Feliz ano novo ♥

Querido 2012,
Sei que hoje não é o último dia do ano, mas falta pouco.
Mais um ano passou, mais um ano vem de novo.
Para muitos não é nada de novo, para outros é uma oportunidade.
Só queria dizer que 2012 foi certamente um ano muito bom e positivo.
Tanto desejei para 2012 ser o meu ano "sim" que consegui! E estou aqui toda entusiasmada porque correu tal e qual como queria.
Sim, perdi um amigo. Sim, houve acontecimentos que não correram tão bem como pensava. Sim, existiram dias que não foram os mais positivos de sempre. Apesar de tudo, estou aqui para continuar a sorrir e para resolver todas as questões que ainda não foram respondidas.
Apesar de tudo, venci aquilo que me atormentou durante algum tempo e vi com olhos de ver. Senti aquilo que ainda não tinha sentido. Aprendi muito, isso posso dizer. Aprendi tanto sobre "coisas" inexplicáveis e totalmente diferentes. Aprendi a sorrir o máximo que posso. Aprendi a fechar os olhos mas com uma condição: abri-los logo para não perder nada do que está ao meu redor. Aprendi tanto sobre aquilo que é grandioso e que todos questionam e sobre o que é pequeno e que não passa de pormenor. Aprendi também sobre todos e especialmente, aprendi sobre mim e sobre as minhas capacidades. Claro que para aprender tudo, aconteceram erros. Só com os erros é que se aprende profundamente. E este ano, já não errei e apenas dediquei-me à aprendizagem, a uma comunicação sólida, ainda insegura. Dediquei-me a questionar e a voltar a questionar, sem encontrar respostas. Dediquei-me a querer, desejar e sonhar, sem obter o final. 
Para tudo o que ficou incompleto, será este ano novo. Será 2013.
Portanto eu acredito: se 2012 foi muito bom, não há razões para 2013 ser mau. 
Pelo contrário, 2013 irá ser ainda melhor. Vou ser ainda mais segura, vou encontrar as respostas às minhas perguntas e sim, vou obter aquilo que quero. Mais uma vez: vou voltar a aprender.

Feliz ano novo a todos ♥

Fragile Eyes.

She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood. She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.

—

Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things

I'm lost, I'm lost.

You cross my mind, a lot. More times than I like to admit; you seem to have taken up permanent residence, making your home in the deepest corners of my mind. And sometimes I get caught up in my head, I’ll lose myself in the colour of your eyes - even in my head I’m helpless - and I have to remind myself to breathe.

—

Julia Pollacco, Inhale, Exhale

Dear Adolescents...

Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite as good as they do in a faded, sun-drenched Polaroid; your days are not an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington isn’t your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don’t play softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage diary isn’t a work of art. Your room probably isn’t Selby material. Your life isn’t a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable. Your pain will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit. You cannot romanticize hurt. Or sadness. Or loneliness. You will have homework, and hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won’t lead to any fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and not in a Wes Anderson kind of way. And there is no divine consolation - only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum - and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola film.

- Unknown

After all, smile.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are losers.

Maybe the truth is, there’s a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn’t having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it’s about stringing together all the little things.

— Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Believe at all.

I remember I would not stand still; I would not stop being perplexed by everything that spontaneously attracted me or caught my attention. I would never cease to look around me and observe myself in relation to nature: either crystal clear skies and sun-melting afternoons, or foggy winter days and weirdly tinted nights. I would never cease to dream and stand by the window, ready to let the diversity of life pass freely through my skin; courageous enough to believe I stood a chance in devouring each shade of sensation. Or perhaps, immensely foolish to plainly - believe at all.

— Virginia Woolf, Selected Diaries

 


















 Photo by me, 21-12-2012

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?

—

Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

What's platonic, anyway...

It’s not that I can’t fall in love. It’s really that I can’t help falling in love with too many things all at once. So, you must understand why I can’t distinguish between what’s platonic and what isn’t, because it’s all too much and not enough at the same time. 

—

Jack Kerouac

Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?

