Night Works and past memories

I know what it felt like when Marty McFly was sent back to 1955 and back to the future again.

I know it because even without a DeLorean (or a TARDIS or any time machine you can imagine) stepping into The Miller was like being sent back straight to a summer somewhere between when Alex Turner started dating Alexa Chung and when it was over. The place would have been the Rocket, or Circolo Magnolia with still the stage indoors only but the beer garden open for that random fag someone in your group really needed to have. But everybody spoke English and nobody was posing as cooler kid because of their latest trip to London to see that unknown indie band they kinda scouted or a famous indie band everybody in the room wanted to see but couldn’t. And that amazing denim you’re wearing? That cool new designer from CSM with a pop up on Shoreditch High Street (and a few things imported in that cool multi-branded shop at the Colonne btw). Whatever, nobody is really going to listen to what you said about it.

Girls are either blonde (but rarely it’s their natural colour) or brunette (and it’s mostly the natural blonde ones), but there’s always a shade of red lipstick to go with it. Maybe a fringe and a hat too. It’s London’s style baby, and it was our dream.

When I stepped into the pub the atmosphere was then surreal, and for a while it didn’t feel like a new happier life. I didn’t spend my time reminiscing, and in fact I went as far as enjoying the first half of the night which was Night Works’ music with a very annoying light flashing straight at me. 3 free drinks help you forget everything about it looking like a scene already played in a long run, just with you in the audience for a change. But something has to be said, no place that tries to look like London looks like London.

Shit just got real (sic.)

Nothing but the Blood

If there is something I dread more than be(com)ing a fashion blogger is be(com)ing a Christian blogger. There’s nothing wrong with being one, and there are so many I read that are amazing and make me unworthy of being one anyway. The reason why I don’t want to be one is that I don’t like the idea of putting a narrow definition to myself, alienate part of my readership and feel the obligation to keep up with the expectations it comes with. This is something many of you and especially So Worth Loving well know I’m trying to leave behind my back, somewhere between a happy time with pink trench coats and leopard print fake furs and when I realised life is a bitch but I’m bitcher.

I like to make people have a good time and escape their lives by reading a wannabe-witty account of the life of your average 20something in London, someone that is me yet is not me, and all can relate to on some level. Unless you really hate Doctor Who.

So let me talk about this wonderful book and be reassured I’m not going to discuss religion all the time, even if that’s the 2nd religious post in a row. Or third. Whatever.

‘Nothing but the Blood. The Gospel according to Dexter’

Everybody knows I’m borderline blasphemous anyway. 

If you don’t know who Dexter is, either go to watch the series and then come back here or forgive the spoiler and carry on.

Dexter is a killer who only kills people who killed innocents. He’s almost heroic in the way he runs after justice, whether it’s arguably a very twisted idea of justice. And this is why Zach J. Hoag’s book is awesome.

It’s not yet another book with an impeccable hero who never failed and always got it right (yes, my favourite character in the Chronicles of Narnia is Edmund, OK?). Well, one reason is that it’s an essay, but then how many moral essays addressing Christians revolve around a fallen figure not to criticise it? It’s almost like talking about angels using Gabriel and Castiel (Supernatural, if you’re asking).

I consider literature (and sometimes films or TV series, but mostly literature) a more powerful way to teach about Christianity than using the traditional teachings.

If I’m a decent woman I owe it all to Oscar Wilde and none to the Catholic Church. If it was for the Catholic Church I would be seeking revenge over bullies and abusers which never paid the price of what they did to me. So I’m biased towards using such a controversial character to reflect on God.

But then you read two lines like “I wonder if darkness is defined by light. If so, darkness can’t exist on its own” and it all makes perfect sense.

