São 9 da noite e o céu ainda está claro no País de Gales. Eu escrevo num guardanapo que apoio num porta-copos enquanto deito na cama, rezando para não precisar reativar meus músculos tão cedo. E, para variar (mesmo), escrevo em português, porque assim meu parceiro não lê. Não que seja tudo segredo, mas diário é diário. Ele ainda está no pub com os amigos e eu me retirei (outra cena inédita) porque estava (estou) quebrada. Eu sou normalmente a que romantiza pubs. Eu falo da atmosfera, do aconchego, e de como eu sinto falta, e de como nada na Alemanha (no mundo) substitui a experiência de um pub britânico. Então por que me retirei cedo? Porque, sinceramente, naquele pub e na minha estadia inteira em Gales eu já vivenciei o que queria vivenciar. É até difícil descrever, vou precisar de muitas palavras. Mas eu preciso eternizar no papel tanto quanto eu sei que ficará eternizado na memória. O pub à minha esquerda, com Tobias, Rolf, e Luuk; à direita, uma colina alta na distância, toda a paisagem no verde vivo que só a Grã-Bretanha tem. Muita luz, mas já indireta. Eram 7 da tarde. Eu me apoiava no muro (para variar) feito de skate, com minha half pint, à minha frente uma mesa de piquenique cheia de locais. Conversavam entre si mas também de vez em quando conosco, queriam saber sobre nós, não queriam nos deixar de lado. Era o pré-pub quiz. É nós descobrimos que muitos dos presentes participam do coral local. Soubemos porque espontaneamente começaram a cantar no meio da conversa. Foi aí que um deles nos disse, aquele com a camiseta de “Gales continuará europeia”: o País de Gales é um país de canções. Enquanto isso, outro local, um homem de idade com sotaque forte, astuto, tentava me vender o cachorro dele. Clyde chorava baixinho constantemente mesmo comigo enchendo ele de carinho. O papo de canções seguia porque o homem com a camiseta de Gales europeia tentava fazer as mulheres do coral cantarem, e elas diziam que não funcionava assim a pedido, então o papo rolou por mais uns 30 segundos até que (semi-)espontaneamente destoou uma cantiga galega da qual metade do grupo participou, incluindo o senhor do cachorro, e eu não sei dizer quanto tempo durou, eu só sei dizer que naquele momento tudo concluiu, tudo fez sentido, era aquilo,exatamente aquilo que eu sempre procurei e sempre imaginei e no fundo sempre achei que fosse realmente só isso, imaginação, um produto de minhas experiências na Grã-Bretanha, sim, mas se confundindo com escapismo e romantismo e haveria mesmo esse tipo de lugar? Mas eu não tenho mais dúvidas, e o momento de realização foi um bittersweet. Porque eu o achei, e enquanto a cantiga persistia eu sabia que tinha poucos segundos para saborear o momento e ele desapareceria como a neblina sobre as paisagens de manhã. E os locais ririam e tomariam suas pints e iriam para casa e quem sabe no próximo domingo eles cantariam mais uma cantiga galega no beer garden antes do pub quiz, com as colinas verdejantes a espectar e uma ou outra ovelha distante de coadjuvante.

Mas eu não estaria mais lá.

sorrrowfull:

(via cuttingstone)

Snails are cows.

Hear me out.

Absolutely unnecessary background to this post: I have nothing to do tonight. I have been on a reading binge, because I randomly remembered that I possess a kindle and also a salary. I devoured several 200-page books before tackling one Stephen King which wasn’t even good, but at that point I was exactly 300 pages too deep, so I gulped it down like that shitty valentine’s day cocktail I made myself two days ago. I finally finished it yesterday and knew exactly which book to read next, but this one I decided to order. So I lay here, at home, alone, having fuck all to do, because I forgot what I used to do at home after work when I didn’t read. I think it was doomscrolling, so maybe I should find something else to do.

The reason I reactivated my Tumblr actually, other than the fact that I am scared to death someone steals my blog URL due to inactivity somehow, was born precisely out of lack of shit to do. Lack of active shit IRL and excess of rambling shit IRH (In Real Head). That shit could go somewhere. Throw it to the bots of Tumblr. Let them eat ramblings.

Second unnecessary background: I made myself a cocktail. It tastes weird. Not bad. Not good. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. Probably the opinion most people have of me, tbqh. I have to sip it doing something. I am sipping it thinking about cows and snails.

