Reasons to go back (or an ode to New York)

When I was in NY, in one of my visits to Barnes & Noble, I picked a book called "Ways to come back home", by a Chilean author who tells the story of a 9 year old boy during Pinochet´s dictatorship.
I only read the first few pages and, more than likely, it has nothing to do with what I will write about here. I just wanted to brag.
Anyways, I´ve been thinking about this "coming back"/"going back" thing. Because there are a few places I want to go back to and, honestly, I don´t know what´s in there for me. Which means, I have no idea why I want to go back. And I guess many times, when we think we want to "go back", we really don´t want to go back to some place as much as we want to go back to some time.
No matter how beautiful a city may be, we don´t want to go back to a place where we were unhappy. Take for example this friend of mine who, before leaving Madrid after living here for 5 years, said she hoped she never had to come back to Spain again.
The first time I remember having this idea was when I went back to Venice with my family, a few years after I had been there with my boyfriend. Venice was so incredibly beautiful in my mind, and going back kind of ruined the memory. My parents found it too hot, too wet, too crowded and too smelly. My brother was down because this girl had broken up with him. And I realised how different a place can be, depending on the circumstances.
I was also with my boyfriend when I first went to London, and I loved it. And when I went back, I remember telling Mar I didn´t want to walk Regent Street because I wanted my memory of it to stay as it was. Of course, I did walk it, and the curve from Piccadilly Circus is still one of my favorite places in the world (yep), but it was much better when I saw it for the first time, at night, from the front seat on the upper floor of the bus.
When I think of the places I would like to go back to, all of them on my list seem to have one thing in common: I not only liked the place for itself, but I also liked what I was feeling at that point of my life. So after London, I would like to go back to Brussels, and then NY and DC. And if I had to pick one, NY would go first.
I haven´t done too much travelling but I wouldn´t go back to Lisbon, Berlin, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Egypt or Tunisia (that I can recall now). Not at least without a good reason. I wouldn´t go back by myself. Even though I had a great time in all those places.
So why NY? I didn´t really like the city. It is too big, and too small at the same time, and too noisy. There are too many people pushing each other to get out of the subway, too many people rushing, too many people drinking coffee, too many people working late hours or studying on saturday night. It is dirty and dark and buildings are so high that it can be suffocating. I don´t like the glowing lights and the lifestyle. I don´t like shopping like mad, or eating in a fancy restaurant that not many people can afford, or getting some really healthy food in a vegetarian, or paying 24 dollars at Walgreens for a bunch of paper rolls and a bag of apples.
So what made it so special?
When I first landed there, I thought I would be taken to lots of places. Well, the first night I was taken to Macy´s and then we took a walk somewhere around there, and we walked to Times Square, and my first memory of the city is a lot of superhigh buildings over my head, with their superlarge screens at the front, the top of them dissappearing in the mist. I thought it was crazy. And I was cold.
And then, I wasn´t really taken to many other places. I mostly discovered the city by myself. I learned to move around, I did my little research on must sees, and I did it all. I started to wake up late, and I had coffee and cookies for breakfast, sitting on the mattress, and then I used to study or read, then take a shower, then asparagus with cheese and mayo sandwich, and then starbucks and sightseeing.
I won´t lie, I was dissapointed at the beginning. But then, the feeling of being by myself, thousands and thousands of miles away, further away from home than any other member of my family had ever been, in a place where nobody knew me, where it could be hours ("hours"!) until anyone would know if anything happened to me, where I could be punched on the ribs by a random guy at the street, or called a white bitch by some woman at the coffee shop,  where I could get my palm read by a guy whose favorite flowers were cherry blossoms, or have a nice walk in the park with a guy who was afraid of "blacky" people, where I could have 10 chickenwings and live music for a dollar, where I could be asked about my shaving habits on a bus trip... that feeling, I was saying, was awesome. I don´t remember having lived so many new experiences so condensed in such a short amount of time before. And then I went to the hospital and saw that, even though they were really good, they were not unreachable. Not by me, anyways. And that too, felt great.
I don´t think I can explain to what extent the city changed me. And of course I know it was not only the city. It was all of it. It was the winter from a 15th floor in the bronx, the fish tank at the hospital library, the free wifi space in that building in Lexington where I shared the hand dryer with a homeless woman to dry our socks after the strongest rain, the walks in Roosevelt Island, the Strand, the gardener. All the people I spent time with. Staying up until 6 am talking with Kene after the coldest night. Yomi the fellow. New year´s eve at 6 pm with my family on Skype.
I didn´t intend to write a post about NY, but that is what this will end up being, I guess. And you know, I would be cheating if I changed it now. You don´t censor yourself in your own blog.
So yes, I want to go back to NY, because I want to get that feeling back. The feeling that I am barely starting my life, that I´m just about to make the ultimate discovery, the feeling that I´m completely free to do whatever the fuck I want to do, and nobody will judge, and any option will be a good option. But I´m also aware that the moment is gone (and shall never come back). Which makes "wanting to get the feeling back" not a good reason to go back. Sorry about all these backs and the next to come, btw.
So I guess my rational reason to want to go back is because I want to keep liking the experience, and possibly keep disliking the city, but from a different perspective now.
But the reflection is, do we really want to go back "there", or are we just desperately trying to go back "then"? Will we be happy to be there, knowing that we cannot be "then" anymore?

