blog_sibylla (English version)

2012-01-17T20:35:00.010-02:00

I'm just in from the gym - you know, that place where you can simultaneously bore and pump yourself to near-death while listening to divas whining for their being emotionally messed up to a itchy dance background -, and, on a whim, I'd like to give a few pointers to those whose take on the matter is like mine. Which is: I must not get nerdy legs from playing too much Skyrim, and exercising often feels like a waste of time so going to a gym is the most efficient way to get it over with.
I live in Rio de Janeiro, which has warm weather all year round and many outdoor places to go to, some even with gym equipment on them, but no one to tell you how you should use them. I've tried to jog along the ciclovia (the bike track) around Botafogo Bay, but always having to take a pocket knife with me in order to scare away the thugs proved too adventurous for my tastes.

Please, just let me sweat

The coaches will get too friendly sometimes. I don't mean flirtatious, just eagerly talking about why you should come four times a week and pretending they want to know you better by asking gym-unrelated questions. They'll shout good morning energetically while wandering around the running mills. Sometimes, they stop at my mill, ask how am I doing and take my pulse - which they never get right since my running interferes with it. Don't mind that. They're actually instructed to do it - also to keep an eye on the clients, see if they're not exerting themselves too much, lest the gym will get sued if they croak. Besides, in Brazilian culture, niceness of the prying kind is a perk.
So what do I do when they pry and shout GOOD MORNING every three mills so everyone gets their share of sunshine? I tolerate. I nod and I smile until the niceness is finally done with.

To update your bodybuilding training, you should find a coach you least dislike. This person will have some trait reminding you of a friend, and should be the only one updating your training program. That way, you'll only have to answer the prying questions once.

Let your mind wander away from the pain - and the petty talk of gym people.

Learn their vocabulary enough to ask efficient questions about how to do your exercises right, so you won't have to talk too much with them. If you really get how they work, you'll get to avoid most of the boring/embarassing routines (like getting your pulse checked) by countering their questions with stuff that makes sense to them.

Don't smell any glass with whey protein in it. Drink coffee and lots of water instead.

That's all for now.

2009-05-31T14:33:00.001-03:00

I'm on fire!

Now I've just spelled "labyrinthitis" right from memory!

pryde

2009-05-15T03:40:00.002-03:00

I just spelled "photosynthesise" right without a second thought.
Can I try that spelling bee now?

2009-04-12T21:38:00.003-03:00

I dreamt I was reading this century's opus. Part of it was set in a high school. It involved mutants and geopolitics. I remember particularly of how a dilemma was solved: the dog wouldn't eat because it was really a fish (a mutant fish). There was this smiling, ultrapopular guy called Swoomi (Swann + swami + swoon) that wore a striped red'n'white shirt and foresaw the future through his tiniest actions - but he did not know it.
There were at least 3 tomes, and I read parts 2 and 3. Reading, in my dreams, means to incarnate into a character which I identify myself with.
So, after I read the beggining of tome 3, when the few teen survivors of tome 2 gather in a new high school building for their first day of class, I woke up and stared at the ceiling feeling beside myself.
- What's wrong? - JP asked.
- I've just died in an atomic explosion.
- That's good. At least you didn't feel pain.
- Yes, I did. Because I was stupid. I hid behind a lead thingy.
- So... you were stupid. You died slowly and painfully.
- Yes, I did. And they had developed these mini atom bombs. You could see tiny mushroom clouds. There was even time to hug strangers.
- Someone told me about this stupid flick where the guy flees an atomic explosion by going into a lead fridge.
- That's... the last Indiana Jones. I saw it.
- Pretty stupid.
- Now I can say it doesn't work. I know it for a fact. Been there.
Last thing I felt were my wrinkled toes touching each other. And that was all that was.

2009-04-09T01:37:00.002-03:00

Does anybody know an English word that could mean "nail it completely with no helping references"?
I thought up "point-blank", but that's not it. It's driving me nuts.

2008-10-15T11:33:00.002-03:00

And I post this UKeyed bit here, set at a Brazilian New Year party, specially for Rachel's enjoyment! : ) (I'm pretty sure I made some translation mistakes there, though, and I apologize for them.)

Clinically sober, on I walked, looking for something I was too unfocused to find. Mr. DJ had embarked onto a trippy oldies’ séance and I, pre-morning mode on, stumbled at cabbages who wouldn’t take notice at all. Only the cabbaged attend afterparties.

I envied them. While I moved on and kept my mouth firmly shut, I had this grasp on reality: to me, it was yet another year to end, yet another year to come. The lack of seasons in this town would be the thing to freeze me: non-summer, non-fall, non-winter, non-spring.