End of background(s). Begin of hot take:

Snails are cows.

I love cows. They are my favourite animals. They mind their own business. They don’t have a care in the world. They could fucking obliterate us, and yet they do not. All this power and they just want to eat grass and occasionally moo. And they have best friends.

Cows are the fucking best, I love them so much, holy shit. I think it’s because they irradiate something I do not have, which is this calmness and peacefulness and a general sense of having their shit together (or scattered about in neat piles). On so many occasions I went for a run with stress and negativity creating a whirlwind in my mind, and then I saw cows, and everything was ok. And I mean EVERYTHING. I mean no thoughts, head empty. I mean being completely aware that in my pre-cow state I was a dense ball of negativity, but my post-cow self could not fathom how or why that could be. If the cows are lying down and masticating with their eyes closed, HOLY SHIT that’s better than opium. How can a living being be so peaceful? We can only dream of achieving this state. We can only dream.

My partner recently reactivated his aquarium, now that he was promoted and is rolling in money. I am excited for the shrimps, but first he needed to clean the aquarium and fill it with water and start the whole water cycle, do some aquascaping, water plants were ordered. I learnt about the concept of accompanying fauna. Small animals that come with your aquarium plants because their eggs are impossible to eliminate unless it’s an in-vitro culture. Then I learnt about the concept of bladder snails.

Holy shit I love bladder snails so much.

We don’t even need shrimps.

I could watch them for hours, and in fact I have done so. One “sprouted”. I called her Philomena. Within a few days there was en entire Philomena hivemind. They are everywhere, big, small, they are in the plants, they go up the glass, they break the laws of physics by strolling on the water surface upside down (they use the laws of physics actually, water tension and all, but it’s so SIIIICKKKK every time I see them doing it). You can see their little mouths and they constantly chew (?). They open and close incessantly, and our aquarium was cold at first, because the thermometer was broken. We got a new one and those critters got a SPEED BOOST with double the chewing frequency. For weeks there was literally no filter but it is no problemo for Philomena. Philomena persevere. Philomena thrive. Philomena would dance on our graves if they had legs and understood the concept of graves.

My partner was amusingly surprised at my interest in the Philomena, and I was too, until one day the enlightenment came to me that, really, snails are just cows.

They mind their own business. They don’t have a care in the world. I don’t think they could obliterate us but they sure as hell outcompete us in the wild. They just want to eat ???algae??? and maybe they have their own subaquatic moos, I like to think they do. I don’t know if bladder snails have best friends but I can be their friend.

Bladder snails irradiate peace just as cows do, I look at them and I think that maybe all is not so bad in the world. Sure, the far-right is gaining power, but also, look at them go. Chew, chew, chew. We have nazis but also we have snails. We have taxes and bills to pay but they also help us create and sustain a mini world for our Philomena overlords. And when we are in the brink of mental collapse we can look at them Spiderman their way through the water surface and we take a deep breath and we carry on.

I may be putting too much faith on the therapeutical capacities of Philomena.

We had to move them to a temporary aquarium a few weeks ago. We found some not-so-nice parasites in the water and they need to be purged before the shrimps move in. The Philomena didn’t like it. I have no idea what happened, but they started dying in their quarantine aquarium. I did all sorts of water tests and all seemed fine, I bought an oxygenator, and in the end they are fucking bladder snails that survived weeks in an unheated, unfiltered aquarium so why the FUCK was this happening????? I don’t know, and as of now this is still unconcluded. Quarantine is still ongoing and my partner and I don’t yet live together or even in the same town, so I see don’t them (I mean the Philomena but also my partner) every day. He recently told me there were still some survivors. I sure as fuck hope so. There is a wonderful aquarium free of parasites and with beautiful new plants waiting for them. They just need to hold on.

This was supposed to be a goofy post but I made it sad. Let’s recap:

Cows are precious beings of pure positivity and peace. Snails are also precious beings of pure positivity and peace.

Cows chew constantly. Snails also chew constantly.

I like watching cows. I also like watching snails.

Ergo, snails = cows.

Appreciate them. Cherish them. And send Philomena your thoughts and prayers.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

ouroborosmoons:

Newlywed couple, Moscow USSR, 1986

(via cuttingstone)

I’m currently sitting alone in a bunker (internet signal-wise) of a spanish-inspited cocktail café in Utrecht while my partner boulders his Christmas meals away with his friend. It’s cozy, and I have a good carajillo. I wish I got good bars where I live (or really, any bars) so that I could at least have a reference for what my homemade cocktails are supposed to look or taste like. But these are the first sentences of my post and I’m already steering off-topic.