Cynical me

Last night, for the anniversary of the fall of Berlin wall, I watched a movie about the world war II. And I thought again about the letters in Ohio Veterans Plaza, and I thought again about the bombings in the World Trade Center, and the trains in Madrid, and I thought again about the stupidity of the human race, about how we don´t seem to understand that we are all the same and all looking for the same things in life, and none of us knows shit about what will happen to us, we all live under the same uncertainty, we are all alone and afraid of being alone. We all have the same instincts and the same fears, and still we don´t work together, even though we would be much happier if we helped each other instead of fighting each other.

But then the cricket in my head says, "Ok, the world sucks. Get up and do something about it". And I realize how cynical I am. How I´m always talking about these utopic ideals of mine, but I won´t be the one to change the world. Because the truth is, I don´t want to. I am too busy trying to fix my own life, too comfortable sitting in front of my books and complaining about how unfair the world is, but it´s not my fault and therefore not my responsibility either. Thank god, there are a few people in the world who don´t think like me. But hey, I am not worse than all those perroflautas who protest for the wrong reasons, or for the right reasons but the wrong motivations.
And I know I could help a lot. Not enough to make a significant change, but still, for somebody, it could mean a lot, even everything. And sometimes I kind of feel that I need to do something meaningful. Maybe some day.
But for now, I will keep writing down my ideals with the vane illusion that someone might read them and get up and do something.

All animals are equal

This is one of the recurrent topics in the residents´ room when we´re not talking about sex, and I thought I could discuss it here.
The issue is "differences between men and women". Some of us are sexist (or feminist), some others claim we are all the same.
I think denying the differences inherent to our gender is nonsense. With this I´m not saying I don´t believe we should have the same opportunities. Unfortunately quite often I throw stones against my own roof (spanish phrase) but I would be stupid if I did it in this context... And I´m a woman, not a stupid!
As Jüng and a NY metro station wrote, "Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose".

(Use this pause to think about this statement and how it relates to the matter on discussion)

