Celebrities are only available once they are dead: an afternoon at the Pere Lachaise

I went for an aimless stroll at the Pere Lachaise today, the monumental and oldest cemetery in Paris. It's very close to the place I am renting here for a month, I can actually see some tumbs in the distance from one of the windows.

It's May 1st, a holiday, in France and in most of Europe, and it was full of tourists. Everybody looking at their maps or at the plaque in front of the the door signalling all the famous tumbs in this huge and very old, very surreal park.

I wish I had a recorder: the talk, in all these different language, was so surreal. Few hundred years of stardom, from different places and times, were mixed in the absurd expressions of the crowd. "Let's go to Chopin first, then to Jim Morrison....et Apollinaire, il est la' aussi. Voila', ici c'est Edith Piaf et par la c'est Ingres. Puccini l'hanno portato via, ma c'e' la tomba'. It was very weird, somehow voyeuristic, all these people trying to find the tumb of a famous person that for some very personal reason had meant something special to them.

I strolled aimlessly, without a map, through this forest of tumbs, most of them very very old and totally abandoned or ruined, the names of their inhabitants completely erased from the stone, the newer ones (or those with newer deads) clearly marked by some reference to life in the form of a bunch of flowers or some newly bloomed blossoms. Many had lilac trees. God knows who put them there, those paying homage to the dead now as dead as their dear ones, only the tree left , white or lilac, in all its spring beauty, quite out of place within the grey of the aging limestones.

I thought while I was walking, that it's only when they die that stars or famous people become completely, I would say helplessly available to their fans and supporters, to those to whom they meant so much. Only as dead can they be reached, can people enjoy the fleeting glorious feeling of getting close to them, and fancy the idea of sharing the same space. It's only a big or small piece of stone, in some very old case there's probably not even one single DNA particle of the original celebrity in that particular space. But the idea is that the last trace of the human leftovers of these people 'had' been there. And that is enough for peopleto go, not so much to pay hommage to the one in the tumb, but for the usual, voyeuristic attraction that would have brought them closer to them when they were alive.

It's of course mostly done for the visitor than for the visited: it's a part of his or her identity, to be able to say 'I have been to the tumb of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret" or 'I went to see his tumb' when listening to a record by the Doors back home in a grey winter day.

I, personally, went to see the tumb of Amedeo Modigliani. It' close to the one of Edith Piaf, just across the little voie, but much less crowed than that of the great little singer.

It's strangely covered with a lot of trash: letters rotting away, plastic flowers, a lot of pens and a brush, various pieces of stones purposedly arranged on the surface. It's really messy in this combination of people mementos, but it also makes it incredibly alive.

The most touching thing is to see the date of his death, January 21st 1920 and that of the death of his great love, Jeanne Hebuterne, just 5 days later. She killed herself after he killed himself. It's the stuff of movies and novels, but to see their two names, quite simply carved , one on top of the other, on the stone, it's very touching. It makes you think of eternal love. Maybe that's the only way to have it.

Mimi is sleeping next to me

My Cat, Mimi, is sleeping right here on the sofa, next to me. She is curled and her back breathes softly, up and down. She wants to be next to me and that is enough to calm her and make her sleepy. She feels safe and warm, maybe because of my body next to her, maybe because she has some feelings, and she feels happy with me. Even if sometimes I shout at her because she makes caca on the carpet. And then, like yesterday, I put her in the other room and leave there for hours, even a day sometimes, to punish her for her misdeeds.

But now she is happy, and looking at her makes me happy too. It makes me feel at home. It makes me feel safe. That is what Mimi does to me. That is why I take her around . Mimi, my cat from Beijing who has lived in Canada, Italy and the Netherlands, is what makes me feel at home wherever I take her. I should learn from Mimi, and accept the way she is and the way I am.

Mimi is one of the most stable things, together with my study, that I have had in the last 15 years. She has been with me when I was with Dinos, she was the cat of our house, the house we had together and for which we bought furniture, vases and paintings. The only house I ever had with a man.

She was not with me afterwards, she stayed with DInos. My life was already becoming unstable, in terms of geography, and so I decided that Dinos could keep her. And then I went away, far away, across a large ocean and another land, and stayed there for four years, not knowing much of what was going on with Mimi. I was far from her, somewhere else. My love for the next man came and slowly slowly started to go and then I got back , and it was at the time when Dinos was leaving China. So he gave her back to me and that is why I have had her ever since.

Mimi is 17 now, her birthday is probably this time of the year, or just passed. I think we got her when she was just born, and she is still here, on the sofa, sleeping next to me. I have moved continent or country six times since then, I feel completely lost sometimes as where I should be. I could not make my own family, or create a place where I am going to be for most of the rest of my time. I did not settled down, as that Indian lady the other day told me to do. But Mimi is still here. She sleeps and she just curled a little tighter. This is why I love her, this is why she gives me strenght.

