Near to you by A Fine Frenzy

He and I had something beautiful
But so dysfunctional, it couldn’t last
I loved him so but I let him go
‘Cause I knew he’d never love me back

Such pain as this
Shouldn’t have to be experienced
I’m still reeling from the loss,
Still a little bit delirious

Near to you, I am healing
But it’s taking so long
‘Cause though he’s gone
And you are wonderful
It’s hard to move on
Yet, I’m better near to you.

You and I have something different
And I’m enjoying it cautiously
I’m battle scarred, I am working oh so hard
To get back to who I used to be

He’s disappearing
Fading suddelly
I’m so close to being yours
Won’t you stay with me
Please

Near to you, I am healing
But it’s taking so long
‘Cause though he’s gone
And you are wonderful
It’s hard to move on
Yet, I’m better near to you.

I only know that I am
Better where you are
I only know that I am
Better where you are
I only know that I belong
Where you are

Near to you, I am healing
But it’s taking so long
Though he’s gone
And you are wonderful
It’s hard to move on

Near to you, I am healing
But it’s taking so long
‘Cause though he’s gone
And you are wonderful
It’s hard to move on
Yet, I’m better near to you.

Yet, I’m better near to you.

I dance through the rush hour traffic. I try using the inner city road but the traffic’s so jammed I immediately choose another route and when I find it is also jammed I try another one and like this I go around town, you know, just checking that every building is still there. I recently made a CD out of some of my favourite songs of all times and am now listening to my favourite of the moment, The Reason, Hoobastank . Such a perfect song you almost wish you’d had the honour of witting it yourself, at least I do! In fact, I press ‘repeat’ on that song so many times I think I could have completed a CD with that single song and would listen to it from beginning till end. So, I guess I obsess about stuff once in a while. Meanwhile my thoughts are unclear, I try not to think at all. What a mess I got myself into. I stop the car and sight. It’s just going to be another day, just like any other day at work I remind myself. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’m not sure. As I said, I’m refraining from thought as much as I can. Despite the fact that I recently read in this book that ‘denial is so last century’, right now, I’ve become pretty good on the denial thing. So you do learn from experience after all. Just you don’t learn never to do it again, you learn to block it out the next time.

Another sigh as I enter the place. (I’ve been doing so much sighing these last couple of weeks you’d think I would have drained all the air my lungs could get me by now.) The place I work. It is how I earned my way through these last years of college. And now it is high time for me to find something new. I just can’t stand this place anymore. The place, the people, the work. I want to do something I love, and work with interesting people. This gym, as far as people are concerned, you just meet dumbasses, a few exceptions aside I must say, to their credit. I don’t mean to say these people are shallow. Oh, no, certainly not. They’re full … of rubbish. And they do have useful information to pass on … if you wanna be talked into freaking anorexia nervosa!

So it’s a quiet day and I have my book ready to fill the void between getting a coffee and making a sandwich. I start to read and this person comes to me, takes a look at the book, decides it’s not the one I was reading last week and shouts ‘Are you reading ANOTHER book? Do you read like three books a month?’ She actually made it sound like I was on drugs or something. That’s the thing about my country, if you’re smoking pot and drinking anything but water every other night, you’re a rebel, a COOL rebel; if you read a lot, you’re a freak. And I don’t even read a lot, it’s just a frenzy I’m going through at the moment. And I just found out that the more I read, the more I wan to write. So, if I keep this pace, I should well be on my way to becoming a novelist. I just need to fix up a story to tell. Anyway, as much as I love the person, I took offence on the commentary. But that’s how people are, I guess you cannot expect a gym instructor to sympathise with the ‘reading kind’. She’s becoming a mother in a few months. Now THAT’S a kind I don’t understand. Just the day before one of the many brilliant people at the gym said (kept saying) that she would bring her four-year-old daughter the next day because she had no one to look after her. I immediately got the feeling that what she really meant was something like ‘Tomorrow be ready and have many many tricks up your sleeve to entertain my baby. Please, also have some nice comments on how beautiful and cute and well-behaved she is.’ So, when I smile at her ‘warning’ I just think ‘Oh, no you don’t!’ I’m not playing the babysitter and I’m not playing with your daughter. I always find parents who drool over their children’s perfectness so pathetic, especially when they expect everybody else to agree with them. When I have kids, and I’m sure they’ll be too beautiful what with my wide green eyes and perfect taste on men, I’ll never boast about their virtues. And I won’t treat them like children, I’ll definitely treat them like little adults. I don’t usually relate to children, my whole life I can only remember two little girls I just loved and wished mine would be just like them. But that’s it! Parents out there, don’t expect everybody to envy your kids, cause they don’t.