The matter is that I’m alone in a very cozy atmosphere and I feel very content with myself. I feel independent and mature. I feel like, if a genetically engineered supersoldier blasted into the café dual-wielding shotguns on the back of a velociraptor, I would know exactly what to do to disarm the situation. And everyone would clap.

And so it’s very difficult now to convey the feeling I actually have on a relatively daily basis, especially when I’m in the company of others, and somehow especially in the last few weeks, during the holidays.

It’s just the feeling that, literally, I don’t think I possess much common sense, and usually out of all the possible paths could choose to deal with routine situations I usually parkour into someone’s backyard right into their baby’s first birthday cake. I don’t know where I was going with this analogy. I’ve been reading a lot of Douglas Adams lately. What I want to say is that I make very weird decisions. I behave in unusual ways. I react unexpectedly. But not in the exciting kind of way, rather in a “baby, please stop” manner. I think in Tumblr I’m just another quirky being, but in real life I don’t hang out with Tumblr people, I hang out with people who actually do what society expects them to do every second of their existence.

I wish I had lots of examples, but they tend to fizzle our after some days, which is also good. If my mind kept track of every single awkward moment I generate I would run out of terabytes really quickly. The capacity to forget is also what keeps me going instead of making me jump off the nearest bridge (canal, for a more Dutch analogy). So technically it’s not a problem, but it is, because it reduces my existence to a series of small jabs, pinches, “ughs”, winces, and generally a constant sense of uncomfortableness with myself, as well as the eternal mental mantra of “why am I like this?”

Two days ago I went to Bonn with my partner, and we found a very legit Currywurst shack which on Google had some very controversial ratings. It sat on 3,6 stars I believe, but right at the counter I was treated very kindly by the owner, so I proceeded to take some pictures of the place for my (belligerently positive) review. My partner kept lowering my hand, so I couldn’t take good pictures, so I tried again, and he lowered it again, eventually saying there was a sign outside about no pictures being allowed. See, I didn’t see the damn sign. I felt ashamed and frustrated. Why did HE see the sign and I didn’t? And how uncomfortable it was for him to be related to someone so clearly breaching that rule. I didn’t mean to, obviously, but it was irritating. That a sign was placed somewhere where clearly sentient human beings were capable of perceiving it, but I didn’t pass the sentiment human being check. 

I mulled over it throughout my entire Currywurst (while at the same time being aware that I should enjoy it, and j did - it was good). Why not? What makes me perceive the world in a manner that the “no pictures” sign flies by unnoticed? And what series of life events makes one become a sign perceiver? What’s the missing piece and can I buy it on Amazon?

I think the unnoticed sign, or at least the thought process that it kickstarted, is a good enough example. I know it sounds small, but see - this thought is what springs up every time I do something or react or behave in a way that’s just not the way it is expected to be, and it’s also not the funny unexpected either that makes people be glad you’re along for the ride.

Why do I say too many words to a cashier that couldn’t care less about the extra words I’m adding to my sentence, and why do I keep doing it even though internally, and on real time, I am completely aware that this is happening? Why am I not able to talk about the reality of Brazilian immigrants in Germany and stutter through overly detailed aspects, and ignore the big picture, and ultimately let my German partner take over the discussion while I sulk inside myself for being incompetent in discussing mature things I absolutely have a say in? Why do I get so excited about a cat on a window on the other side of the road that I am almost ran over by a bicycle? 

Some of these things are not like the others but believe me when I say they trigger the exact same feeling.

Inadequacy?

Yes.

It took me 880 words to finally crack it, didn’t it?

My father is the same, to be quite honest, so that is one part of the “why am I like this?” puzzle. He strides through the world behaving in the most unique ways. As if he was acting and reacting to a pocket universe of his own. My mother and I would usually be very ashamed. She would tell him so, and I would either mentally or physically distance myself. When I emigrated I realised I was just like him. I don’t know if this was always the case and here people just point it out, or if only to this country I am like my dad. But once I experienced his reality personally, I got very, very understanding. Crazy how your perception of people changes when you put yourself in their shoes, right?

Well, it also made me more understanding of what other people do in general, in the sense that now I really think thrice before judging someone.

I just feel alone sometimes in this feeling. Except when I’m with my dad.