There’s a lot I would like to quote and a lot I would like to say about what’s in it for everybody, but I would make reading the book useless instead of something you’re intrigued to do. It just really went down my skin like few other non-fiction books, and I took Philosophy at uni so I read a lot. I think it would be a perfect basis for a dialogue between atheists and believers, because if you eliminate the principal premise you are left with a beautiful account of humanism. I believe this is relevant, because besides my reasons not to be agnostic I think the question whether or not God exists is irrelevant, and the outcome of it when the last day comes doesn’t change the human potential for good. If God exists and I was right then it’s God-given and imago Dei. If He doesn’t, then it’s a result of a coincidence in the middle of chaos but it’s still there. And this is why choosing Dexter is brilliant and necessary: Dexter is no man’s land in a cultural war where there’s a lot of misconceptions but also lots of common ground. One for all, we are all the same humanity, wherever you think this all comes from.

The greatest thing about Christianity for me is that the beliefs build a community of people, and this is a feeling I’ve been craving all my life. Belonging. This is why this relational theology rings so powerful and so right to me. And if the Gospel is all about restoring our relationship with God, I think restoring our relationship with our neighbour is a first step that would set things right unnoticed. We may not kill people (I don’t, at least, I don’t know about you), but Dexter’s struggle with a broken world is our struggle too. But if there’s darkness there is light, so humanism is what really matters. We matter.

I hope this book will reach people from all walks of life, and those who don’t believe will be able to go past the assumptions linked to the primary audience of the book and will grasp the universal teaching (if there’s anything universal at all in this world) between its lines.

Click on the link and buy Zach J. Hoag’s book.

Bright Young Things: on Victoria’s Secret and being a woman

There are moments when being a religious humanist is pretty hard. Feeling connected with religious people comes pretty rarely. Maybe it’s because religious is more an etiquette I’m given by atheists because I’m not an atheist and I go as far as actually going to church. I’m an anti-realist, so I don’t believe you can know reality outside of your experience of it and I have an experience of God. It is no Sputnik in the sky or old man with a beard sitting on the Sinai saying “you, yes. You, no” to people, to say it with professor Parodi (University of Milan), who is an atheist by the way. But God is there when I look out for Him/Her/It. It’s the greatest thing outside of me, comprehensive of all, and the most minute thing inside me. Does this God listen to my prayers? Yes and no. I can’t tell, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is alive and as of 2 hours ago happy and grateful for his life, my grandmother died, my guinea pigs died and ignorance and idiocy are still spread. And the TARDIS never came for me, but I still have a pretty kick-ass life even if not a flat in Chelsea and an engagement ring. So some are answered, some are not, for some there’s still time and some can’t possibly be.

If you require blind faith in the literal interpretation of everything said in the Bible to mark a religious person then clearly I am not (and so wasn’t Augustine of Hippo who is a saint and one of the Fathers of the Church and a few others philosophers made saints, just saying), but I do believe my mind and its doubts are God-given as much as anything else and I’m no less than what this perfect divine intelligence behind the world wanted me to be in His infinite love and grace. If I have blind faith in something, I have blind faith in this. If I was given the choice of picking one reality to exist in itself it would be this.

But in days like this I wish I was an atheist and I could say there’s no God because I really wish God answered my prayer about idiocy and ignorance. I find it degrading when I read stuff like this controversy on Victoria’s Secrets new Pink line, which is clearly for college girls who have a campus and not for pre-teens like Christian people are saying. But most of all, as Sheldon Cooper said, I weep for humanity when I read the dichotomy between being beautiful and trendy and caring about what you wear and being clever, dedicated, interested in the world outside of you. Why can’t a woman be both? When a woman poured expensive perfume on Jesus during Passover, Jesus said the woman has done something beautiful to him when everyone was thinking of the money you could give to the poor by selling the perfume. He appreciated she prepared him for burial, which in a sense is a vain thing to do in the face of him dying for our sins and useless in the face of resurrection anyway. Vanity is a sin in the Catholic tradition but the origin is not biblical, and anyway even if we admit it as a sin it’s still plain silly to say things like:

I want my daughter (and every girl) to be faced with tough decisions in her formative years of adolescence. Decisions like should I be a doctor or a lawyer? Should I take calculus as a junior or a senior? Do I want to go to Texas A&M or University of Texas or some Ivy League School? Should I raise awareness for slave trafficking or lack of water in developing nations? There are many, many more questions that all young women should be asking themselves… not will a boy (or girl) like me if I wear a “call me” thong?