That’s just what I think but it’s not really what I say. I mean, has anyone ever told you that it was good to speak one’s mind? Well, these people are either mad or they just never thought of what that meant. If I said everything that I think it would be … bad, for lack of a word that expresses how despicable that would turn out to be. But then again, if people expressed everything that comes to their minds World War Three would be on its way. That’s why we have compromised to do a ‘little’ bit of editing in every thought, or else, society has made us do it.

Oh, and here it is, The Reason, Hoobastank

Depois de muita relutância lá decidi experimentar fazer compras online. E que melhor maneira de começar senão com livros? Fui então à amazon.co.uk e fiz a bela da compra, Ted Hughes, Selected Poems. Serviço ultra-rápido (como pedido) e ultra-profissional (como esperado). E só depois de uma viagem à livraria Britânica fiquei a saber que o serviço também tinha sido ultra-barato. O mesmo livro estava à venda por mais do dobro do preço que paguei na amazon (e não vamos esquecer que pedi entrega-express). Este mês encomendei Anna Maxted, a minha musa da chick lit, e, claro, não resisti ao Twilight … eu tinha que ter um só meu.

Já agora, aqui ficam algumas das minhas preciosidades.

What is it that sometimes gets people stuck on somebody or something? What is it that some things have, to hold such alluring capacity on so many. Does it have a logical reason? Is it like a recipe? – You take a little bit of this and and whole lot of that and you got yourself a big beautiful fluffy cake bound to have everyone begging for more.

Hardly!

What I’m trying to do here is to excuse myself for being back in my teenage years. So I read this book, and within a week I have all the four books that constitute the saga already read. The next thing I know, I have a picture of Edward and Bella ( aka Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart) ‘embellishing’ my desktop and have marked the trailer for the upcoming movie Twilight in the ‘my favorites’ part on Youtube. How worse can it get? Well, a lot! I actually have enthusiastic conversations with my teenage cousin about everything Twilight-related. I’m this close to actually start hanging posters on the walls of my bedroom. Well, if I usually bought magazines I probably would have done it by now. I’m that shameless. But pimples … you stay away from me!

So what is it these books have that makes me feel the need to exorcise myself and reveal my darkest secrets on some place just about everyone can read them (they won’t but they could; that’s the point)?

So today I sit here trying to analyse this drama of mine so that tomorrow I can go buy the books I’ve already read just to put them on my private collection and be happy about it.

I have read good books and loved them. I do have good taste, most of the times at least. OK, controversial as the idea might be to some people I DO read good books and DO see good movies and DO like them. Isn’t Harry Potter a good book? Just because it is not on the canon doesn’t mean it’s not a piece of art! Right, but The Catcher In The Rye, Atonement, Wuthering Heights are on the canon so I’ve got my defense all built up right there.

