A new look
I got my hair cut today. I hadn't been to that saloon before and i wonder if i'll return. Here's the profound dilemma: First of all, it took me a good two and half hours to get through the whole process. And i don't look like Angelina Jolie now, just like regular Uma B., but without the usual messy do. Then they overcharged me. It was a colouring and a trimming. I insist, no red carpet material.

These two matters are rather appalling but then the brighter side comes out. The hairdresser is located inside a department store (yeah, yeah, elcorteingles) right in Callao, the centre of the city. On the seventh floor. This was 6 pm.

They have huge windows overlooking Madrid. You can see everything, from the red roofs of the old neighbourhoods to the Royal Fuckin Palace. After a very shy snowfall, the clouds made way to the blue and i witnessed an overwhelming sunset while a girl hummed and dyed my hair.

The image is still lingering on my mind. The dark blue and the orange and the brush strokes of pink. The skyline of the city i love, seen from a brightly lit hair saloon. At least the view wasn't intoxicated by the usual hairdresser radio burping out the latest hits.

Snapshots
You didn't seriously think i was going to move home without giving you a quick glimpse of it, did you?

First of all, sit down... i'll get you a coffee. Don't you just want to hug that cushion?



This is where ambivalence gets done these days. Note the record player (still unplugged, but the old fashioned parties are definetely on their way).



Here's something Pablo did a while ago. Perhaps a long, long time ago. I think it's beautiful so he's placed it on top of the bedroom door. 'The Hug'.

'So i'm not your pearl
(to this i am resigned)
but to an outside world
i will not be defined

for i'm neither fish
nor flesh'

Terence Trent D'Arby. Declaration. 1989.

Fish and flesh
I bought it on tape and inmediatly learned this peculiar poem by heart. I can't think of anything more ambivalent, except maybe my view on Madonna. As many of you know, this site lives for the undetermined feelings, the not-white-nor-black approaches to almost anything. I guess T.T.D'Arby's words say it all.

Do you fancy boys or girls? Either? Do you order Pepsi or Coke? Seven Up? Would you rather watch Friends or Sex and the City? Six feet under? Is it harder for you to come up with a white lie than the awful truth? Or do you just look away?

It's easier to know what you are not than what you really want to be. I can sit and stare at the waiter thinking i don't want a coke, a beer or an orange juice, and it will take me ages to figure out what i really need is a nestea in my system.

I can contemplate taking up a job selling sunbeds in the North Pole or freelancing for the pubicity department of a studio before finding out that i really want to put my journalistic career on hold.

I could never give up writing but i feel i'm done with the newspaper-television-agency options. There you go, that's my fish and my flesh.

Archive crawling
February is almost done, taking away so many old things with it. Now that everything seems to be new in the ambivalent town, i can't help but put the time goggles on and take a look at the past. Here comes the classic uma b.'s year review... Do you remember?

The bittersweet year

Irene travels
It was the time of going out on the playground and wishing to be a full grown up. The eighties were all over us with the warmies, the adidas and the plastic bracelets.

Irene was brilliant at basketball. She was also my best friend for several years. She was tall and shy and had red hair. We went to my first concert together. It was dull but we got to stay up all night, chatting away in her room.

I still think about her sometimes. How she easily shifted her own path and dived into a music career, moved to Italy, smiled a lot more. I wonder what instrument she plays, if she's teaching, if she's part of an orchestra or plays at a dark jazz club on weekends.

She's in Madrid for a few days, i've been informed. The person who told me is trying hard to locate her number ("hmmm, yes, i left it on a piece of paper just yesterday...") and perhaps i'll get a chance to see her. And her baby.

It always seems rather unreal when the eighties knock back on your door with no plastic bracelets this time, but carrying all the emotions we could hardly deal with back then.

Look at that
Scary movies, six feet under, news flashes, the news, cartoons, reality shows, commercials, sex and the city, 24 hour gossip, friends, romantic movies, based on actual facts, documentaries, more ads, comedies, talk shows, tennis matches, contests, thrillers, classic movies, hunting and fishing shows, the holy mass, football games, soap operas, dogma movies, late night shows...

I have a television set again. The world at the tip of my eyes. Hmmm.