See, I’m the worst breed of human. Let me explain. Some people are dead inside. They go through life knowing this, and they manage fine enough, because, well, they’re dead inside. They aren’t bitter because they don’t care enough to change. They just try to get by with the things they can control. Others live in the fucking clouds, watch romantic comedies, and dream about everything being perfect one day. These people are always fine because they have an everlasting well of hope inside them, and no matter what happens they’ll just romanticize their existence.
But when it comes to me…I’m someone who’s mostly dead inside but still has a little hope for something extraordinary, which, as I said, is the worst breed of human, because it means that I know everything is bullshit, but that I secretly hope for the day when it might not be. The tension makes me wish I were just completely dead inside. It would makes things much easier for me.

—	Nick Miller, Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?

Anna Karina - Photoset2

We Will Hurt Each Other.

We just have to open ourselves up to the truth: we will hurt each other, often. Life is crazy beautiful, but it is crazy and sometimes spins out of control. And that’s okay. That’s how it should be. It’s okay to lose the grip, to slip a little. Because we all do and maybe that makes it easier to forgive one another — people will disappoint you and wrong you, but they will also defend you and fight for you and bowl you over with kindness. We are all such radiant fuckups — we have to remember this and love one another for it. And even when it seems impossible, we have to be good to one another, to extend an open hand, to try to bring the light back in to illuminate the darkness.

—	Cody Gohl, We Will Hurt Each Other

Think.

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody. And the people under the sky were also very much the same - everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same - people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.

—	George Orwell, 1984

Monday... What a really nice day.

I know today is Monday and you assume it’s going to suck, but according to statistics, there will be over 5,000 weddings, 10,000 childbirths, and 42 million hugs occurring today throughout the United States. Also today, there will be at least 4 people that will win the multimillion dollar lotteries, 600 people will get promotions at work, and 3,000 people will lose their virginity. There will also be 600 dogs adopted, 35,000 balloons sold, and 800,000 skittles eaten. Plus, the words “I love you” will be said over 9 million times. So again, I know today is Monday and you assume it’s going to suck, but just smile, because according to statistics, it should actually be a really nice day.

You have to let go.

No matter how many times I tell you this, you’re still thinking, thinking, judging, coming to conclusions, trying to work out your life. You have to let go. Totally, absolutely, completely.

—

Robert Adams

Don't be too lazy to think.

“There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don’t be too lazy to think.”

—	Nisargadatta

The Unicorn Diaries.

She loved the arts, music, paints, nature. Hans Christian Anderson, Van Gogh, Tchaikovsky. They were her favourites. She loved Tchaikovsky because he made his sadness into warmth, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Symphony No.6. She loved Vincent because she felt his loneliness in his paintings. But she couldn’t look at his sunflowers for too long, the yellows stung her eyes. Feeling too much Feeling is too much sometimes. She told me how she thought it was weird you know, that all these people who created such beautiful things were so sad. How sometimes the sadness was so strong that they ended their own lives. Their last work of art.
She said she thought that most geniuses were lonely. I said I thought everyone was lonely. That even the Moon is lonely, and that’s why it pulls on the tides.

Don't forget your dreams.

He asked why people are sad. “That’s simple,” says the old man. “They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.

—

Paulo Coelho

Being a Wallflower.

So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

—

Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

That's it.

I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.

― Lisa Kleypas

What's left to be afraid of?

Because being scared doesn’t help you. Reality is uglier and harsher than anything we like to admit to ourselves, and yet it’s pointless to be scared since your fear will not protect you. Fear is only useful if it alerts you of a danger you can avoid, but if there’s no possible way to avoid it, if it’s inevitable that it’ll crush you no matter how hard you fight, then what’s the point of being afraid? If you have no hope of survival, what’s left to be afraid of?

― Daniele Bolelli

The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.

By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent. We will no longer sleepwalk through our life.

― William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

Trust your instincts.

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.”

—	Timothy Leary

Sad nights.

“It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.”

—

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Phases.

“I go through phases. Somedays I feel like the person I’m supposed to be, and then somedays, I turn into no one at all. There is both me and my silhouette. I hope that on the days you find me and all I am are darkened lines, you still are willing to be near me.”

—	Mary Kate Teske

When.

However she is, drunk or sober, she thinks of life and death. Day or night. Sad or happy. She thinks of her life, of her mission here on earth and how it will be her future and destiny.  She thinks of her death too. How it will be. Hard or easy, painful or peaceful. But especially, when. When will everything end.

Nothing holds me.

My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.

- Fernando Pessoa

Hello December.

“It’s usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.”

—	Saul Bellow