to anyone, he just went home, packed his bags and left.

Behind him: a burnt soil where nothing but envy and mistrust could possibly grow.

Ahead: everything else and the ocean.

I loves you

2011-04-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

If the cotton and silk on my outside for the moment is prettier than the ravaging thorns inside, I know someone who is always equally beautiful on both. S is here with me now, looking adorable in her little vintage Kenzo dress, blue velvet ballerina shoes and a string of cream white pearls around her graceful neck. She calms me down and silences the constant noise just by being close, and that's worth more than anything money can buy.

She said she was getting a blog of her own, and now she has. You can all read and follow it here: My Darling Solitude

I love her so much.

Today's outfit

2011-04-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

Outside:
.Calvin Klein panties
.Armani men's shirt worn and left behind by someone I never loved
.Bvlgari Pour Femme, newly opened

Inside:
.Angst for no reason
.Fear for no reason
.Guilt for every possible reason

I dreamt about a burnt down forest. The smell of smoldering wood echoed through the walls long after I woke up. It's been 130 months.

Songs that voices never share

2011-04-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

First 24 hours with mom home, I'm literally counting the minutes and they seem endless. I had gotten used to the house being absolutely quite apart from the luxury cars passing on the street outside, and now silence is a slowly burning fire. The walls are thin here and I know they're listening, so I lean towards them and listen back.

Last night at dinner she pretended to care about how I've been but really only spoke of herself. She went to New York, then Paris, then back to New York, in search of something I guess. That's the part she always leaves out: why. Nothing has a reason or purpose in her life, it just happens.

I'm on the second floor in my room, still listening after sounds and noises to interpret. I think I hear her dancing downstairs, but the music must be locked inside in her head. Apart from her high heels clicking over the marble floors in the hallway it's dead silent.

Weightless

2011-04-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

For the first time in months I slept all night and woke up feeling like a little bundle of cotton on a silk pillow at 8. I went back to sleep and dreamt about drowning, also for the first time but the first time ever. I've never been afraid of water, never claustrophobic, always confused falling with flying, but when I woke up again at 10 my room tilted. My bed was standing on the edge of a tall cliff, about to fall down and hit the rocks beneath it if I as much as lifted a finger.

It must have been an omen, only minutes later I heard keys in the lock to the front door downstairs. Mom is home again, after months on the road, God knows where. The only thing certain now is I'll have many more dreams about being trapped under water, not able to get out, get up over that glittering surface again.

For the sake of everyone (but yourself)

2011-04-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

He wanted to finish everything off in style and leave a solid impression behind as he left. Therefore he studied hard all spring in order to get the best grades possible. They should never be able to complain about anything ever again, he thought, those people.

In April, one of his teachers called him up to his room for a brief talk. He looked troubled, as if there was something that bothered him when it really shouldn't.

"You know", he said. "You are the most brilliant student I've ever had, and that says plenty.

My father smiled on the inside, butterflies in his stomach, stone cold face.

"But... the problem is...", the teacher continued, "that you're, well, too superiour. I've been told that the other students feel recentment towards your achievments."

A chill ran down his spine.

"I'm ashamed to tell you this, but I wish you would slow down a little, for the sake of equality in the class".

The butterflies fell down dead to the ground.

As he left the teacher's office he felt a strange sense of pride coming over him, bur it soon shifted and turned to anger. For him, it was a wierd sort of accomplishment that his school had to hold him back. For the society around him it was yet another failure in reaching the final state of complete justice.

A cool wind ran through the streets of his little town, the newly blossomed spring flowers shivered.

Something caught up with me

2011-04-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

S found my blog (hi sweetie). She asked "are you secretly in love with me?" and wondered why I keep writing about her underwear. I had to re-read all my posts about her to see that I obviously do, but I've also written about what a fantastic friend she is. Now, as a way of making me even more nervous, she's thinking of getting a blog of her own. I'll tell you when she does.

Us and them

2011-03-28T02:45:00.000-07:00

When they understod that he wasn't going to join them, the young radicals turned against him. Don't be so fucking selfish, they said. Ok, so your father killed himself, big deal. There's always someone who suffers more than you, you should care more about them and discard your puny self pity. What good is a society if we don't stick together?

He knew exactly what they were trying to tell him, and he hated it. They wanted him to renounce his own life for the benefit of others, and more specifically, for the benefit of the young radicals. They wanted to use him as a tool for their own purposes, their own narrow minded self-indulgence, and pass it all off as altruism.

The hypocricy made him sick, but he had finally reached his last year in school. Just one more spring and it would all be over.

