analysis
To prove or not to prove
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | analysis, life, people | No Comments
“Proving your love”
God, I’ve heard this phrase a million times or more. I’ve heard it from my family, I’ve heard it from my friends, I’ve heard it from close or distant relatives, and, of course, I’ve heard it from lovers up to a point where I had to say: “OK… now I’m feeling a little bit abused.”
What does it actually mean “proving it”, anyway? Of course I would gladly offer my support to my loved ones when they are in trouble, and of course I wouldn’t mind doing it, but I wouldn’t call this “proving my love”, because it’s actually something different, it’s like acting on an impulse: you want that person to be safe and sound, ’cause whatever it hurts her it would also hurt you. You just have to do it. It’s organic. It happens because, whatever it is that is bounding you to the other, is or has grown so strong that it somehow enlarged your self in that person’s direction, assimilating her. She is now contained in your extended self, enriching your life with things you wouldn’t know before. And making you feel each and every of her pains.
This is what they mean when they say: “You are a part of me”. It describes a wonderful, natural process that characterizes close human relationships. When it happens you would do anything that could legitimately help the other, out of impulse. And I guess this is prone to be interpreted as a proof of love.
However, when someone is asking you to “prove” your attachment… well, that brings me an emotional black-mailing flavour. Usually it won’t involve things that are absolutely necessary, things that you would instantly have done for him or her. Usually it’s all about caprices, extravagances, insecurities, lack of understanding that you do have a life beyond them, lack of respect for you as a person, as a free and free-willed individual, and, ultimately, lack of love. Because when you really love someone you would never ask them something that would go against their values, against their inner world or against their possibilities.
Therefore, love-proving? It’s in impulsive acts, in small gestures, in one’s eyes or in one’s kiss. It is never in one’s black-mail or one’s response to it.
Us, the world and its problems
Monday, March 9th, 2009 | analysis, life, people | No Comments
Ever wondered what’s wrong with the world? Lately?
“Oh, not the voices again!” I hear you crying. “Not another financial-crisis article, pleeease. Cool down, relax, and just give us a speech of sex, luxury and refinement, ’cause that’s the way we want it.”
Trouble is this crisis seems to be ruining our lives more than just economically. First, it is excessively mediatised, over discussed, and so goddamn annoying. Secondly, it is basically everywhere and it’s affecting us all. Its main evilness: does not only produce inflation, debt and unemployment, but it also produces a large amount of stress and anxiety. We can live with inflation: we’ll simply cut some of our expenses and limit spending our cash on basic items. We can live with debt. We can live with unemployment, too: there are various ways to earn money and with some smarts and some little bit of creativity one can always make a living. However, living with the stress and anxiety produced by this conjecture is the worse part of it.
Worrying kills, they say. Truth is worrying kills everything. The uncertainty of tomorrow is making us less open to life. We just don’t seem to enjoy things the way we used to, and we don’t get the same courage and energy out of our leisures and hobbies. We don’t love less but we less express it and, also, less savor it. Because we are not free to, we are too busy worrying and worry has already taken us for good. Our relationships grow colder because of it, when it is in times of trouble we should lay more on others and others on us. Our mind starts producing risk-free solutions and scenarios, working for safety and stability, when one should think and fight for his own, sacred, personal development. When risk-free actually means freedom-free, slave to the stronger ones, their mechanisms and their laws.
Lets keep ourselves out of this, dear friends, for the love and sake of all beautiful things out there, for the true marvels the world and the human spirit so genuinely contain. Let us hope for better us. Let us love and let us not forget our friends, our sweethearts, our spirit and our happiness. Let us not work for a safer future, but for one that is richer in good will and humanity. Let us allow ourselves to forget stocks and to never forget or underestimate intimacy, in its deepest, most fulfilling sense. Let us be free and human despite everything, ’cause if there is a reason we were born for, it is love.
Courtship… again
Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | analysis, people, style | No Comments
Here we are, back to the courtship theme and all its marvelous issues. Because, dear friends, there are some things we find unacceptable in our tiny little world, that may be lacking innocence, but not charm, not daydreaming, not elegance. So, let us share to you all the very phrase that arouse our indignation: Am I courting you?