So I guess I just wished some more of that.

“So what does your mother like other than Jesus and dictatorship?”

I’ll never forget the day I was in the middle of a full-on PMS-induced breakdown complete with ugly crying and my partner put the 10-hour Wii Channel theme to play on YouTube and that calmed me down

#hopecore is the best hashtag on the internet and I am frustrated at the fact that I only learnt about it now.

But it’s ok, life’s good.

Wine is a vibe. I always need to be careful because of my family history, and actually since Corona also my own history. I don’t think I will ever be able to enjoy the concept of wine in its most pure, carefree form. It’s like when you spill it on a white T-Shirt and don’t clean it right away because you’re lazy. You made yourself a tie die.

It’s the thought of just sitting on the table on an uneventful evening. The night sky hugs your home but can’t reach you. You enjoy its serenity through the window, cozy and safe. The oaky notes from your sip of red keep you grounded. I want to say there is a book, but I haven’t touched a book in some time because I get home from work and if I have to read one more analysis of how the world is going to shit I may actually pack my bags and go live with the wolves. I heard on the radio today that the German wolf population is doing well. I am happy for them.

I could say the solution to the reading thing lies in buying a non-fiction. It does not lie in Instagram reels. But that is beyond the scope of this entry. And there are other things I do. I write, I watch video-essays, I overthink and I get close to calling my family five times in the evening before deciding I reached my quote of spoken words for the day. I text my partner, then we decide to call. The single glass accompanies me all night. We have no hurry. There is faint jazz playing.

I have a bottle of wine at home. I’ve had it since February. I always think I should drink it and then I don’t. I frequently think about when I’ll drink the damn thing. I then list all of the rehearsed reasons for why I haven’t got around to it yet.

1. It is an expensive bottle. I bought it for an especially outstanding day, and I am sorry to inform that I lead a very lukewarm life.
2. My partner isn’t the biggest fan of red wine. His skin has 99 problems and one of those is getting rashes from fermented grapes.
3. I have this intrinsic feeling that I’m too young for this shit?? I can’t help but associate the image of a decent glass of wine on a pleasant evening with retired successful white people and literally none of these categories fit me (except maybe people). Show me one PhD researcher chilling after a long work day with a glass of red. I… think there are many. I need their contacts.
4. Fear of becoming the A-word. That’s the stain on my white shirt. My family and I already have priors, and I am already living on the edge with my cocktail hobby. Is it normal to enjoy some wine after work? Why do I want that?

Why the hell do I want to chill with wine? I am 100% sure this is a social construct. I just saw a scene on Netflix of a guy alone at home with a glass of wine and thought “oh fuck yeah”. Is it like the old product placements of Big Cigarette? Am I looking too much into it? Is it both? And I did grow up within wine conoisseurs, so of course nostalgia plays a role. The desire to return to simpler times, when the one to spend 20 euros on a bottle of wine was my dad and not me who has to eat noodles with pesto for a week to compensate for that choice.

Can the feeling of a decent glass of wine be replaced with anything else? Honestly… not really. I like my cocktails, but you can’t stick with one the entire evening. I mean, you can, but they’re all about dilution, and once the diluted ice reaches a certain point it’s like gulping down cold coffee. Wine gets better with aeration, or at least doesn’t start sucking balls. I could sub with juice or tea, but. lmao.

The wine from February will stay unopened for infinity I reckon, but I’m getting closer and closer to buying a decent supermarket bottle and just scratching that itch. Should probably do it before the holidays, because then I’ll really miss looking through the window to the night sky, Alexa humming some lo-fi, warm light coming from a single bedside lamp, a glass of red as my only company.

I just came back from a spiritual journey.

With that I mean I got an unexpected invitation to spend two days in a hunter’s hut to go on small adventures through rocks, mountain pines, and (what I unfortunately realised too late) eatable blueberries towards almost invisible nets where we hoped to find tangled up birds. We would then spend 15 minutes untangling the birds and bring them back to the hut, where 15 further minutes would be spent placing very small tracking backpacks on the birds, and that would be the time to check the nets all over again.

My spiritual enlightenment did not come from the fact that a bird’s foot apparently enters the fourth dimension when tangled in such fine nets, although I did have to find a place to write this information somewhere (the world has to know). It came through my working partner whp leads the project, has been on some wild-ass journeys in his youth, and has provided me with simply the best conversation to be had when one is 1500m above the nearest opportunity for a shower.