We cannot deny nature´s rules. We´re different from the moment of our conception. All of our cells carry a whole different chromosome (out of 46 in most cases, which means, even if the rest of our genome was exactly the same, we would still be 2.17% different).
We´re physically, mentally and emotionally different. Our brains develop in slightly different ways. Our bodies develop in hugely different ways. It´s all chemistry. We are naturally not equally qualified to perform the same tasks, socially or biologically.
For some reason when we hear something like this, the idea immediately pops up that poor women are meant to become legged incubators, and that they are weaker, which by the way is kind of true though not politically correct (stone), so denying it is our first impulse. I am not going to discuss the potencial kinds of weakness, let´s just assume I´m talking about physical strength. The majority of women are physically not as strong (let´s put it that way) as the majority of men, therefore there are certain tasks that the male gender will perform in a better way or more easily, generally speaking. Which is not to say that no woman can do better than a man, that would be a not very smart deduction. But it means that, in my very arguable opinion, a woman should not be given any advantage to access the army, for example. Or any other job involving psysical stregth. In this respect, I claim for equal rights for persons, not genders. If the job requires you to lift a car on one hand and a person, male or female, cannot do it, then I´m sorry, they don´t qualify. And I don´t care that I´m facing the strongest woman on earth. Good for her, but she still can´t lift the car, so she´s not qualified for a car hand lifting post. So percentual restrictions in this kind of jobs are counterproductive. (And now that you bring that up, let´s talk about percentual restriction in other jobs, because that´s something I cannot make up my mind about. At least 30-40% women in a company? I don´t know. Is it fair?)
Now, this said, I must say I hate stereotypes. I hate novels "for women", movies "for women", etc... Yet I have to agree that certain books or movies are better received by women than men, or men than women. Example: you will find more female readers who like Jane Austen and more male readers who like Tom Clancy. The reason? No idea. It´s also more likely in my experience that a man likes reading essays and a woman likes reading poetry. Or that a man likes reading the newspaper and a woman likes reading magazines.
This though might have nothing to do with the 46XX or 46XY karyotype, but with the educational baggage or the socio-cultural background traditionally associated to each phenotype. XXs play dolls, XYs play superheroes. Girls are sweet, boys are brave. Girls are cute, boys are smart. Tags are deleterious both ways. A girl is expected to become a mom someday, and a boy is expected to sustain his family. (This, according to nature laws, might have a practical sense though). Girls´ idols are singers and actresses, boys´ idols are football players.
Just a note about tags. They don´t necessarily have to be related to gender. As a child I was always said to be sensible, cautious and shy, and I wonder how much of my self repression, fearfulness and social impairment obbeys to that. To what extent are we what others make of us?
But now, back to stereotypes, and speaking of the quest for happiness that is giving me so much trouble these days, I also think we have a different sense of what will make us happy. While stereotypical women are eager to find their one true love, stereotypical men want to be successful to afford a young and pretty wife to show and fuck. Too much of a cliché, I know, I´m sorry. But then, this would be much more likely than the opposite situation where a man sighs for his love and a grams pays a hottie for sex. Another cliché, girls want to get pregnant and guys freak out. A woman wants a man that is warm, sweet and honest, and a man wants a woman who is smart, independent and respects his privacy. Yep, stereotypes, yet there is some truth in them...
I must say though, I tried to make an experiment with my male and female friends some time ago, asking them to choose the 3 qualities they would like their mates to be defined by, and I didn´t get the results I expected. But then the sampling might not have been representative enough (I got answers like "cheap, big mouthed and not too loud") so further studies are warranted.
Also according to my experience, and here I´m totally risking my roof, I have to say that the average intelligence of the males I have met in my life was significantly higher than that of the females (measured in terms of no idea what). In med school for example, we were about 100 girls and 20 guys in my year. If you looked at the top 10 scores, there might be 6 girls vs 4 guys. Which means, in average, guys performed better. And this is also true for the MIR exam, where the best score every year is almost invariably a male. And if you look at the favorite readings of the males and females I know, males tend to be deeper (I told you, they read essays!). And I still cannot find a reasonable explanation for this. (Any males to help?)
Anyways, concluding, I do think men and women are different (come on, it´s pretty obvious...). I think the situation we have now with feminism is a fair rebound to the sexist society of past generations (this is actually not a good conclussion as I have not mentioned any of this above, but spare this woman). And I think equal rights should not be demanded for men and women but for individuals. Otherwise we are admitting that we women are in fact inferior and need to be protected or given an advantage.
But then, there´s the unsolvable issue of pregnancy and career opportunities...
Peace :)