Sans Innocence is not the kind of narcissistic freak committed to believe all men should be courting her, and she did not receive this rather ingrate response from some random friend/acquaintance/guy on the street or someone else’s man. No. Sans Innocence got the aforementioned phrase from her boyfriend, with whom she manages to share a one-year-pretty-nice-relationship. And, in his defense, one must say he is really charming, graceful, polite and truly loves our main character here.
Further developments of The Phrase: Oh, yes, indeed, I was courting you at the beginning, when we started dating. This translates to me as: Well, we’re only using that very pleasing romantic ritual at the beginning, when we don’t know the girl very well and want to impress her, but after we reach some intimacy level with that lovely creature we just don’t see the point of courting her anymore, ’cause the relationship would go on anyway. Really? I mean, most successful couples I know have reached a certain number of years together because they actually kept dating. (Note: of course, each other, not other people…). How can you keep your butterflies in your stomach for longer if you stop regarding your significant other as some fascinating, mysterious stranger? How can you avoid taking his/hers love for granted? How not to be slipping into a boring routine?
To cut a long story short, my point is this: one should never get to think of The Other as a private possession, a part of him/herself or anything else one might dare to neglect. The Other is a wonderful and desirable fortress which is never truly ours, and which must be conquered again, every dawn. Therefore courtship, as you may see, is a must.
PS: the photo above is our way of recommending www.michaelfairchild.com for those of you interested in wild life photography and not only.
Yin, Yang and the melting pot (part II)
Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | analysis, mythical, style | No Comments
If we go deep, really deep within ourselves, we come to the point where we can realize where our Anima or Animus is, how it reports to itself or to us, and, most of all, where in our behaviour does it show its trickiness. Being aware of one’s Anima or Animus may bring significant improvement in this person’s life.
For instance, when we fall in love out of the blue it happens because we have met someone close enough to our Anima/Animus for it to project itself upon him or her. And so, for us, that person suddenly becomes the very incarnation of Masculinity or Femininity, as we understand and desire it, because it is our own Anima or Animus we are identifying her/him with. That’s why, in those moments, we feel that we are irresistibly drawn towards that wonderful, promising creature, that seems to have locked inside the very secret of our happiness, our fate, our meaning. When, later on, we unfortunately fall out of love, the whole initial magic doesn’t make sense anymore, sometimes the attraction we once felt gets beyond any understanding and there are also many unpleasant things about our former lover we can’t explain not having seen before.
The Myth of the Androgyn has its roots here, although the other half we are so eagerly looking for during our lifetime actually lies inside us. Being together with one or another of its projections may bring us temporary relief, may bring us human warmth and long moments filled with love, but when until the spell breaks we’ll still be incomplete.
However, when we become truly aware of our Anima/Animus, when we manage to understand it and to integrate it into our self, then we’ll get strong, real, wise, complete. It’s that very moment when we find ourselves, that very moment that sees our greatness as a wonderful, luminescent whole. We obtain a peace that will clear away all pain and fear. We enlarge out conscience and rise ourselves beyond this world’s delusions. We reach our true self, and everything that will happen afterwards will be different, meaningful. The love we’ll get will be itself more complete, because we’ll be able to see our significant other not only as a reflection of our Anima or Animus but for what he or she really is, and adore it as a whole. Our compassion and understanding will enlarge and our world will be richer and much more colorful.
But in order to get there we need long hours of introspection, of self-awareness in which to understand, accept and integrate what is different, and hidden, and yet, still within ourselves.
Global Warming, Human Cooling?
Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | analysis, people, style | No Comments
As the long, hot summer we’ve been through has finally ended, leaving room for some more refreshing times down here, we started taking serious concerns less seriously, and that involves the global warming issue, that we had previously been haunted by for weeks. I mean, it is bad… but Sans Innocence just had some huge amounts of white tea, lying in that old, cozy armchair and wishing the world would give her a break. With the catastrophes, at least.
Besides, there are other phenomenons related to the post-industrial era that sadden us in a similar degree. Phenomenons referring to people, interactions, relationships, communication. It’s like we’d be dealing with some kind of compensation’s law here: the earth is getting warmer, the people are getting colder. Yeah, thermodynamics… (surely, man is giving heat away to his environment, remember some physics principles here?).
