I remember walking along the shore, smiling at the false idea that the sea loved me, loved me with every kiss it layed at my feet.
I remember chasing my sister and my brother through the sand, my lungs captivating more of my attention than my lack of self-realization.
I remember so many things, but I don't think any of them are important... these memories dissolve, they remain a pretty picture in my mind, but only the picture remains. What I will remember most of all in a few months, or years, will be what I learned from these moments, because every day I live that.
This is a character that has not only been dear to my heart, forever and always. She's a role model. Watch the following video and understand why: Literally the best thing ever. Loves, Ana
I love school. I love to sit down and just learn stuff for 8 hours straight. And on every possible subject! Every day I exit those horrid white gates (stupid useless arquitechts) a more knowledgeable person. I learn about Biology, about History, about Literature, about Philosophy, and yes, every once in a while I also learn a bit or two about Math. So much fun! It's like educational Youtube, except it's not procrastination.
(Yes, my friends bully me for being a geek. Thankfully I'm proud of that title, being the nerdfighter that I am.)
However, the system has got it all wrong.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for all of my fellow Drama classmates today. We had to present about different pantomime during different historical periods. The ever-present thought in my head was "these are drama students? These, who are supposed to feel at ease in front of an audience! Who should act confident even when they aren't! They profess love for drama, and yet they are giving as pityful a presentation as any average band student would." (Hey there band students, no grudge. I used to play the trumpet in my school band.)
But it's not their fault. It's the fucking system.
WHO ARE THE DUMBASSES THAT PRIORITIZE THE SAME TYPE OF EXCELLENCE FOR EVERY STUDENT OVER PERSONAL CREATIVITY. I acknowledge the fact that it's almost impossible to change the system, but just think it over: We are taught what we must be taught in order to get to college, as quickly and efficiently as possible, and we are supposed to get the best possible grades in order to get into said college by giving the exact same result that everybody was expecting.
I defy you, students of the world:
Don't learn because you have to, learn because you will be a bit closer to being a better person after learning.
Don't research because you have to, research because you might make a conclusion that nobody has ever seen before and to see these links between information scattered all around us as beautiful.
Don't present because you have to, present because you might inspire somebody in the process. Be sure to transmit all of the passion for the subject that you acquired through your research in your presentation.
Fellow students, all of us are given a magnificent possibility every day. It's the possibility to learn! To become more cultured! That is BEAUTIFUL, and if you can't see it, then I'm afraid learning is not for you... and achieving won't be for you either.
Don't be afraid of change.
Don't be afraid of doing things differently.
And, above all, don't do it just to get into college.
Once you get into college, you will learn things to excel in your field! And once you excel in your field... wait, was it of any use to get good grades in college?
My word for all the students in the world is:
STRIVE.
PS. Youtube is one of the most magnificent educational tools that the universe has presented us with in a long time. I am an avid fan of educational channels such as Scishow, V-Sauce, CGP Grey, and Crash Course. But I am an even bigger fan of those channels that invite you to see the world in a different way. After all, I'm only a 17 year old human bug, and I couldn't have developed my theories from thin air. Here are some of my favorite videos on the topic of education:
I like rap, but most of the time, I hate it. I intensely dislike the misoginism, the hypocrisy, all of it makes me think that most of the time rappers are not creating but just like throwing together a bunch of shit. And words are far from being shit. It should be illegal to create something so shitty with words.
But I really, really love Eminem. His rap resonates and is powerful yet lovable. I can't praise it enough.
And, hello, non-Latin Americans of the world, I present to you our very own Eminem! His name is Residente, or Calle 13, and he rocks. Or, rather, raps.
That is, by far, my favorite of his videos, and one of my favorite musical videos ever.
I'm a very bad translator, but this is the best I could do with his Una Vuelta al Mundo (Around the World) rap:
Stop gifting me books because I don't read them,
what I've learned it's because I've seen it,
as the years pass I contradict myself when I think,
time doesn't move me,
I move myself with time,
I am the will to live, the will to cross,
the will to learn what lays beyond the sea.
I hope my lips never quiet,
I also wish that this plane's wings never fail.
I don't have everything solved,
not everything calculated,
not my life resolved,
I only have this smile and I wait for one in return.
I trust in destiny and in the waves,
I don't believe in the Church but I believe in your looks,
you are the sun on my face when I wake,
I am the life that I have, you are the life that I lack,
so grab your suitcase, your bag, your valise, the case, your backback with your toys,
and give me your hand and we'll take a spin on the world...
all around the world.