The region I live in is very traditional.

You have a valley surrouned by mountains, a cauldron if you will. You have early people settling in all around this valley, and with time a certain connection in form of prototypical roads begins. You have the strengthening of these roads within the valley and of absolutely nothing else beyond the valley, because there are tall-ass mountains and no one is going over that for a gallon of milk. You have said mountains taking your breath away every day, seizing this feeling of deep gratitude for your happenstace. You can go nowhere, but do you need to? The connections lead to communities and communities have their speech and dances and food and music and understanding of life that involves the mountains becoming as much an enclosure as their own sense of self.

“I have seen people proud of not taking a single step outside of the valley,” my coworker says. I acknowledge with a judgemental “hmm”, which seems to have been an acceptable reaction, since he responded with a nod. And I meant my “hmm”, because I like travelling. In this day and age, why not? Why the fuck not fuck off two hours or maybe three? I can assure you that even one hour and some 50 km to the north or maybe east can reward one with amazing views, like the fluffy Oreo-cows.

LOOK AT THEM (© Russel Wills, unfortunately every time I see them I have to be an adult and control myself to avoid a car accident)

People who don’t care about travelling are fucking weird until we start talking about being stared at on the streets. Or, rather, I did that. I talked about another experience of mine in another city, and how even if people here in the valley had this mountain Stockholm syndrome, at least they didn’t stare. What do you mean by stare? I can’t describe it. It’s not like people stopped and looked at me while I went about my routine, but there were signals. A side-glance. A different way of speaking. An aura. I can’t put my finger on it. When people smile at me here, I see it’s genuine. Maybe because they think I’ll go away quickly and am not here to join their little clique forever. In the other place it was fake. They had to put up with people like me, but it didn’t mean they accepted their condition.

This isn’t the post for that. Some other time maybe.

“You look like another ethnicity,” said my coworker when I narrated that. And… YES. I don’t look another one, I am another one. But, and that’s when I had discourse problems. But…

I can’t say I don’t want to look like it. That’s not it. I don’t want to Michael Jackson my way into germanic acceptance. I don’t want to not look the way I look. I just don’t want this to be the first thing people use to decide whether I belong.

Fuck, this will be a long post. Trust me, it’s still about crossing the valley.

Why does it matter?

The conversation experienced some bumps on the road when I voiced that opinion. I am not, nor have I ever been, from here. This can be seen as the definition of not belonging. There was palpable confusion as to why the gal who does not belong complain about not being seen as belonging.

For me, personally, I have never 100% felt like the place I came from. And then I came to this country, and every glance on the streets kept telling me that I still haven’t quite hit the spot.

Let’s talk about ravens.

This post is still about crossing the valley.

Ravens experience two or three years in which they, in their juvenile state, just vagabond around flying wherever they want, maybe reaching some 300 km in a single day, and one day they successfully breed and then they stay in their breeding area forever.

We have talked about ravens during our descent from the hut. It’s interesting how these birds settle down in a similar way humans do. When my coworker was doing his master’s, he disappeared in Brazil for three months travelling with street vendors until he reached a vilage without internet or electricity. He got so close to these people to the point that he returned two times in the following years, bringing gifts and nurturing the serious thought that he could live there forever.

When one knows who they are, not much more than an isolated forest vilage or a valley encased in mountains is needed. Hell, even the cows are enough. Even if they don’t have Oreo patterns.

They are very fucking cute tbh, I love them

When you find your purpose as the one crow who I guess found a mate in the middle of Yellowstone, you know who you are, and you are definitely not the crow who flies to Canada every breeding season.

When you find people in the middle of the Amazon who genuinely accept you regardless of the colour of your eyes or skin or speech capabilities, it is pretty fucking enticing to just stay with them, until you realise you need to finish your education on the other side of the ocean, end up finding a nice gal, having a kid, and researching nutcrackers with your quite literally wild youth becoming only a very fond memory you can sometimes talk about when civilisation and associated plumbing are far enough away.

When one is born in a valley where all history and culture is so deeply ingrained, belonging is born with you. There is no search. You know who you are. You know everything and everyone you need. Why do you need to cross the valley?

I know I will have to. I crossed an ocean, and now these mountains. And I will get out of their grasp again, because I am not theirs. When I find my place, perhaps I will be the one to be proud of the chains that tie me to it. Because I can bet a great deal of spiritual peace comes with it.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy my road and my cows and the other side of the mountain.