because we would have our right to sin which came with our free will, thank you very much. Things are not mutually exclusive. People want companionship as much as peace in the world, and knowing that my potential husband is attracted to me because I do good stuff and because I wear attractive lingerie is part of that. Peer acceptance is part of growing up, and if someone wants to be something other than a doctor or a lawyer it’s her right to want to be so. We have our unique talents, and not all of us would make good doctors. I know I wouldn’t. People say I would make a good lawyer but I have no interest in being one whatsoever. People in religious contexts constantly struggle between doing the right thing and doing the sinful thing (which most of the time is just being normal, especially in our times where the mythical Good Woman is so separated from reality). But I’m both body and mind, and there’s no shame in that. My value, intelligence and self-respect are not hidden in my underwear choices. I’m glad my father never wished for me I didn’t face a choice about what to wear under my clothes, and my mother went as far as buying me pretty underwear at all ages. They judged my ability to prioritise between my beauty and my goodness strong enough to let me face both questions. It should be like that for all women.

For your information, I wouldn’t buy a Call Me thong but that’s just personal preference. I’m classier than that. 

Love Never Fails

I was talking to my best friend once again about my doubts in a specific situation that splits the world in two with no in between. On one side those who think I’m so strong to carry on with a tragic love that may or may not bring to a happy ending but I know I won’t be half as happy trying to settle down with someone else. On the other side those who think I’m stupid, I’m being used (for what? It’s not even like we do have sex…), or whatever else because, let’s face it, I must have bought a lie that was only a nice way to dump me. What was the lie or possible truth doesn’t matter. I have faith in many things that people consider stupid, like that my car and stuffed animals have a soul, that the Doctor saved the Earth so many times, that post-rock is the sound of Heaven and well, God. So I have faith in love, of all kinds, and this one in particular. Just sometimes the sun disappears (metaphorically, I know the sun in England isn’t real). It was in one of those moments that I received the email that told me I won a t-shirt through the Good Women Project.

It was a break-through moment. There was light, and Castiel…oh, wait, that was a random Supernatural fantasy. Anyway it was like God was talking to me directly and answering the question I didn’t really speak out loud, because all Alessandro had on his Whatsapp was along the lines of I’m fat I’m ugly I hate myself I’m sure he’ll never be back because he can choose so many more beautiful women and I’m nowhere special so why me?

The reply I got was “Love never fails”. It was on the t-shirt*. God’s love for me never fails and I was born His image, so my love never fails. I don’t know if it’s love, I just know that every day that goes by I am amazed to see that he really exists. And that my first and most felt prayer was to keep him safe, like Lady Mary when Matthew was at war. And I don’t know what will happen in the future, just that whatever happens this won’t have been in vain.

{This post is the last part of a series forThe Scintilla Project 2013. See you next year}

*The tee is from The Greatest of These Ltd.

Wanderlust

By Jana Zee

Getting lost is not one of my specialities. I may leave for wanderlust, even if I can’t travel through time and space, but I don’t get properly lost. The worst I do is to read Google Maps the wrong way and realise that if I tried without I would have gone the right one. I’m very intuitive about spaces for some reason. The only spaces where I truly get lost are imaginary. I can spend an entire sleepless night lost in my thoughts or in a book I can’t put down. It wasn’t rare to see me hide a book under the notebook when I went to uni straight after reading all night and taking it out if only for a few line every time there was a break of some sort. I wasn’t even lucky enough to be Lost in Austen.

My father is the one who gets lost all the time, usually to avoid a queue. We always get where we meant to go, but it’s usually me to save the situation. I really wish I got lost for once, proper lost, and never made it to the right place because of a diversion. Find the love of your life when you go to the wrong place, and never leave. Wouldn’t it be romantic?

But the story I can tell, my story, is no romantic at all. Or I don’t see it as romantic like many do. I see it as tragic, and not in the romantic sense. Not like the stories you hear sung by a soprano. I’m not a heroine who bravely fight the odds of her love, save a kingdom and save her man. I’m just a dreamer who wanders.