However, it’s ironic that in the glorious times of email, instant messenger and micro-blogging people are more and more keen on growing apart from each other. How many truly significant relationships are you currently having? Or ever had? How high would you rate them, as for the quality of closure and of sharing them all? The fast, instant communication our modern stuff is offering us was designed to suit our fast, terribly fast way of living. Jobs, businesses, meetings, studies, trips are on the run. Live itself is on the run. Friendship. Love. Instant communicating offers us the sheer illusion we are somehow keeping in touch with people, and even establish a whole net of new connections – social networking, they say -, but the reality is those quick pings are nothing but life support to old friendships, while newly born ones get to have a development that reminds me of artificially nurtured fruits: no matter how big and pretty might seem, they’re absolutely tasteless. It takes time, lots of time, sincere involvement, honesty, mutual respect and confidence, and many other things in order to build a reliable friendship. You can’t put your eggs in IM’s basket, it takes real, face-to-face interaction. And same goes for love. The Internet abounds nowadays with dating and meeting-people networking, but ties grown here usually lead only to short flirtations and empty affairs, and that has a huge success because is exactly what everybody wants: having it fast and easy, and nevermind any quality concerns.
We run from place to place in our cars, spreading CO2 all over and rising global temperature, while in the same run we manage to cool down what was supposed to be our oasis of peace and well-being – our personal relationships. Bad choice, this speed of living. It is my ferm belief that we don’t actually need it (How many hours have lately you wasted in front of the TV? Or randomly surfing the net?) and that we really can take our time, make things right and give our social/romantic self the best it deserves. It is also my ferm, irrevocable belief and all we have to do is try, and let ourselves seduced by how great it gets. After all, it is our choice whether we want to submit to society’s self-destroying habits or stand up and dare to be free. Isn’t it?
Yin, Yang and the melting pot (part I)
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | analysis, mythical | No Comments
Good versus Evil, North versus South, Darkness versus Light, Male versus Female. Although it’s the latter we’re going to concentrate upon, lets have a little look around first, shall we? Somewhere behind these opposite and their spectacular clashes lies the secret of all things, the root of life and the essence of all creative powers. Duality starts it all.
However, since bright colours were successfully invented, there is no such a thing as black and white worlds, if we exclude from this affirmation early film-making and photography. It’s abstract, unfair, and by no means representative, and that goes for modern Hollywood thrillers too – technical details won’t matter. Besides, duality seems to be taking its force out of mixing stuff: maniheistic legends, for instance, take a point out of combining Darkness and Light, Spirit and Matter in a forever enchanting struggle and “underground” collaboration – and these guys were most radical when it came to contrasts. Wonderful laws does the nature have.
Therefore, as you’ve probably heard more than often, the phrase “every man has a feminine side and every woman a masculine one” is more than just politically correct. Julius Evora, in The Metaphysics of Sex defines Femininity and Masculinity as some kind of strong, genuine opposites, resembling magnetical field’s poles in action and energy. There is impossible to find pure Femininity or pure Masculinity in any living creature, but, the more Femininity does a woman have, the more she embodies the warmth and attraction of it, the closer she will be to Perfection. Also, the more a man becomes the incarnation of powerful male archetypes, the more will he find himself above other weaker, less sexual men. However, as this equation’s poles are as far apart from each other as Antarctica and Greenland prove to be, in every genre’s exponent there will be a nice little – or not so little – leak of opposite energy. He or she may ignore it all lifelong, but it’ll be there, playing tricks on them from its sweet well-hidden place.It will never disappear, and it will grow stronger and stronger, feeding itself from the owner’s denial, like a smart outlaw would steal electricity from an energy plant. And this, my friends, is beautiful, and great, because, ultimately, the oh-so-neglected side of ours is an useful instrument, able to make us whole, if we let it.
Carl Gustav Jung named man’s feminine side Anima and woman’s masculinity Animus. They are important, base concepts in his work and ones of most significance in psihanalysis’s efforts of understanding the dynamics of human inner and outer relationships. Normally, a man will only be able to understand women and their behaviour through his Anima, which generates the proverbial irrationality, uncontrolled emotions and unpredictability view. It’s not the way women are, it’s the way Anima is and the interface it offers to real-world Femininity. Same, if no level of higher awareness is met, women have their impressions of men established through their Animus – the Animus is a source for ready-made logic, rigidity, judgementalism and when a girl shows off her list of prejudices, yes, sir, it ’s her Animus at work there. Sounds like a lot of trouble in male-female interactions, doesn’t it? Well, at this level, yes, it definitely is and as we all know from experience genre conflicts are not actually light-and-easy, right?
