In two weeks time

In two weeks time I'm gonna do one of the most randomly crazy things I've ever done. I'm heading to London to watch this man live.

Maybe it's not such a big deal for some of you, but for me it's the first time I'm going to a concert alone. Yeah, alone meaning with no one else I know. Sometime ago I wouldn't have done it because I was scared and I thought I needed other people to do things, but I'm starting to get over it. So when in October, I think it was October, Frank announced he would be doing a Wembley Arena show I knew I had to go, and I bought the ticket (though I have to admit that I had to think a lot before buying it). And I got it this January.

So basically I'm taking my Easter holidays the week after Easter so I can go to London, and I still can't believe it is happening. I'm really excited about it and already planning to spend the morning queueing outside the Arena. I know I should be visiting London, but anyways I don't have that much time, I've already been there once, and I'd better go back another time to be able to visit what I want with the time it needs.

To sum up, I'm really looking forward to it and expect a really long review on Sunday the 15th.

Small things (Part 1)

I'm really missing writing decent things so I want to try to do an experiment, I'll try to write a story in here, I still don't know what it is going to be about and I'll write when I feel like it and I don't know how long it is going to be. I'll just write until I think that I have to (or like Hemingway say until the well is almost empty so it can refill itself during the night). So this adventure is going to be entitled (for the moment): "Small things" and there will be a label for it! (Yes! My first label... this means I'm messy as hell!), also this is going to be my first serious attempt to write fiction in English, but I guess it is going to help me prepare for CPE exam.


Small things 

Seth was one of these people that you know all your life but still can surprise you. We first met when we were six and became friends almost instantly, maybe because we lived close to each other or because we had similar interests, though since we were so little it is difficult to pinpoint which were our affinities. We shared all our childhood and adolescence together and, when the time came to go to college, it was the first time that we would lead separate lives.
We were a weird couple, not only because I am a girl and he was a boy, but because even if we were always together we never had feelings for each other, and also because we had no other close friends. Growing up, everyone told me that I should have some girlfriends and do girly things, but I felt I could be feminine enough while still hanging out with Seth, I didn't have the need to waste my time talking make up or clothing. Back in hindsight is as if we had been adults all our lives, talking about life and death when most of the kids were talking about TV shows. We were different.

Of lifestyles

As a kid I was never a cool or a popular girl. I was naive and well behaved, I liked to study and I had nice and well behaved friends who turned out to be nice and well behaved girls. And we all were unbearably boring, we did what our parents wanted us to do and we were scared of doing anything that was different from the things that people we knew did.

I met a couple of this friends the last weekend. They are nice and they are my friends and even though I don't see them frequently it's always nice to catch up, but I felt as if I had changed a lot and they had remained the same. It felt weird, it was like going straight to the past. I'm not the most cosmopolite person of the world, but I've seen a fair share of it, I've travelled and I've even lived alone in a completely unknown country, but compared to them it was as if I was from a big cosmopolitan city (London, New York, L.A., whatever) and they were from a tiny rural area. It was unsettling. I'm used to speak my mind with my group of friends and some of the things we usually say would have scandalized them.

I tend to complain about my life being never changing and people around me being kinda conservative, but compared to this girls that's nothing. They are my friends and I loved them, but I couldn't help feeling uneasy. I guess it's just a lifestyle choice and maybe the right one is not mine neither their, but I couldn't help imaging how would my life be if I had the same lifestyle they have.

Hemingway

I started reading "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway this last weekend and I just finished it today. It's the first book by Hemingway that I've read and I've always wanted to read something by him, I had the feeling I was going to like him.

And I completely fell in love with it. "A Moveable Feast" is just so true, so intense, there were moments when I had to stop reading because of the beauty of it, because it was so natural it made me dizzy. And I don't have the right to give an opinion on such a great work of literature. For those who haven't read it "A Moveable Feast" is an account of the days when Hemingway lived in Paris, at least of some of the days, of the people he knew and of the things he did. But in some way is much more than that, it gives you an insight of how Hemingway thought, of how he lived. Reading it made me want to go back in time and get to Paris just to meet him, to live what he was living, or just to live his way nowadays. I really would like to live this way someday, maybe one day I get tired of my scientific career and decide just to start writing professionally, although I think I'm not good enough to do so, but anyways, it would be nice to write all day in cafés or wherever, save money only for trips and don't care about what you're wearing or what you're eating because that's not what it is important in live.

I have taken a lot of time to read it, but I still think I might have missed something and the end of it left me so shocked that I decided to read it all over again (it will be the first time I reread a book just after reading it).

I leave you a small extract that can be found in several chapters of my edition of the book.

From: The Pilot Fish and the Rich from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Nobody climbs on skis now and almost everybody breaks their legs but maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that sometimes, afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places. I do not know about that now but this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy. 


And I feel the need to put another fragment, which is similar to this one, from another chapter.

From: Nada y Pues Nada from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

No one can ever say they will not break a leg now under certain conditions. Breaking a heart is different. Some people say there is no such thing. Certainly you can not break it if you do not have it and many things unite to take it away from those who started with it. Perhaps there is nothing there. Nada. You can take this or not. And it can be true or not. There are philosophers that explain it very well.


Moreover on my edition there are other fragments that never made it to the original book, and they are strikingly beautiful, so sincere and powerful that it's a shame they didn't get into the book.

Things that I got lately

When I started receiving a paycheck I decided that every month I was going to spend 20 € in books or music, now I see that since I want so much music this limit was a bad idea, but on the other hand I appreciate more the music and the books I buy. So this are my acquisitions for this month (yes, yes I know Black March and everything... but I did need this).

Books that I got lately


A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

I've been wanting to read Hemingway for some time now and I wanted to read him in English, mainly because I think that translations are less strong than originals, but I had been unsuccessful on my quest of finding his books in English, and actually in any other language. So when the last weekend I found this book in a local bookstore I was delighted and I had to buy it straightaway. I started reading it yesterday and I was blown away, his writing is so strong and so true, as himself would say, that I cannot handle more than a couple of chapters per sitting, I need it to sink in. So I guess that when I finish it I'll be able to... I was going to say review it, but I'm not good enough to review Hemingway.

Music that I got lately


The First Three Years - Frank Turner

There are several reasons to buy this album, first it was only 7 € on iTunes and it has 24 songs, so it's literally a bargain. Secondly, there are the most emotional songs Frank has possibly ever sung: Worse Things Happen At Sea, Casanova Lament, You Are My Sunshine, Sunshine State and some live and rock versions of some of his best known songs. Thirdly, there are some amazing covers: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, Smiling At Strangers On Trains (it's funny because he is covering a song that he actually sung with a Million Dead) and surprisingly an amazing version of ABBA's Dancing Queen. Finally, a third of the songs are "flagged"as Explicit, and they actually are, but I do love the swearing.