(Life)
The park looked so cold and grey this morning i felt i was in England. Tiny snowflakes made my feet look smaller on the sidewalk. The winter comes after the spring that came after the first winter. I think everyone in this city feels as if we are living inside a couple of brackets. Just waiting for the flowers to bloom, the sun to kick in, the skirts to grow three inches shorter.

I'm also holding on to my own bracket. I'm grabbing an Arial 12 question mark and i won't let go. I've sent out three CVs in the last few days and a silly presentation letter that might get me into business. I've arranged my moving out of the palace for tomorrow (the wee little place shall be deeply missed) and i'm finally going to give Venus La Universal bottle the royalty treatment.

The winds are blowing and we walk faster towards our destinations (the bar, the office, the grocery store). We put our collars up knowing that everything is only temporary anyway. You might as well put your entire (life) in brackets.

Wake up call
Something is broken in my biological clock and i don't mean any reproduction call or the coming of age. I'm just referring to the fact that, for the past six months, i haven't been able to arrive at a decent hour on 80% of the days. I wish i could get my act together, but i'm afraid this new habit of mine comes from a darker side i don't want to can't really control.

This is not me. Not my old me, anyway. I used to be dead early for everything. I used to be the one who waited an average 15 minutes on friends, colleagues, interviewees and dates. I used to arrive 30 minutes early to (my previous) work. Nowadays, i don't even bother to offer explanations for my more than usual delays.

I know what you're thinking, because i think it too. This job moves me so little that the buzz from my alarm clock doesn't register inside my system. Or maybe i'm reaching a point of relaxation in my life that needs to reshuffle some things and waking up on time is one of them.

One way or the other, i believe something is broken in my biological clock, though it still ticks on time. I may be late, but i sure smile a whole lot more.

L'enfer
I am jealous. Not sickening, not really obsessive, just your average 'jealous of the way you looked at her' kind of girl. I suppose i'm within the standards, if there are any at all. I had a boyfriend who was the most perversely jealous person i ever met, and of course we had to call it quits. I've also met not at all jealous types. None of the categories mentioned so far are good, trust me. So there probably is a standard to stand to.

Jealousy plays tricks on you. It causes distance between friends and a huge state of permanent paranoia that's really hard to kick out. But not impossible. I guess quitting cigarettes after smoking for years still makes you a smoker. Once a sinner, always a sinner, huh? Though you can stay 'clean' of tobacco if you're really aware of your own arguments. The same applies to those jealousy pinches.

Someone shunned me out of her life and has recently opened the door again. I've been furiously running options and possibilities to explain why she blocked me out, but months went by and the confusion persisted, just as the strange reticence of my friend. Then she grinned and pretended nothing happened. I did, too. I had finally understood she had been under a jealousy attack all this time.

Happily enough, everything seems to be back in place now. I'm amazed by her lack of self confidence and trust, but i also feel sorry for her awful (yet silly) worries. She must have had a very hard time imagining stuff. Which reminds me that jealousy doesn't take you anywhere but hell.

Another turn?
What do you see in this picture? A funky face? An invented treasure map? The unmissable figure representing Spain? I look at this image and i see something very close to my near future.

If you've been following this ambivalent blog long enough, you probably know about my ambivalent feelings for the city that shelters me, i.e. Madrid. I've always thought that the best thing about going away from this place is coming back. I love and hate its colours, the people, all those fucked up bars. I adore and detest the weather, the traffic and the sense of humour.

But maybe it's time to give everything another turn of the screw. Perhaps it's good to really get out and live somewhere else in the peninsula. Somewhere down South, following the sun. Somewhere that makes it easy for us to smile yet miss the city beat.

I'm applying for a job elsewhere in this country, for the first time in my life.

What if it comes through?

Lingerie and the city
G-strings, lace knickers, push up bras and corsets. The city is covered with underwear adds, seductively not showing the face of the models, begging taxi drivers and nurses to crash their cars into the walls.

The fake spring enhances the atmosphere of lust and bees and funky rhythms by directing the sunlight straight into the flesh of the paper lingerie.



But don't be fooled. It's still winter, you won't look like that with your new fancy panties and nor will your sister/wife/math teacher. This is not Brazil, it's Madrid, and us girls are not really carrying all those lacey secrets under our regular clothes.

No. It's just a campaign for that awful day of the year. You've been warned.