Four months later

Four months later I am still on the same sofa in this little room under the roof, by a canal, writing my pain away. Four months later I find this screen, and the words that appear on it, as a way out from myself and my obsessions. Four months later I am still here pondering on my life, now and in the future.
Maybe being all by myself is not a solution. Or maybe taking advantage of my solitude is the way to cure it, to erase its negative influence. There probably is no creativity without at least some solitude. And probably the deeper the condition the better the creation. Great art may not come easily.
Or maybe this is just my illusion, to justify why I do what I do in such a unhurried way.
Yet Criulinha is still very much alive in me. Maybe she will tell you more stories.........Let's see.

What happens when you try to date on line

Ok, now let's get to the real business: my experience of dating on line. Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to have a blog in the first place. To be able to tell to the sideral space what really happens when you try to meet a 'friend' or anybody of the gender you are interested in through this very new mean of communication. One theory I have (it works for planes too) is that we are psicho-biologically quite backwards in respect to what is happening technologically these days. So for example, when you travel to another continent, a part than jet lag, there's culture lag (which is not the same thing as cultural shock) in the sense that even when you go to a place you know well (see my case, when I go to New York or Canada or China) even if I do feel right away like if I am back 'home', it also takes me several days to fit in mentally and logistically. Most time I am quite lost during the first few days, even if I am back 'home'. That also happens when I go back to Italy after months here, or vice-versa. There's a process of cultural, habitus adaptation, that takes much more time than the flight. Because we are not originally programmed to travel that way, in such an 'innatural' fashion.

Same thing with MSN, dating on line, meeting strangers on the web, etc.: our pshycho-genes or whatever you want to call the tiny elements that carry our emotional DNA , would still act as normal, like in real life: i.e. somebody sounds nice to you, says nice things to you and instantly you start having a sweet penchant for him/her. And then this thing grows like a piece of dough in the dark space of the internet vacuum, with you and your mind and your sick phsyche filling in the void and making the 'other' so attactive, so desirable. Which of course is mostly the result of our imagination. But apparently there's no way to avoid it, becase this is just what people seem to love most about intenet dating: the creation of a ciber-romance with strangers, right from the center of your sofa. (to be continued with more 'specific' details)

Grey Dutch Sky and Flowers

Here we are with another of those typically Dutch grey sky days. Yet, how do I say it, the weather here has never really bothered me. Of course it was like heaven last month with an entire, read entire, month without rain. And flowers blooming, tulips extravanganza everywhere.
I think this is the best part of Holland: the way they were able to develop this flowers business and gardening skills to such an incredibly sophisticate level. What I tell my friends in Italy is that whenever you see flowers around here, and you think they are fake because they are so beautiful and perfect, and you are used to think that flowers (particularly orchids) so beautiful must be made of silk, then you are always wrong. They don't really need artificial flowers here, they have the real stuff ALL THE TIME. Which is weird because this is a Northern country, not a tropical one. But because they are probably the largest producers of fresh flowers in the world (I guess so) there are more flowers here to buy and see that for example, in Italy.
This is really a way to waste time, isn'it? Since I don't want to go and start editing that article that I have been working on for ages.....I am going now.

Why I call myself Criulinha

Criulinha comes from my basic understanding of Cape Verdian criole. I am sure it is a term generically used in most lusophone (i.e. portuguese ) languages and societies, but I discovered it through my passion for Cape Verde, so for me it's related to that culture (and experiences).
It is used, at least in one song that I like a lot sung my friend To' Alves and composed by my other even better friend Kalu Monteiro, to indicate a young criole (by this meaning mixed, because everybody is mixed in Cape Verde) girl. ('inha' is like 'ina' in italian, an affectionate diminutive).
I am not so much 'inha' (I think I am 1.80 cm tall, around 6' in english system) but I do feel to be very mixed, even if not on the outside, which is unexcitingly white.
But since I have lived in far too many places (it kind of fucks you up, actually, forget about the exoticism of the experiences) I feel marked inside by all these very deep ties I have with so many different people, which is very hard to make sense of. So I feel very mixed, very 'something else' , often very different (in the sense that I don't fit in, not that I stand out). So I like to call myself that way, which is a way to make me feel as if I am in fact part of a little bit of everything.

My First Blog late at night

Just few words to say that I now begin to put some of the things I have been writing on diaries, email messages, postcards and paper scraps here. I don't know why I want to do it, but it's probably to find out whether there is somebody out there who can sympatize with my random, and often self-bashing thoughts. It is also because I want my friends who are living so far away to be right here, next to me.

Baci for now.