A bloke was standing right in the middle of the floor, sweating, holding this cigarette he wouldn’t puff. I examined him closely. I took his cigarette and puffed it; I saw no display of reaction. I put it back, but, as his fingers were frozen, it fell on the lino. That was my cue: fed up I tried to walk away, which ended in a thud.

The body I had thumped upon absorbed the shock as firmly as a rock. I lifted my eyes. The stranger had a grip on my wrist.

The man didn’t just look much more conscious than the rest; he looked a lot more nitid as well. He looked like a Real Man.

2008-10-15T11:13:00.003-03:00

I decided to post the translated beginning of my book, which I plan to call Nasty Nights in English. It probably looks a bit different of the version that's been taken to Frankfurt Book Fair, but no worries. Sample it, taste it, enjoy it.

He turns to one side. Four in the morning.

He turns to the other. A woman.

By color, shape and smell of it, it should be Amanda. He checks the face.

Amanda.

The skin under her eyes is shiny. But over her cheek, it’s opaque. She called that a mixed skin type.

Her hair was changed. He touches it. The tresses fall apart in between his fingers.

He cannot tell her new colorwave right in this darkness. It’s probably located between color numbers 3 and 6, maybe a mix between two or more tones in the brown-reddish scale. He knows such things because he’s about to complete twelve years of hair intimacy.

She had a perm on the first time he met her, at Paulinha’s, at a time when he was but yet another boy in a trenchcoat in that miserable heat, and when she was considering to hold off college and go lounge around Europe just like her sisters and cousins had. She had spent the ’88 Winter as a redhead, recycling the half-coats and boots worn during her Hitchcock blonde stage (spiral buns and hair-sticks); in ’91 she mimicked a native girl, long dark straight hair, artificially tanned, tribal accessories, only to appear just before New Year’s Eve with a late-yuppie look. He could barely make out he was married to a blonde.

From his vantage point he could see stars, even laying down as he was. Stars. Shining as if nothing was happening. Whilst somewhere in town people were drunk and naked having dirty hot sex. And laughing as if things were granted and easy, not belligerent and covetous.

So stars were bothersome and he would close them curtains if they existed. But they didn’t. His wife had asked for his input and he had said whatever. Now he sorely repented in a china cabinet.

At least he has nothing of interest to be looked upon.

In the trash bin, he discovers an auburn chestnut color. Its name: Tobacco Honey.

Amanda’s watching turned-off TV. Again.

The first time he busted this behaviour of hers, in the middle of a black-out, he was sure she didn’t sit there every afternoon, first thing when home from work, just to watch TV. No way. She was brooding.

He cooks up an approach.

He opens the cabinet door left of the TV.

There’s a half-bottle of whisky.

He quickly closes it.

She had lightened a cigarette. TV still off. Of course, TV does get worse each day, but the fact that she had stopped to bother turning on the TV before complaining about the quality of the programmes, and even allowing the irresponsible color-show to disguise any darker thoughts, was very worrysome.

2008-05-30T13:42:00.007-03:00

I've got a real problem. I do not adapt into Brazil. I was born here, raised here, but I've never ceased to be amazed at the ethos you can see here. My problem, in a nutshell, it's that my values differ significantly of my people's values. For some reason which I can not put my finger on, unlike my fellow countryman and women, I hate wild parties, vulgarity, intimidation, informality, immediatism and showing off my beauty (meaning my ass) and success (meaning my buying power). Let's not forget the hipocrisy that varnishes all the previous behaviours (and which will award me with tons of angry mail if any Brazilian reads this).
Brazil is a place where push is always coming to shove. Except when you can pay for it. Then it's a gentle nudge. Then seemingly no one will notice that you got into the Congress on narc money. Or that you kept your mistress' daughter private school off public funds. But if you're a commoner, if you can't afford a blinded car with film-coated windows, then you're subject to the law of the concrete jungle. You may be assaulted, disrespected, extorted, run over by bikes. The "res publica", the public patrimony, is of no one's concern. Not the people, not the government. The sidewalks are littered, crapped upon by dogs, destroyed by parking cars, parceled by "car caretakers" that demand money to "protect" your car from themselves.
Nevermind the written rules that say (so naive!) pedestrians should have preference at all times. Here is what really works on Brazilian streets: pedestrians should fear bikes, bikes should fear cars, and cars should fear buses. Truly a food chain. If you think just because the lights are red you can put your foot on the street, think again. You could lose that foot, like I almost did the other day, when a minivan came from behind a bus and flew across my face five seconds after the red light was on. What is more shocking is that no one offered a hand, no one asked if I was alright, no one barely looked even though I had stopped in shock at the middle of the avenue. They just crossed the avenue. They knew they weren't getting another "chance" so soon. This is normal. Common Brazilian sense.
When I went to England the first time, I saw a different kind of nasty, but a nasty I could deal with. I remember that when I went out at night I used a crack on the sidewalk as a reference for where should I get off the bus. A crack on the sidewalk! You'd have to see my neighborhood's sidewalks to understand the joke. Here, an uncracked sidewalk is a landmark. No joke here. I mean it:

Copacabana Beach sidewalk

24/7 party mood

2008-05-30T09:56:00.005-03:00

I'm going backpacking in Scotland (and some other countries). Do not say when, crazy stalkers may ensue.
I've carefully chosen my hostels in order to avoid 24/7 party moods and STINKING PEOPLE. "Oh, let's save 8 bucks per night so we can spend it all on beer, shall we?" Vade retro!
If you see things my way, you must have some guidelines in order to make the best of the available data. One of them is finding out which is the town party district (there is often more than one) and STAY AWAY of the damned site. Just take a look at the map of the hostel's location and see if it's far enough from the party 'hood for you to have a nice sleepy time. It's important to sleep well to fully enjoy your trip -- you don't wanna be half asleep and irritable when you find your email-pal to be.
Another pointers are:
1 - TOO CHEAP - like I said, cheap youngsters tend to save on the littlest things so they can get very wasted. If you do the same thing due to financial reasons, you'll be stuck with all the bad things extreme drunkeness can bring with it - use your imagination about the creepy stuff, but I should warn you: it can even make you spend harder, if they trash the room, for instance. Or you can say what the hell, befriend them, overdrink them and become their problem. Your pick.
2 - AVOID BOARDING SCHOOL DISTRESS - I often wonder what kind of people craves to sleep in a dorm with another 15 unknown human beings -- and the answers I've come up with are not enticing. The least appalling of them would be a compulsive friend-maker -- a kind I've come to hate. Do not stay in huge rooms with many beds.
3 - LINEN IS GOOD - and so are towels and breakfast. But try to find out which kind of "breakfast", "linen" and "towels" you're going for. The reviews by former guests of your prospective hostel in many sites can help you do that. If you're going to travel during chilly times, you don't want to pay through your nose for an extra duvet. Or proper heating. Or a nice hot shower. Maybe it's better to go out and pay for breakfast than paying "a little extra" for the in-hostel "goods" and getting hungry, frozen and annoyed.
4 - INTERNATIONAL DORMS - A good friend of mine said that, when in hostel dorms, she usually woke up twice at night: at four, Americans and Canadians coming back drunk from the club circuit; then Koreans, Japanese and Chinese at six o'clock, so as to get their cam schedule started. That's it; there's nothing you can do about it. I intend to do some clubbing and some sightseeing, so I intend to use the Asians as alarm-clocks sometimes. If they're OK I may team up for some clubbing and sightseeing as well. Or not.
5 - MIXED OR SORTED - I've heard horror stories about mixed rooms. Most Europeans are pretty cool about it, but let's remember: in hostels and trains we have people from different cultures, who may not be used to seeing a pretty girl sleeping in their pajamas beside them. As to avoid distress and have the best experience possible, I always go with female dorms. Which, as we know, is not 100% creep-proof but it's nicer. Besides, most lesbians are against rape.
6 - JUDGING BY THE LOOK OF IT - Would you be a good secret agent? Just by the uploaded pics and info of each hostel you can muster an idea of what they actually are. While looking at those pictures, you must take into account: 1) what they did not show or say (wonder why?) 2) the kind of people who occasionally appear in the pics (party animals? jocks? evil staff?) 3) the layout of the rooms (too busy? too much light? bad mattresses?) 4) the overall cleanliness (consider the cleanliness displayed should be an exemplary one for their standards, as they were taking pics for marketing purposes).
That's all for today, folks.

synopsis for "Nasty Nights"

2008-02-28T14:47:00.003-03:00

This is part of a synopsis for my second novel, published only in Portuguese up until now, called A feia noite (literally, The ugly night or The nasty night). I plan to call it Nasty Nights in English, which mantains the original sense while keeping a nice alliteration. Sorry about any mistakes and hope you like it.