{This post is part of a series forThe Scintilla Project 2013}

Chances

It is not a mystery that I don’t believe in coincidences, so being asked to talk about a chance meeting that is still with me is like asking me to tell you the story of my life from the start. In the end being born in your family is a matter of (bad) luck, you don’t really choose where to be born. I’m pretty sure that my brother (who was born 19 years ago on this day) would have never chosen to be be born my brother if he had a choice.

Why should he? I had a pink trench coat and I just received a Ken doll for the mere reason that a bloody (literally) small creature of apparent belonging to the human race was thrown out in pain from my mother’s womb. And I slept with a lot of stuffed animals because I just couldn’t make any of them sad by cutting them out, and during the day they all went to school together and he would have been the next. And I used to watch Robin Hood all the freaking time. A pox on the phoony king of Eeengland. 

Or what about falling in love with someone who tweeted the flatmate of the possible girlfriend of the guy you wanted to date and that’s how you first realised he ever existed and oh, he is so DARN GORGEOUS. 2 years later you still want his babies more than you want Tom Hiddleston’s, Eddie Redmayne’s, Jensen Ackles’, Craig Gazey’s, you surely get the point. Maybe not more than Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s but still…

How can I even start with a chance meeting when one of the best men you’ll ever meet was met in a random club in Cardiff (where I was because of Craig Gazey, btw) where I went because it was free entry and I had some time to spend before my overnight coach, and where I was hit on by his crazy friend with a very crazy story? I’ve gained more friends through him than in my entire life.

I got a job through a chance meeting, and who know what else. Not a degree, that’s for sure. But a lot more. I can’t just pick one, because most of the chance meeting are still walking alongside me in this crazy journey called life. It’s just not a story I can tell without making it a novel not to diminish anyone’s role in my life. Not even the best storyteller can do it.

{This post is part of a series forThe Scintilla Project 2013}

We Are Young

It is so easy to make yourself look all glamorous when you live in a city like London, and you’ve lived in a city like Milan and you jumped the queues at Plastic club on a Friday night when even Klaxons were left waiting, and it actually was you to tell the club promoters that they were in the queue.

Tonight we are young

So let’s set the world on fire

We can burn brighter than the sun

If it was written years ago that would have represented the years when I was young perfectly. Which such premises it’s hard to think I’m very good with children. Scratch that. If you put me in a room with children it’s going to look like meeting Sleeping Beauty in Disneyland, and they will never want to let me go. There are at least a dozen girls that wanted to grow up to be like me and boys who wanted to grow up to marry me as of the early 2000s.

When you lose a child and seriously, it seems to happen to everyone including David Cameron, you really wish that the one to find him is someone like me. If only for one reason: the child may run away and who knows where he can go. The mother thinks the child is with the father and viceversa (I promise you it wasn’t David Cameron’s, it was a random 2yo Swiss boy). Nobody was going to look for the child until the parents got back together…the child could have been sent to Russia by then.

It is great that I unlikely panic, and when I do I don’t panic for a real reason to panic…in cases of accident I realise the whole thing a lot later and I’m perfectly fine all along. Everybody is going mad and I raise above them like some powerful and neurotic Greek goddess (there’s one in a manga…) shouting at them to all fucking calm down. Yeah.

Anyway, you don’t shout that way at scared toddlers and even if you don’t they will be getting mad and more scared with a stranger getting them and taking them to the information point to try to call for their parents. They don’t know what’s going on even if you show them a phone to make your point about calling mum and dad stronger. You don’t even know if the child speaks your language, you can guess and he probably does but in a country with 4 official languages it is a bet. You have more chances to bet right on Tottenham Hotspur winning a match than on which language a Swiss 2yo boy understands, and he’ll probably be the one at which you are shit anyway.

Children have just so much empathy that they can trust you by holding your hand and this is just so powerful and so sweet. By the time we tracked down the parents of the wandering toddler, he just didn’t want to go. Not exactly what parents would want but better than child kidnappers, right?