Anyways, I probably did no justice to Calle 13's magnificent rap with my clumsy translation, so I either encourage you to learn Spanish or to just try to feel the power of the words in his voice. ;)
Do you have a favorite rapper? Or a favorite local musician?
PS. Hello haters of the world. Yes, I am aware that Calle 13 is the market's fabrication in its quest to have a Latin American Eminem. So what? It might be hypocritical, but it doesn't stop it from being good. And it's not killing anyone.
They're just plain gorgeous, and we all are cultivating gorgeous shelves, right?
Cons:
There's a silent pact that you will take care of the hardcover
Heavy shit to have in the purse
You can't fit infinite of them into your backpack (tune in Rory Gilmore)
They're, like, a gazillion times more expensive
And you can't find every book in hardcover
Slightly more uncomfortable to read
Paperbacks
Pros:
Is it just me, or do they feel really artsy and hipsterish?? (I think I'm a wannabe hipster, guys, I confess.)
You can bend them and dog-ear them and get in with them into the bathtub. In short, the more tattered that they are, the more amazing that they look. (Hey, look, Barney Stinson, another thing that DOES get better with time.)
Long live marginalia (*see previous note)
CHEAP!!!! (In other words, money for more books!)
They are faithful companions, and are allowed to go with you eeeeverywhere. (Even then, I'm not the biggest fan of paperback editions, but they do have their use.)
Cons:
Lend them to your bro, your sis, your cuz, your Ma, and pretty soon you have a book that's 30 pages shorter.
Let's face it, the previous note pretty much says it all. The paperback sort of defeats one of the main purposes of a book: IMMORTALITY!!!!
Even though it would seem I am much more in favour of paperbackss, I am an extremely unpractical person and the unbalanced pro/con list does nothing to soothe my dilemma.
Do you have any preferences? What are your arguments?
My first day of Kindergarten with my mom. L <3 cheezy="" e.="" flashback="" fridays="" gettin="" intolerably="" m="" me.="" p="" please="" someone="" stop="" the="" v="" with="">
Greetings to trying to be as interesting a person as possible. Greetings to balance. Greetings to the final trumpetings of autumn. Greetings to travel and resting a bit. Greetings to making new friends and holding on to the few who are worth it. To snuggling between my school's library's books, to kissing my mom and receiving her hugs, to playing my guitar in bed, to beating the sun's bedtime home, to listening to a lot of rock and chilean music.
I'm not sure about you May, but hopefully that means it'll be okay. I'm willing to take you as an adventure, to smile too much and sing too much and stuff. I'm not afraid of you.
I've been thinking about the prospect of becoming a teacher for a while now. I mean, most practical writing-people who have the desire to study literature or any other flimsy career like that have to consider it at some point, right?
And I think I would enjoy it.
As of late I've been observing my teachers, characterizing them in my head. They're delightfully varied characters, with distinguishing marks in which I delight.
My Spanish teacher is my favorite. She's an enthusiastic, passionate 30-something year old, with a violent eye for humor and irony. She's also open to the world as few people are, knowledgeable in every field one can imagine, from folk music to history. And she loves it all. She loves knowledge like a prisoner loves liberty, and she transmits this through her vivacious classes, with never a dull moment when her fluid and embellished conversation can fill it up.
My English teacher has short, straight hair, a gap between her teeth, a British accent, and a pair of small, loony black eyes. I've seen her wear the same clothes two days in a row many times. But even though at first sight one laments the fact that she's going to teach us English for a year, after a few weeks the feeling evaporates. She, too, is passionate for books and what books can teach us. Showing us videos online of beautiful poetry, intellectual seminars, movie clips that have everything to do with the book we're currently reading and makes us understand that "Oh, maybe that is what life really is about."
My History teacher is a short, pretty lady who must have a closet bigger than my house. I've never seen her wear the same clothes, nor the same combination of colors. For this hippie at heart makes a point of wearing every color of the rainbow at the same time in every one of her outfits. But she's tolerant, open-minded, knowledgeable, and insightful.
I hate my Math teacher so let us not talk about her.
My college-admissions exam teacher is witty, funny, happy, youthful, very smart, very knowledgeable, he talks two hundred miles a minute. I at times want to hate him because everybody loves him too much, but it's impossible to hate someone who hates nobody.