Francisco is 37 years old. Even though he is a political consultant, out of the office he is an extremely righteous and rule-abiding man living in Brazil, where rule-bending is the only rule. But he feels left out of the great party of life. He is on antidepressants so as to stop his panic attacks and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and also to save his marriage. It’s election year and we’re in January, a high-Summer month crammed between year-end holidays and Carnival festivities, where everybody is out on vacation, including his psychiatrist.
The book starts with Francisco being left by his diva of a wife, Amanda, and breaking down. The following day, he’s unable to remember much. There’s a girl not in his bed, but in the single bed of the children’s room (that he and his wife kept even without children). She’s about to be 21 and her name is Maria Luiza.
Not knowing what had happened between them and not strong enough to show her the door, Francisco offers her shelter, unaware of his own intentions, let alone hers. From this point on the book is divided into “nights”, in a total of fifteen. Francisco is soon to find out that Maria Luiza too is involved with an occupation that is despised by society: a whore’s. A libertine, as she favors. Maria Luiza is just what Francisco has always secretly yearned for: his entrance pass to a world made up of crazy flings and debauchery – but why exactly would she be leaving all this behind?

2007-09-12T20:43:00.000-03:00

A Brazilian is never distracted and therefore commits no such thing as a Freudian slip. A Brazilian can’t do more than the very thing they assigned themselves to do, should it be “do this little work then spend the rest of the day chatting up babes at Orkut”. It’s like they had no subconscious mind, but the truth is worse: they have no super-ego. They’ll do exactly as their ego wishes. They’ll cheat their wifes first chance, they’ll kill harmless puppies, they’ll try to bail out of the lightest obligation. Then again, if anything of it comes to public, they’ll deny it fiercely, because the little super-ego we could amass is a collective one. Everyone pretends not to do just like the pointed out scapegoat of the hour and frowns at him - the press, corrupted as it is, is included in this number. That indignation is so carefully faked for the same reason for which we have no super-ego: Brazilian people act outward-mindedly all the time. As Brazilian are always looking at other people and worrying about what others will think, they never take the time to look inside or share a moment with themselves; all they want is party party party. Out out out. That makes us shallow – not really in the evil sense, but in the pathetic sense -, defenseless to consumerism, always embarking on the next road trip to nowhere (see “Second life fiasco” for details).
Also on the pathetic side, we should point out the Brazilian gloominess. The “underdog complex” as named by Nelson Rodrigues is merely a manifestation of it. “Tristeza não tem fim/felicidade sim” [The sorrow never ends/ but happiness does], a samba by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, translates very well this mental atmosphere. The thing is, not so long ago we were not as cornfed or as pretty as the people we saw on films, advertising and, later, on TV – foreign people, or rare Brazilian who showed a foreign, white, agreeable complexion (remember that "outwardliness"? It also applies at a country-to-country level...) When we entered the football field, us scrawny latinos, felt that we were no match for those big blond athletes – up to 1958, even with our great football, we hadn't won our first Cup. That Brazilian facet is changing, though, because we were taught by many years of military dictatorship (and by the left-winged intelligentsia as well), as well as by five Football Cups won (believe me, that’s critical), that we are not that bad. As often happens in “morale boosting” movements, this motto soon turned to unabashed pride, the kind that proclaims us a “potentate” while toothless illiterate kids still roam our city streets and peasants still starve in the remotest regions. The gloominess now expresses itself in the form of an aggressive, spoiled-child-like mindset that ranges from the poorest strats of society to the elite. Everybody wants it their way and they want it now.
So yes, it’s looking bad. I think someday I'll have to bail out too - on trying to fix this place.

the little red-bound daybook

2007-08-09T02:19:00.000-03:00

I have started a notebook of dreams inside a little red-bound daybook I was gifted with in the middle of 2007. My subboss gave it to me. I accepted it immediately because it was beautiful. Then he explained, a graphic had offered it to our publishing house as a luring complimentary treat and he wanted to pass it along. Not to waste it.
I took it home and tucked it in the middle of the other books. I admired it. I had no use for it.
I already had a tiny notebook for quick notes; a light, compact daybook; and a stenography notepad I like to hold with the left and write with the right. Each was appropriate for one determined use. No need for yet another carry-along bunk of sheets.
Then I remembered an old project of starting a notebook of dreams and retrieved the little red-bound daybook turning it into a nightbook.
I wrote in the first page: CHAIRMAN SIMONE'S RED BOOK.
Then in the second I wrote an epigraph by Sao Paris:

I was silly.
I gave you my notebook of dreams.
I was so silly.
I thought that you'd write on it.
But you, you lost my notebook of dreams.
You lost it in a place
that you'll never come back too.
Eu fui silly.
I was boba.

I was boba is so tiny that's just too much; it gets me misty.
Then I wrote my first dream. I can remember just about everything and pretty much narrate it in a linear fashion until there is a break in the dreamline, which makes me happily aware of my odd ways and possible dormant insanity.
I dreamt of she-stormtroopers making splits and other girly stuff at a gas station. I was one of them.
Then, colorful action movie. Chinese underwater bomb defusers, the girl in the team with her face painted green for some reason.
Squarish, crystal-like, black-and-white-traced explosions just before I awoke.