Concentrate … the book. What about that first book, Twilight? Come to think about it, it hardly has any real action. Bella, the cliché girl-next-door, moves to her father’s house in the small town of Forks where everyday is a rainy one. She really is a low-profile kind of person and I guess I can relate to that! First day of school, high-school, and she catches the attention of everyone for the simple fact that in such a tiny place a new ‘asset’ is always welcome. On the other hand, her own attention gets caught by the beauty of a family of students who don’t get along with anyone else. They are beautiful, super-intelligent, extremely white, so it’s quite plain they’re the vampires. One of the vampires, Edward Cullen, described by Bella as The perfect man, gets lost in the mystery that she represents (he can read people’s minds but not hers). So the rest of the book is just them getting to know each other and testing the limits of a relationship bound to be tragic. Let’s not forget that being a vampire makes Edward want to kill Bella every single minute he spends with her.

So it all comes down to the endless love between Romeo and Juliet, Catherine and Heathcliff, Jack and Rose, that is, the love between people from different worlds. A killer vampire gets in the way and sets out on a chase for Bella’s blood. But Edward, the knight in shining armor, rescues Bella, his damsel in distress. Ultimately, it is the eternal battle between life and death, between good and evil.

All in all, this book represents fairly well the commonplace in literature.

However, no matter how many times we’ve seen them repeated on movies or the countless times we read them in books, some stories demand to be written. I believe this is one of them. The author, Stephenie Meyer, who had never written before, claims that she had the most beautiful dream one night and being furious for waking up in the middle of it she decided to write it down. She then continued writing the story so spontaneously that it only took her one summer to complete the first book(which is pretty good taking into consideration Meyer has got three small kids and a husband (and probably another job at the time) to take care of).

Of course I can see the flaws. Unlike Harry Potter, the Twilight saga is only 100% coherent up to the second book. J. K. Rolling managed, throughout seven books, to keep her story credible, logical and cohesive. Stephanie Meyer seems to have been caught up by the pressure of writing a sure-to-become bestseller. But the core art of Twilight was there through the whole series.

And then we have those little parts that are so sickeningly cheesy, hokey, slushy, corny, mushy (and everything bad that ends in ‘y’) that it makes you wanna throw up! Romanticism is good, to abuse the reader’s patience is unacceptable. I mean, I guess you can put up with reading I love yous all over a book, but to have them explaining exactly what they mean by that! Some things are better left unsaid! I won’t even mention the most terribly cheesy part of the whole saga, which is in book four, because I’m under the impression everytime I remember it I turn into a light shade of green. I can only say it’s not an Edward/ Bella moment, more like an Edward/ Jacob moment. URGHHH

It is, however, very personal and intimate and that might be the key element. It is a 1^st person narrative, written by Bella’s perspective. It is written in such a way that the reader relates to and connects with the characters in such a deep level that to emerge oneself completely in the story is about the easiest thing on earth. It is a very beautiful and engaging love story. The magic of Stephanie Meyer is to get ordinary words to reach within the reader; from the very first chapter to the very last, you just can’t wait to read what’s going to happen next and how much more infatuated this romance can get.

Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter describes the upcoming movie: ‘Twilight is about a romance between a girl and the ultimate unavailable boy, a vampire.’

Stephanie Meyer, the author of the book says: ‘Bella and Edwards relationship was always defined by the fact that he is a vampire and she is not.’ ‘She gets a chance to be a teenager for the first time. Everything is brand new to her and that was fun to write because the first time you do anything, the first time you fall in love, the first time you get your heart broken; that’s the one that sticks with you more than the others.’

Robert Pattinson, the actor playing Edward: ‘They can’t see any real future together but they just remain together because they both provide each other exactly what the other one needs.’

Soooo … I did like reading these books. Actually the right thing to say would be: love them, love everything about them. Even the cheesy parts I guess.

Now for this ‘essay’ I had two options. I could write it on a diary. I’m sure I have one (people used to offer me that kind of stuff when I was younger) but am not sure where to find it. The second option was to write it here. Well, if you got to this part (after actually reading through the whole thing) then let me tell you that you sure can pick what to read out of all the junk on the web! Or maybe not!

How To Be …

Twilight …