I've said too much, I've said enough

2011-03-14T15:04:00.000-07:00

S comes to me through an ever so hypnotic daze, dancing on top of the raindrops like a butterfly. She speaks, I see her lips moving but I register no sounds. It must be the alcohol, strange things can happen after a bottle of Burgundy wine. She has a redish, almost purple, stain on her silk jacket, on her left breast. I stare at it, it stares back at me. She notices, looks at me and smiles like only she can. I'm slowly melting, my body as tense as a violin string in the ouverture to Tosca. On her bed, right beside her, I slip in and out of a sleep-like state of physical numbness, listening to her breathing getting heavier, more erratic. I suddenly regain feeling in my left hand, on the inside of her warm soft thigh, halfway up her cream-white Versace dress.

Is it just a dream?

Places

2011-03-11T16:39:00.000-08:00

Late night between thursday and friday, I'm in a car, passing places where events have taken place, stories been told, hearts broken. They're dark and cold now, almost dead, as if nothing ever happened. Where does time go when we rush past it, where do we go when time rushes past us? Who's moving and who's standing still, waiting for something or someone?

I remember just driving, having all the time in the world, never thinking of a better tomorrow. Passing places that were alive, feeling alive.

I fell asleep and dreamt about butterflies, again.

Mad world

2011-03-08T14:34:00.000-08:00

When does life get real? Different people would probably give different answers to that question based on what they've seen and where they've come from. Some would say it's when you discover a meaningful purpose for your existence, something to love and hold on to. Others might say it's when you find God or face your biggest fears in life, when you overcome challenges or live up to your full potential.

My father would said it's when you notice how people constantly try to screw you over. It would be easy to write him off as a simple cynic, but he had every reason to be one. He had already seen how various groups tried to fool him into believing they wanted what was best for him, when in reality all they wanted to do was to profit from his misfortune. He had learned from that, he had learned that a valueable quality in every human being is mistrust. Taking care of your own person means being suspicious, especially towards those who talk to you as if you were a friend when in reality they don't even know you.

Maybe, he thought, people are different on the other side of the Atlantic. Maybe those people are honest and well-meaning, maybe I would be better off around them.

And sometimes, he thought, "maybe" is good enough.

You're searching for good times, but just wait and see

2011-03-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

I've always had a schizophrenic relationship with nostalgia. In certain moments in my life I've wanted to freeze time and hold everything exactly like it was right there and then. From the outside it seems to be the easiest way out, but in reality it's not. Lingering in lost times is merely destructive in the sense that they will never come back like they once were. And hoping for them to repeat themselves in a new era is useless since the second time is never more than a bleaker image of the first. I think you've all experienced that at one point or another.

And no matter what you want to have me belive, life is limited, time is ticking because every day we come a little bit closer to the end. Wanting to stay frozen in the finest moment of your life is therefore nothing but an illusion, a self-deception that will sooner or later explode in your face, and by then it will all be too late. You won't be able to change the things you hate about life and yourself, and what you once loved is forever lost except for the precious but slowly fading memories in your head.

For my father, the illusion of a happy home broke down and shattered like glass right before him, so he had no choice but to move one. You could call it a blessing even though it sounds harsh, because he instantly knew he wasn't really happy with anything. Not that he had thought so before, but he had kept his pain and sorrow locked up air-tight, afraid of a possible change for the worse. It's how the human condition works, we're conservative even with the things that slowly kill us. It might not always be a good thing to pick up your belongings and leave everything you had behind, but the least you can do is evaluate it and think: is there anything else?

My father saw his future on the other side of the Atlantic, and until he was old enough to go, he was ready to put up with whatever mind-numbing bullshit his society dealt him. Time was after all on his side.

Unite

2011-03-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

After the missionaries came the young radicals. It was capitalism that killed your father, they said. These new times pose a threat to all of us, we must come together in order to fight those who want to exploit us.

These young men were rabid and impatient, always searching for an enemy, real or imaginary, to defeat and destroy. But my father was tired of those perpetual battles, tired of destructiveness and the use of force over thought. He only saw an intellectual dishonesty and another form of hypocrisy in those people who called themselves progressive. What ever was so forward moving in the idea of demolishment and war?

He found himself trapped between these various formations who all tried to kidnap him with different versions of the same moral justifications. They all wanted the same thing: to wear him down mentally and use him as a tool for their own gains, like a cult. He was never going to be that person, he had already seen what the selfless struggle had done to his father. He might have thought he was an independent man fighting for a good cause, but when he failed no one was there to pick him up and say thank you for trying.

He had seen it happen, he was there, on the inside, to witness it with his own two eyes. That was plenty. He was never going to be that person.