2007-07-10T13:34:00.000-03:00

I was mauled by butterflies in my next-to-wake-up dream today. Yellow and white. It isn't as pleasing or cute as it may seem, though. They were flicking so, and every time I rubbed a bunch off my shirt, more would come in groups and land somewhere else. I think they were mad or else in love.

2006-08-31T11:39:00.000-03:00

I feel ridiculous writing in Portuguese. I've gone so deep in terms of significance, I've so thought up every word - every usable word, because extended vocabulary hardly has its place in Brazilian Portuguese modern writing, and believe me, I've looked for their place - that I cannot bring myself to put them to a natural use any more. By eleven I was starting to get fed up, by fourteen I had had enough. Bestselling is for the ones - not the dumb ones, these don't care for words at all - bestselling is for the late ones (pardon the pun: not dead people, just retarded). They are still mesmerized by the mere power of words. They've just discovered them! When you learn all the usable words in their depth, and you're pretty sure you can uncrypt whatever other may appear, it's all stale. You lose interest. You want to do something different. That's where the other languages come in. To replenish thy cup of thirstiness for writing.
In Portuguese, I find it really hard to write. I have to invent words and shapes. Yes, shapes. I have to develop new syntaxes. Write with Portuguese words as mistranslated English. Or Japanese. Portuguese no can do.
At Englishland, i feel at ease. It's easy to write here. It's a breeze, sentences popping out one after another. In Portuguese, I have to sit and wait. A lot. And the worse part is the final result, which seems so much better here, at least in some ways.
Now you're gonna ask me why I detest my poor mother-tongue. Well I love my language. But I can get enough of it. I'm a slut, that is. I'm prostituting with all other tongues. In fact, I write in all of them at the same time, same line. It feels so good.
I think my books in Portuguese are really good for their deconstruction of what may seem not only a right, but a cool way of writing. The first book (called No shopping, for that matter) was a "wannabe cool book" with a twist. I cannot get by without a twist, ever. I'm practically rococo. I love Nabokov (who dropped his Russian himself). But the second book I wrote and is about to be released - oh, man, so evil - i wrote it like around words. Then moments. It was like a vintage book. It exposes today's challenges in an old-fashioned way. It is supposed to be a pun, which I know not exactly every man will get. But I did it anyway.
Variety. That's the word for my style. I'm always playing around. I develop ways. I'm a carver. You can't go and tell me I abandoned my previous style – you just hadn't seen all of it, love.
If I wanted to bestsell, it was easy. I'd just have to write in English, then translate. But until now I had been tied up by the language "of my own" - I write around it.

2006-08-31T11:32:00.000-03:00

It looks as though it's all fiction - the English language, for example. I know it. But I can't believe that it exists outside of my mind. It does exists inside our collective minds, cuz people answer me but - I don't believe it still. Trouble is, I think that I'm dreaming. For the first time today i didn't feel safe when i saw my house again, just out of a bad dream. I was not sure that it was actual, for the first time. So I still think that I'm dreaming. I awoke, slept and awoke again in that dream, and now I'm working still in the dream. I'd like to wake up. Difficult thing. I have been mastering a waking up technique since I was a little kid: slamming my eyelids shut in the dream. As I aged, I had to press them harder and harder to force me back into awareness. Till one day it didn't work anymore. I couldn't get away from that particular bad dream. Some followed. Sometimes I could awake, sometimes not. I was about six. It was a bad time.
Somehow, though, I managed to improved that technique. I think it was in the middle of some horrid nightmare: I struggled so desperately to get out of there that I sent a massive discharge of adrenalin down my spine - while still sleeping, so I could just - get - out. It was freaky horrible, I felt dizzy and unrested the first time I did it. In fact, I felt dizzy and unrested every time I did it. But it was still better than staying there with the monsters and my sadic subconscious mind. Anyway, I had always had the theory that the line between my conscious and subconscious mind was not that thick. I could always remember what I dreamed with an amazing amount of detail. When I dreamt I knew it was a dream and I had a real life to get back to - and I'd even learn to tell the difference, within time. But that was only the you're-not-that-postal part. Sometimes I could see places I had dreamt of repeat themselves in real life, sometimes I'd write fiction and tiny details of it subsequently came real in a quite haunting way. Things were escaping into life and I'm sorry that they do. But now apparently what I want is to escape life, because somehow, I'm not really sure that I woke up today.