Tuesday 25 November 2014

Ibuprofen works better than paracetamol for a splitting headache

PAINKILLER
Lay your comforting hands on my head,
Give me your breath not only in bed.
Embrace this tormenting brain
And crush its exhausting pain.
 


Saturday 22 November 2014

Talking about the weather

(I’ve been trying to hide some of my opinions for many years, but sometimes they chase me and come true; that is my penance. When I was a child I was told: Don’t ask that! Don’t speak like that! Don't talk to me! And finally: You don’t say anything. The plan is perfect. The machinery has been working for centuries and only needs a little holy oil)
It’s a dull day.
Some words leave scars; your silence, too.
 


Tuesday 11 November 2014

Is love an art?

Eric Fromm shakes you up with this question and knocks you out with this answer: Love requires knowledge and effort. Is this a recommendation or an observation? The author shows us how to learn about this kind of art, but before that, he analyses three mistakes we make in love.
First of all, Fromm focuses on the general view of love, where most of us look for being loved than being lover and we accept several stereotypes about men and women, who seem to be more lovable (there were two doors, one pink one blue…).
Secondly, love is presented like an object, a product, an attractive package available in our contemporary culture, where everything is bought and sold, but depending on the possibilities or potential of every human commodity (the supermarket of love).
And a further failure is about the lies of love, where the idea of being in love is confused with the beginning of falling in love, so we try to maintain that intensity forever; but, it has an expiry date (young love).
Finally, Eric Fromm gives us his prescription for being a master in love, where as in any art you have to learn the theory, put it into practice and consider your art the most important thing for you. However, all of us know what makes the world go round.
 


Sunday 9 November 2014

Slip of the tongue

I have a problem, well more than one, but one of them is to solve a family matter with my partner: the number of SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, where I’m compelled to keep/get/be/stay in touch with them. With my friends or your friends, with my colleagues or yours, with your extended family or mine, with our wide circle of acquaintances or also, the friends of our friends – they are good people, too.
I feel sorry for all of those people that suffer loneliness, but I feel asphyxiated on several occasions. Mind you, it can be that I’m not a social animal. In fact, I prefer to spend my time with my nuclear family (assuming that its radiation is frying my brain) or on my own than listening to the “experts” who have the solution for this country or if they are more ambitious, for the world. Although, having a lucky day, the debate could be which team will win the league this year or about the last clever gadget that we need to have to be more connected; if we aren’t still (a good plan for my very little free time).
By the way, how much time would I need to attend Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other services that my dear mobile phone supplies, apparently free of charge? Or Apps like the fantastic whatsApp! So useful and necessary to be involved in superficial relationships that I don’t know, certainly, I don’t know how we lived without them some years ago.
Seriously, to be honest, I’d like to be more in contact with friends, relatives or even strangers and not always keeping myself to myself. However, it is becoming harder to maintain a fluent relationship with all of them, when you have other interests, worries or responsibilities – Eat the chicken Andreita! Probably, this is a symptom that in my twenties went away a long time ago and I don’t want to waste my time repeating the same things; I had a whale of a time.
 
Cheers!
 
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
                                                                                                            Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)  


Tuesday 4 November 2014

Instruction manual

Written words on pages of paper make a BOOK; that is to say a physical book. Do you remember those rectangular objects that occupied some places in your home, giving colour and filling empty furniture? You look like as if an express train had hit you. Probably, you also forgot how they work and for this reason, I think that this video can help us to develop successfully that activity called How to read a book.
Heaven help us!
 
Oddly enough, when I was a kid, I’d read several newspapers every day, which were the seeds of my passion for another fiction: Literature. Maybe, this is the explanation for my taste in simplicity, without running rings around the same thing with long descriptions; although, lately I’ve been tolerant with a little embellishment. My love for books was increased as a printer (was I working for a printing company by coincidence? I know that you don’t believe in that) and far from looking for other alternatives in my leisure time, I enjoyed choosing a book from my bookshelves or the public library. As a result, those sheets of paper that cut my hands like sharp blades at work, also gave shelter to my chaotic mind.