{This post is part of a series forThe Scintilla Project 2013}

On the Road

Do you know that the cows are on the other side of Paris? I can’t tell you which side is which, and probably there are cows in Normandie as much as in Bourgogne, but it was a funny chant that annoyed my parents during long road trips. In the end, we exhausted the game of counting how many cars were from each canton shortly after Genève (and it’s always either Uri or Schaffhausen anyway). That the cows were on the other side of Paris and Paris was on the other side of cows made perfect sense, and so we chanted it until something else attracted our attention of children.

I was sitting on a coach next to a perfect stranger on my way to Cardiff, noticing once again how there is a trait of the highway that looks exactly like the area around Mendrisio. I should go take pictures of both and put one next to the other for all to see. Travelling alone is not like travelling with your family or your class at school, when sitting in the last row makes you a cool kid and all you do is singing popular songs, eating popcorn and don’t pay the slightest attention to what the professor is saying about the next stop. People on coaches are often students or young professional on a budget, busy with their own workbooks (I’ve seen teachers checking tests too) or iPads. I tried to write articles or read essays on coaches, but I more often than not give up and just sleep or watch the country pass me by. There are very few cows going to Cardiff. My mother asked, I wonder if she still remembers our Cows on the other side of Paris. Probably she does, it was the tune of an entire summer. It made me smile. Smiling is not exactly what you want to do when on the other side one row behind you a couple of drunken people are fighting each other and splitting up. They had those “bad faces” that posh bigot people like my aunt (the Pedantic-Paul aunt) would say belong to violent people who use heroin and would not hesitate to attack you if they perceived you hostile (e.g. laughing of them, like the time I laughed at a girl who dropped a bag in Finsbury Park because I dropped it 10 steps before. She verbally attacked me, I told her it fell down to me a moment ago so it was a funny coincidence, she thought I wasn’t hostile and asked me for some change for a bus without punching me. All good). I must admit that given how badly they were fighting each other it was easy to believe, though my first instinct was to ask the girl if she needed someone to talk to. But she wasn’t exactly looking like a sweet innocent girl crying and needy, so I didn’t dare. The person next to me decided it was better to call the police and let them deal with it for the sake of a quiet atmosphere on the coach. I’m not sure a quiet trip was what I really wanted, I’m still not ready to face the realisation I grew up and now I look ambiguously like Bonnie Tyler in 1983 (and I’d like to have her hair too).

{This post is part of a series forThe Scintilla Project 2013}

Valentine’s Day

I think I qualify in the group of cynical peeps who hate Valentine’s Day, though it is a misunderstanding. I would hate the day I met the Man-who-broke-my-heart-and-put-it-together-just-to-break-it-again even if it was the 14th of October (that’s the day I’ve first seen Craig Gazey now that you make me think about it) or of July and everything in between (and before and after). It just happens it is Valentine’s Day. Oh, the irony. 

If it wasn’t for this small (sorta) detail, I’d be perfectly indifferent to it. At worst, slightly annoyed. And by it I mean your boyfriend coming up with roses and chocolates and French Fancies and champagne one day of the year when everybody does it, and they do it because they have to because, well, it’s Valentine’s Day.

Yes, I am this kind of person.

 

I wrote about my reasons for not liking Valentine’s Day already last year. If you want to avoid the lecture on the origins of the day, in short I’m fond of it as a day to remind us that you are not always allowed to be with the one we love and that some people fought for it and so we should.  

I can’t feel like celebrating love when, while I’m sitting at Starbucks sipping on a soy Caramel Frappuccino, there’s a father somewhere who is closing a deal for his teenage daughter to be married to an older man. There are two men or two women in a state where marriage is not legal yet who would like to give that present to their husband or wife, or in one where they could be killed for loving them. There’s a rejected lover, and someone who lost the loved one, maybe to death. I just feel the presents and all the marketing for consume goods and wishes sent around both IRL and on the social media lack of respect and compassion. A lot of people are depressed and lonely on this day because of people who do my job and sell a holiday that we should rethink. It’s really not worth it. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do for a living. I think it can help doing a lot of good too. I just take the fact a saint’s day is commemorative of the saint’s martyrdom, and Valentine’s according to legend died to give people the chance of being with the one they loved when the law didn’t allow it. I find the “Love yourself” and wishes from people not in a couple to other people, whether or not they are in a couple a lot more annoying than the gestures towards a partner. In the end, couples should be glad if they are together and can be together. It just shouldn’t be a day to say I love you, that’s it. We should celebrate the fact we are free to say it if we really want something to celebrate. 