Strangers in a train (and prehistorical hunting)

A girl sat in front of me in the train on my way to work this morning. She was wearing dark blue jeans, sneakers and a white sweater, her black curly hair in a ponytail. She was about my age, a little younger maybe. She was pretending or trying to study some handwritten notes, but she couldn´t stop looking at her phone over and over, eagerly. She kept going from her notes to the phone and back every half a minute or so, and she wouldn´t turn the page. She wasn´t texting, just waiting for someone else´s text that didn´t come. Notes, anxious, phone, disapointed, notes, anxious, phone, disapointed again. And she looked more anxious-fearful than anxious-excited. I decided she was lonely.
This girl made me think of how many lonely people take the train with me every morning. How many of us would not feel so lonely if we could just start a conversation with any other random lonely stranger in the wagon and share a few minutes of our day. How many of these people could be good friends of mine if we met in more proper circumstances, and we just miss it because well, you don´t start a conversation with a random stranger in a train at 8am.

I don´t like philosophy (I don´t like being forced to study someone else´s philosophy that will never prove itself more valid than my own) but I like things or moments or situations that make me get philosophical and I try not to miss the chance (or the inspiration). Or if I do, I always try to get the thought back later when the timing works. And this morning I thought about what this XXI century world gives us and what it deprives us of. About how lonely you can feel in a world where you are never alone. About how we have let our career ambitions become so important that we don´t have any time left for the really important things. Or maybe about how we can now find happiness in something that was originally conceived for being just the means to survive in a society.

Imagine a prehistoric twenty-something guy. He can proudly claim to be the best hunter of his tribe -- he hunts faster than the tribe can eat -- but he could still be even better. He knows about some guy a few tribes away who might hunt more bisons per moon. So he spends night after night sitting on the bear skin by the fireplace, reading the last updates on hunting techniques he just downloaded from his seasonal suscription to the American Journal of Hunting. In a different world, he could have gone hunting for a couple of hours every day to get the food he needs to feed his whole tribe, and then devote the remaining 22 hours of his day to be happy in whatever fucking tribal way. Instead, he is seriously considering not to have offspring with his prehistorical teenage girl, because that would keep him from spendind the nights reading the AJH by the fireplace.
So why doesn´t it sound absurd if we extrapolate to our days society?

But it´s late. I might be rambling...

Inscriptions on a wall

I got used to blogging in English and maybe to thinking in English too. I am thinking of ending this blog some time soon anyways, but until that happens, I will keep posting in English.
That said, I´m not gonna say that it´s been a long time since my last entry like I always do.
So let´s get it started.

I have wanted to write about this for more than a month now. You know I don´t give a fuck about patriotism, especially when it´s related to the great USA. But for some reason (which I know but am not gonna share) one thing in Columbus made me cry inside, and maybe a little bit outside too. The thing in question was these walls in Ohio Veterans Plaza:

I didn´t know what they were when I first saw them. They are two walls, in both borders of the plaza, showing inscriptions which are real transcriptions from letters that US soldiers sent to their loved ones while fighting in any of the multiple wars the US have been involved in.
Yes, this probably intends to enhace the american spirit of a united nation that I dislike (and despise) so much (paradoxical, I know, since I want to move there). But, forgetting about that, these are letters written by men who knew they would probably not come back to their people alive. And when I read what they wrote to their wives or girlfriends (or kids) I kind of felt (it´s taking me a good while to find the word) let´s say jealous/lonely/relieved. In a way, I envied those women who had someone who loved them until the last breath, whose last words were love words for them. Lonely, I don´t need to explain why. Relieved, same thing.
But I (stupid girly me) couldn´t help imagining I was one of those women, and wondering whether I would want that or not. Whether I would rather have and lose a love like that, or never experience it. And I don´t know the answer to that question yet, but for now I will take option A.

So I want to share some of the pictures I took of those inscriptions. That will be it. Bye for now.