My Biology teacher is a prim, pretty woman of about 40. She constantly uses examples in class about height, about how she's short and someone else is tall. Dresses to prim perfection, talks to prim perfection, and gives a perfectly prim (see: boring) class, but it's okay. She's not at all as mean as she appears to be at first.
And if I didn't remember a teacher by now that's because they weren't worth writing about.
It's probably ridiculous to write a letter to such a popular writer.
But we do a whole lot of ridiculous things in life, because, in poetic terms, they're "cathartic." In real terms, they're fun.
It's fun to stand at the back of a pick-up truck while listening to Asleep and driving through a tunnel. It's fun to make out with vampires. It's fun to go searching for Horcruxes and save the world from impending evil.
Okay, who knows.
But it is cathartic to ask for advice and outpour your grievances onto someone you know to be wise and possibly god-like. (Although, as The Fault in our Stars should have taught us, this is not necessarily the case!) And, as much as I wish I followed my Hipster Bible's commandments and pretended disdain over a popular YA author, I love John Green. Not as much as JK Rowling, but getting there.
It was soothing to tell him that I want to be an author, yet see no hope for myself. It was soothing to tell him that I feel stuck in 17, that it's an age where I'm not permitted to do all the things that I want to do. Because I want to do EVERYTHING, just to know, and maybe if I know, I'll have something worthwhile to write about.
And I haven't even mailed it yet. But that's not the point.
Once upon a beautiful time, I had a fisheye lens. I adored my fisheye lens. And then I lost the connector ring, and bought another fisheye lens, but this came without a connector ring, so I bought connector rings, but they didn't match up with my camera. Now I just have two useless fisheye lenses, and a bunch of useless connector rings.
A few years ago, while going through a bout of Dorothy Parker fever, I created the mess of a page showcased above, in hopes that the paper shrine would soothe my fever.
Unfortunately, it didn't.
Or should I rather say fortunately, because this witty, sarcastic, BRILLIANT woman has been an inspiration to me for a few years now. Not only is she an amazing poet and writer, but was also a beautiful advocate of equality and tolerance, whether she wanted it or not, in an age where women couldn't even vote! (At least, in Chile they couldn't. I'm not really sure when women's suffrage was legalized in the US.)
And she did this all without losing the spark of honesty and realism that characterizes her work. She writes about her flaws and romantic misadventures with all the zest of Adele but with all the brilliant sarcasm of a stand-up comedian. I believe that figures such as Tina Fey or Ellen deGeneres are modern commercial copies of what is this brilliant model, Dorothy Parker. Yet nothing can dream of attempting to overshadow the original.
I love you, Dorothy Parker. I love your poems and I love your stories, but above all else, I love you, the character that exists in my mind and hopefully once did in reality too, of a powerful, smart, honest woman.
I can only hope to have you as a friend when I close my eyes at night, but regardless, thank you for being such a great mentor!
Typed "Dorothy Parker" into Google images and got too many amazing pictures to choose just one.
Nats was my best friend for what seemed like an infinite number of years. (But, in reality, were a couple of years too few.) She still is one of my besties, even though I see her about 10 times a year at best.
Love is a nice thing to feel for such a cool person.
Or, rather, from January and February. My life was more interesting then.
If I were to waste Instaxes on my life now they would include a lot of Don Quixote, of the gym, of WWI, of running around, driving classes. Going mad, basically.
While the civilized world enjoys Coachella, I relive my pretty and cute Lollapalooza moments. Which is fine by me, because I feel like no Coachella can deal with MY Lolla! 'Tis the merriest time of year.
If I could summarize Lollapalooza 2013 in 20 points, what would I say?
I took a brand new disposable camera, so I had 30 potential amazing pictures to take. On Sunday afternoon, 25 pictures down the line, I looked for my camera to take a picture of the sunset against Franz Ferdinand, and realized that my camera had dissappeared. My only hope is that whoever finds it will have the brilliance to develop my precious moments, and treasure them as snapshots of insight into a stranger's life. For now, I only have pictures of the festival taken from a friend's point-and-shoot, pictures such as this:
I am in love with Of Monsters and Men. (I'm 17, okay? I'm allowed to express deep feelings for yet another band.) The lead female singer is gorgeous and cute and the lead male singer is adorable. Their interaction with the public was fantastic. I used to like their music. Now I sorta need it, especially on bad days.