Still, solving the duality brings peace and freedom, and that’s why we must take things further on and go deep, deep, deep.
[to be continued]
Thrill and Temptation part II
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | analysis | No Comments
So, back to the flirting-almost-cheating subject. Where were we? Yes, The Spell… It just works great and it adds some interest to even the most ordinary life. After all, that’s the thing box office hits are made of. And although it sounds really interesting as a story, it doesn’t take a genius to realize nobody can go on like this too long. It comes a moment when it’s either black, either white. Or red.
Because almost-sexual relationships always come to a turning point. There ain’t such a thing as keeping them safe and private forever. It’s the same as in physics: the tension between point A and point B won’t manage to grow and grow without some discharge, sooner or later, stronger or milder. A lightning, maybe, if we’re charged enough.
Real world seems to be having some rules when it comes to any knowable, existing stuff. You can say: “ok, nice chatting, but there’s somebody waiting for me at home whom I really love.” and end it right there, or at least end the temptation and sentence future guilty excitement to death. When you have something really great with a significant other, you simply know it. Grass may seem greener on the other side, but, no, error, it ain’t. Love is what makes the world go round, and loved ones deserve our loyalty and respect. Or you can find yourself in the position to understand that you were not having the relationship you desired, that you were not in love or that you were wasting your time on something dead and dry. Here, temptation is useful and it helps you find your freedom. You may try giving up your current lover and start seeing your “temptation”, or you can just leave your relationship and go looking for your great, precious self instead. That would be totally worthed. Thrill and temptation are prone to bring good things in one’s life, but it takes some lucidity and some management skills to make it work. When it does, it’s great.
Two more possible situations may the victim of temptation encounter, not out of her will, but lack of. The temptation may turn into an affair, while the lying and cheating gets serious. It’s more than difficult to be involved with two people at once, and one would make a big mistake in offering herself as subject of this emotional torture. You will loose something anyway, at some point, and it may hurt a thousand times more. Same goes for trying to escape the decision, and pretend not to see what’s going on, while continuing with the flirting thing after it has already shown obvious signs of becoming dangerous. Duplicity hurts. Lies hurt. And there are two, wait, no, three people you have to show respect to in this story: your lover, your “temptation”, and yourself.
As for my dear old friend I was telling you about, she somehow managed to keep the thrill and throw away the temptation. I guess she realised it wasn’t quite worthed, and I also believe that, having gone through this, the overall relationship with her boyfriend actually improved. There are moments when you need to get on the edge in order to better see what you’ve got and what you could loose. And these are the very moments when you start loving more.
Femme Fatale
Monday, September 8th, 2008 | analysis, mythical, sex-appeal, style | No Comments
There is a figure in today’s modern mythology that I found myself very fascinated with when I was a child. Oh, and in my early teenage period, too. It was the sublime, mysterious aura of so called femme fatale: the seductive, incentive woman that captures them all. Eyes, men, whatever. She had to have style and wits, and to posses that indescribable charm that was beyond beauty and glamour. Her sexuality was strong, dominant and enslaving, and there was no hope for the poor butterfly heading towards her light. A modern, powerful, superb witch.
Even though this image has blossomed fully during the ‘40 and ‘50 decades, in the period of the American “film noir”, I have to admit that one of my favourite bewitching characters is the cabaret dancer Lola Lola from 1930’s “Der Blaue Engel”. As everyone who has seen, or even heard about the movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star knows, the lovely Lola pushes Professor’s Rath life on a downward spiral using nothing but the power of lust that she so irresistibly awakens. The power behind a femme fatale ’s silk eyelashes is always meant to bring destruction in the aftermath of every sin, as her ravishing force will ultimately escape all control, even her own.