Happy anniversary, you idiot ♥

New Year’s Horoscope

It’s that time of the year people make resolutions and promise they will be better people. They will take on the gym more seriously, lose weight, eat better, get a partner and such. I promise you I’m going to be the same mess I’ve been for the past 24 years, I’ll do mistakes and I will never try to be perfect or better or something I am not. And I’m not taking on the gym or finishing my novel. However, I do believe in the Great Irony keeping the universe together and so here we are one year later, with http://www.thefrisky.com/and its astro guide.

Love

Forget all that you know about love now, because this year things are going to get way more intense and what you are dealing with now will feel like small potatoes by the end of 2013 — but in the best way possible {as if I didn’t live in some sort of Russian novel already}. So, get ready to have your brain stimulated, body reinvigorated and your spirit soaring, as this year brings on possibilities that you’ve daydreamed about, but still thought was far off in your future {I doubt it but hey, I like vintage rings and sapphires. And TARDISes. See, I like blue things}. Sudden changes will strike and you’ll need to think fast, which luckily will be the best way to really know what you’re feeling. First impressions ring true when it comes to romance, so if you know something, believe it {that’s what I’ve done in the past 2 years and people believe I’m delusional. I’m not. Narnia is real, you know}. Of course, destiny will be throwing your fast balls, keeping you on your toes {so I’ll really start ballet classes?}, but it’ll happily bring out your best {size 8, here I come}. Yes, hopes and dreams are about to be realized, so prepare for blast-off, because 2013 will blow your mind {sing along! There is a design, an alignment to cry of my heart to see the beauty of love as it was meant to be…Love; it will not betray you dismay or enslave you, it will set you free}.

Madness

Everyone will feel as if they are entitled to have an opinion about your life {story of my life}, opening up a can of worms that you won’t think you can shut politely. However, stooping down to play those games won’t make you feel any better, no matter how crazily enraged you get. Stay in touch with your lady-like manners {would the Dowager Countess say it? If yes, say it. Ok, gotcha}, as they will get you the last laugh {my favourite}. You have more clever tricks up your sleeve that will leave your haters speechless. It would be nice if everyone around you could grow at the same rate, and actually have knowledge to share, but such is life {don’t be defeatist, dear, it’s very middle class}. So, when it comes to cutting the cord this year, know it’ll be the fastest way to get rid of the fat for good.

Obsession

You will be chomping at the bit to seal deals and get partnerships going in solid form. However, if you can wait, the second half of the year is more auspicious for taking on commitments {everyone knows already I want to marry in Autumn, not Spring}. So hold out, or at least bide your time to see all the fine print and know what you’re getting into {marriage is a long business…}. Not that the deals on the table this year won’t be fair {empress of the universe, may it be empress of the universe}, but you’ll need to be up on every detail, as there should be no reason you are left with any questions. Time is yours {I thought time was borrowed}, so be regal and set your pace. If others have to wait, oh well. Anyone or anything that can’t let you be thorough won’t be worth it, and hence weeding out the bad choices will come naturally. So, be classy, and never accept the first offer {but I am an impulsive capricious spoilt child! I should hire an assistant}.

The Supernatural gif is from Tumblr, I couldn’t track the original maker.

2012 brought me a lot of things I can’t even try to resume and report. Yesterday’s…pardon, last year’s (would you believe it?) predictions turned to be true, and I had my fair share of spotlight, high heels and handsome admirers. I left my past behind and got real. No, OK, I still dye my hair from ash blonde to a golden one. And spend a lot in getting my nails done, mascara and lipstick. But maybe that’s my real me. Who defines what’s real and what’s not? I do crazy things like there was no tomorrow, does it change much whether I wear Rouge de Dior or not?

Did your 2012 predictions turn right? What’s in store for you in 2013? I wish it has all the best xoxo