The last concert on the last day: The Black Keys. My best friend and I were the only ones who cared to see this Great. So we left all the rest of the techno lovers (boo for them), and ran to a crowd of thousands and thousands of people, pushing our way through. WE GOT TO THE FRONT LINE. That's a lot of pushing. (And a lot of love.) I took this picture on Instagram:
FRANZ FERDINAND, FRANZ FERDINAND, FRANZ FERDINAND. Oh and this babe:
I found this picture on Tumblr, but it was actually taken at this Lollapalooza.
By the way, I'm never marrying if I'm not marrying Nick McCarthy.
I lost the half of my group of friends that wanted to see Franz Ferdinand just like four minutes before the show, so I went ALONE. Alone yet surrounded by thousands and thousands and thousands of people. AND IT WAS WORTH IT. By far my favorite show. My feet still hurt from all that dancing and my throat's still sore from all that singing/shouting. And it is worth it.
There was this point during the Ferdinand show, where they ALL started playing the drum set. It was magic, I'm telling you. Magic. (I normally say these angsty phrases with a sarcastic undertone but this one has none. It really was magic. Especially Nick Mccarthy. God, that's what he is. A black haired, guitar playing, sexy god.)
Mosh pits? Are fun ways to get the bruises that complete your Outsiders outfit.
I AM NEVER EATING NORMAL FOOD AGAIN. TOMATO+CHEESE SANDWICHES ARE THE EFFING BOMB.
I felt sweaty all day, and suspect that only 26% of that sweat was actually mine.
I wanted to see The Temper Trap and saw Two Door Cinema Club instead. Which was fine. 'Cuz it was intense. Yup.
Were any shows boring at all, you ask? Well, I don't like Passion Pit's music, so that was meh. And I'm not a huge fan of techno, so Deadmau5 was also meh. All the other shows were amayzin.
We were walking away from the fireworks that closed the festival on Sunday when I met a cousin of mine and he offered to take me home. Sweet.
I can't believe I'm having trouble getting to point 20.
People watching is more fun at music festivals (or, at least, at Lollapalooza. Only festival I've been to) than anywhere else. Such a variety of people, all dressed their best but as comfortable as possible. Everybody wants to go, and even though for Chile these events' "everybody" still means "high middle class and upwards at most" I still felt a bit of social ventilation occurring. We all had someone completely different from us pressed (with the might of an incredibly big, fan-frenzied crowd) against us, for the sake of music. More than a hundred thousand people, all different from us.
I'm really pissed about not getting to see Kaiser Chiefs. I am The Angry Mob. And I am only one person. That's how angry I am.
Okay, let's leave it at 19 okay? I really did have a great time. Blame this lack of memory on something else ;)
Have a nice day because I love you because you read my blog,
I would like to start off by saying that I will feel wretchedly rejected were you not to answer my letter. You see, I am in desperate need for help. And it is oh so most urgent.
My troubles are not at all even strange or will require of so much effort on your part. You see, I am to impersonate a book character for my theatre's class was museum next week. And I have no clue what to do!
No, what crazy talk this is! I know perfectly well what I want to do. I desperately want to be Bellatrix Lestrange. Desperately. She is the character of my dreams. Unfortunately, a very talented young girl already did Bellatrix for last year's Wax Museum, and therefore, my crazied, screeching, manic dreams are impossible.
But I've thought of other options! I could be Becky Sharp, but nobody knows who Becky is, and wouldn't understand her character at all. And I've also thought of being Cruella de Vil, and Alice in Wonderland, and Luna Lovegood. But none of these characters seem just right. Anyways, I want to be a really crazy character, someone to startle the audience. To make them gasp.
Now, whoever could I be!
I normally try to avoid posting a gazillion quatrupillion pictures on my posts, but this is hard for me. I get exited about the Lollapalooza topic.
Here are some pictures of last year's Lolla:
Last year I saw Camila Moreno and I saw Foster the People, and TV on the Radio and Morodo and Joan Jett and MGMT, Tinie Tempah and Skrillex and the Foo Fighters. Yeah, a lot of music in just one tiny day.
And this year, I'm going for two tiny-but-huge days! Yeah, rock on.
Green spirit!
Camila Moreno
This is probably one of the best pictures I've ever taken. I call it "Skrillex illuminating the people." Even though it's pretentious to give photographs names. Yeah.