Hectic and beautiful
I smell chlorine around me. And nervousness. Expectations. The pressure is building up in this office, while my cells are already pumping back the stress. Things are happening, boys and girls. At work, at home, all over this winter city disguised in early spring.

I feel i'm getting stuff done (although of course some extremely important things are still left unsaid, undone, underestimated) and i like the fact that, again, the pieces of the neverending jigsaw seem to fall into place.

At the same time, i'm about to start packing my books into boxes. Again. Little restless Uma B. is moving for the tenth time in her life. We all know it won't be the last, either, huh? Anyway, as of next month i shall be part of the hectic, crazy, decadent and beautiful center of Madrid.

The tide is up, the sun is setting. I can see your reflection on the water. It smells of chlorine, funnily enough.

Supervise the goddam grammar (please)
When you're as tired as i am today: that is, not exactly hungover but close, not quite exhausted but feeling like a nokia who hasn't been fed in 76 hours, your eyes get that strange light, your muscles want to blend into one and all things silly become simply exasperating.

When you're as tired as i am today, all you want is the hours to stop stretching around you and the courage to get another cup of coffee into your system. When you're this tired, the last thing you want to do is read a badly translated book with poor grammar mistakes.

Translator is actually a paid job, right? I could have corrected some of those pages with my eyes closed. Which, as a matter of fact, are closed right now.

The way one looks at snow
He hates the snow because it gets brown when spring is around the corner, because it brings all things cold into his life, because it's a regular feature of his 30 years of existence.

Still, he sends me pictures of the snow, because he knows they make me travel back to the time together up in Quebec, because i always got that amazed look in my eye whenever i saw those snow flakes rolling down to the ground. Because to me, snow means cool instead of freezing.

He also sends me pictures of himself, of his business, of his/our friends. Time has gone by over his dark face of pitch black hair and huge black eyes, and his attitude (on camera, at least) has slightly changed. I ask myself if he's more self-conscious now or if it's a matter of not caring any more. I still like what i see.

He craves the sun i indulge into but has never built the courage to get on that plane. Perhaps he just needs a freakin' brilliant excuse to come over, something fascinating and white, like the snowflakes falling before my eyes.

The thinking pile and the price list
She carries her thoughts the same way she carries unnecessary items inside her big white bag. She lifts her sense of guilt and three paintbrushes of stress through the underground doors in the morning, just like she ignores the notebook, the extra set of keys and the bank documents that seem to live in the bottom of her purse.



She keeps on walking, aware of the load but not ready to reorganize and file anything yet. Time. It's a matter of doing, she realizes, but it's also a matter of knowing exactly how to do whatever it is she does. You can't achieve without making a sacrifice. She wonders what will be sacrificed this time.

A home. A friend. Self esteem. A job. A dream. Something will be killed along the way.

Knowing this, she adds the murderous thoughts to the thinking pile and grabs the strap of her big white bag, while the city whispers grow dimmer and the sound of her own voice learns to articulate new words. You always end up paying, but what you get in return might be priceless.

Frivolousness (or lack thereof)
I can't remember the last time i bought any clothes. I don't recognize myself anymore. Honestly. This misery lack of cash is leaving me totally out of season. In fact, i don't even window shop anymore. The sales are as foreign to me as the Great Wall of China.

I could use a new pair of black boots. Brown gloves. I ran out of my Dubonnet Rouge about three months ago (actually, i simply lost it two days after paying a small fortune for it). I need another suit. See? It's not like i'm immune to fashion necessities.

(Deep sigh)

No money, no wardrobe renewals, no frivolousness in uma's life. Boy, would i love to stroll down that little alley off Jorge Juan, carrying four or five -heavy- bags.

Paralyzing white
After a weekend of self indulgence (shiatsu session, pampered by friends, surrounded by family, enjoying the exact company at all times) I can now look at this new unfolding month with different eyes. The result is white.

February looks a dirty shade of white, just like the rest of the months until the summer, when everything will surely turn into a yellow alerting tone. The questions are the usual: What the hell am i going to do with my life / when will I get my act together with the due texts / where is my home going to be/.

I’m still paralyzed, just like I have been since September. And that’s a freaking long time for a paralysis. Every night i feel the pinch in the stomach but the following morning i manage to ignore everything and hide behind invented routines.

Yeah, i can't find an explanation either. I look around, i look inside. I see the same. White. It's not that bad a colour, is it?