This was the black-and-white archetype that marked my age of restlessness. Surely, I eventually got to learn that it is only the incarnation of femininity’s destructive and unstoppable potential, and that it has nothing to do with reality. I have never met her in flesh and blood, only pale, wannabe roleplayers. As for any other common archetype (the mother, the maiden, the prophet, and so, so on), there is no human being that simple to match it completely. Humans are way more complicated than black-and-white figures, and even though our lives may, sometimes, resemble old thrillers, they have a little bit more meaning and underlying layers, don’t they? However, for short moments only, I can see her very glow in the shape of one of my female friends, or acquaintances, or other random girls I happen to randomly meet one place or another. And there she is, charming and dangerous, filling men’s hearts with desire, only to disappear some seconds later. Strange, glamourous epiphanies.
Or maybe just my imagination, as I truly, deeply love my inner world and its ghosts. So, reality check here: have you ever met Her?
Thrill and Temptation part I
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | analysis | No Comments
It came as a surprise for me some years ago, when a dear friend of mine, extremely in love with her significant other, confessed she was being strongly led into temptation by a new, rather insipid acquaintance. Her boyfriend was out of town for the summer, and we all know how summer is… However, during a long period of time, there had never been a more faithful, reliable and wife-material girl than her. So, what the hell was going on?
Women don’t have the huge amount of hormones that awards the hunter title to basically normal, even bourgeois men. Women are genetically programmed to look for stability. And same blah-blah goes on and on. After all, there’s Penelope who’s continuously waiting for Ulysses, and not the other way around.
But as the main essence of femininity is contradiction, we find a donna mobile next to every Penelope, and, needless to say, even beyond the latter’s one endurable figure. A wandering eye or a wandering mind are both rooted in the oh very special, heartbeat-fastener thrill of new, unknown, unconquered territories. Especially when you’ve spent ages being a good girl, dangerous, mind-twisting affairs appear infinitely appealing. Sometimes it even doesn’t take a lot of looks or brains to make you click, just a fairly reasonable average subject and a moody overall period. Or some feeling-lonely time. Or neglectfulness. And as you find yourself getting closer and closer to the common sense borderline between flirt and guilt, you start admitting it is interesting. The whole situation becomes more and more movie-like or novel-like, and you start getting all the attention, compliments and whatever-else you were lacking lately. Plus the thrill. Double thrill, actually: it’s new, it’s unknown and it’s forbidden.
Quite a spell, right? Enough to make your knees shake, at least. But beyond it, the big picture of what you really want and feel is totally different. See now what I mean? Trouble.
[to be continued...]
Fairytales
Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | analysis, mythical, style | No Comments
Oh, those sweet old times! How trendy they prove to be today! We’re always in for some candlelight or vintage furniture, aren’t we? It’s just the charm of living brand new lives in brand old eras that steals our soul. It’s that beautiful, oh-so-polished image that wraps us into some novel/movie/whatsoever character and that usually lasts until candlelight goes out and the lightbulbs go in. Cause fairytales are just fairytales, right?
Truth is fifteen minutes of poetry won’t make up for 15 hours of prose. And we always come back to our daily life and those overused contemporary myths: The Strong Woman, The Self Made Man, The Success. It seems like The Princess, The Hero, The Accomplishment have transformed overnight in their Business-World-Equivalents. That’s the model for today, nothing else we’ve got in stock, so take it or leave it.
I was not aware of my own, personal need for fairytales until some years ago. Back then, I was in the middle of some love-affair and way too preoccupied with being cool about it. Being cool was cool, right? So I was being so cool that one day I realised it wasn’t fun anymore. I was looking on the window, smoking in silence, my dreams were blocked somewhere on the way, there was no thrill, no thrill at all. I was feeling strong, the night was warm, there was no wind blowing and no sense of adventure. Nothing could have been more boring. My lover was a nice, calm, almost passionless person and I wasn’t looking for commitment. Everything was awfully clear and there was nothing to fantasize about. Suddenly, I realised I was living an uninteresting solitude, as my experiences were losing their meaning, and I got extremely sad. And out of that, of course, because that boredom thing wasn’t making feel like a novel heroine at all.
What I came back to was not idle dreaming, but a world full of sense. An interesting solitude, where you could plant fairytales and let them grow. And then I actually realised the value of being able to wait, hope or fight for something. It’s not the adventure that makes our hearts beat faster, but the possibility of it.
So, the prose? It will always be there, but when you do have something to wait for, something to believe in, well, it just turns to poetry a lot easier. And then we can just get rid of all those models and write some true fairytales. True fairytales rule.