Sleepy made up face
Something in my system decided to wake me up today. At 4.28 a.m. I feel as if a space ship had run over me a minute ago.

My mum slept over last night (does that sentence feel odd for you too?) and this morning, while we were both getting ready to go, she asked me to show her how to apply mascara properly. My Bobbi Brown make up class is paying off. The result is i look unhealthy and underslept but i have fabulous eyelashes. Happy Friday.

In other news, my favourite tennis player didn't do well at Davis last night. Maybe that's why i woke up in the middle of my dreams. Right, i didn't think so either.

If i were a teenage supermodel and not 'Perverse Woman of 2003', as a friend of mine recently put it, i would date Juan Carlos Ferrero. I would force him to go out with me. If i were a teenage supermodel, i would also be 'Perverse Woman of 2003'.

So who are you going to be this weekend?

No wonder
I live in a studio, as i probably have mentioned before (i don't mind repeating myself because there are no archives in this blog, therefore it doesn't have a memory). It's a wee little place on the top floor of what used to be a palace in the centre of Madrid.

It doesn't have a lift. We're talking four floors. It's kind of hard when you get home with all your grocery shopping and you realize that you forgot something vital, like cigarettes or a pair of blue suede shoes.

Yesterday, i counted the steps. Floor by floor, muttering under my breath, trying to keep track (sixty-seven, sixty-eight...). I counted til my heart started to pant. I was still counting when my arms were beginning to get sore from all the bags i was carrying. I counted 111 steps. One hundred and eleven. No wonder i'm not a member of any gym.

Gracefully serene
I'll be hitting the big 3 number in less than a month. Wow. Uma is turning 30, boys and girls. This is a bit like the year 2000. Don't you remember, as a kid in school, thinking where and who you were going to be when the XXI Century came along? I used to calculate how old i would be and i'd picture myself doing something fascinating every hour of every day.

A similar thing happens with this number, this 30 situation i'm fast approaching. A few years back, i would see myself at 30 years old, with my entire life solved, looking gracefully serene (stop giggling, you do the same) and walking down the park looking like a renewed version of Meg Ryan in 'You've got mail'.

Needless to say, less than a month from 'the date', Uma doesn't have her entire life solved, not even a little fragment of it, and she feels her life could actually get a little more shattered if she doesn't try too hard.

Less than a month. Uma looks at her reflection in the mirror and doesn't feel the least bit serene or graceful. She feels like she needs to wear a pony tail this morning because her gracefully serene hair has woken up on the wild side.

She doesn't see the point in walking through a park because she has so much stuff to attend to, her mind wouldn't let her enjoy the view. Plus she'd hate looking like any version of Meg Ryan because she's seen one of her pathetic latest movies and she thinks plastic surgery has killed her face.

Maybe, less than a month from today, Uma will be able to close her eyes and pop up a gracefully serene image of herself in her mind. For just one second. Until the next birthday starts to threaten again.

Balance it out
Elvis Costello has been singing all weekend both in my mind and on my laptop. I've smoked something very close to an overdose of cigarrettes throughout the weekend.

Friday i got so nervous my stomach froze. Saturday i drank so many cocktails my heart sank in alcohol. Sunday i emptied my mind so much i didn't understand my own language.

Winter is knocking on the doors of the city. Somewhere on this planet summer is starting to kick in. Christmas under the sun. Christmas under the weather. I need to change my attitude for this season, or i'll go mental over a red ribbon. I think i can cope with the whole thing, as long as i tie my ideas together and breathe in/out more regularly.

Kurt has been feeding me with fucked up little novels that keep my mind blank. In two words, Chuck Palahniuk. Exactly the kind of reading a girl like me needs right now. Something that only gets crazier. I suggest you read it while Costello sings on the background. You know, to balance things out.

The five (my way)

1. List one thing you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
Read my stuff on the newspaper.

2. List one person you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
The girl with the pink sweater on my high school reunion picture. Her name's Ana.

3. List one thing you'd like to learn how to do.
Be patient.

4. List one thing you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
Laugh really hard.

5. List one thing you do that help you relax.
Listen to music.

Into the fire
Days and nights on a rollercoaster. I'm trying to get off this pain and joy ride but it's going so fast i never make it to the floor. Is this the same for everyone i know? My ego is shattered (that's why i keep writing about myself, i imagine) and all the emotions i go through are like flames feeding a neverending bonfire.

Something is broken, some things are a little torn, and then there is the other stuff, the one that makes your day feel brighter. An ad campaign you laugh at on a side of a bus. A delicious dish you really look forward to. Dancing to JLo with two of your friends. Having sweet internet back.

The argentinian singer we met after the Robbie Williams gig is playing on Friday. My name's on the goddam list but i don't know if i'll have time to make it because that evening is going to be heavy with activities and shit from work. I'd love to go, i think. I'd love to let go.

I've been doing all right during the week, but it's the Friday-to-Sunday combo that scares me. Up and down on this rollercoaster. Throwing the pain, the joy, the fear and the happyness into the enourmous fire of emotions that will burn until everything blends into a new me.

Hate
There are few people i hate. She isn't one of them. Still, i feel soaked in bad karma every time our eyes meet. Like yesterday.

She was dressed in black, looking even taller, her plastic surgery making her less alive, more fake, yet a little fragile. She is tough as a woman can be and i enjoy just staring at her, knowing she can fall apart with just one look.

I don't hate her, I wish her nothing wrong, but nothing good either. I've paid her respect for many years, she was the mother of a wonderful creature, but i can't feel the same now.

I see through her. And she sees completely through me. We are linked by the terrible past and the stranged future.

It took her about half an hour to begin her act. The way she folded her arms across her lap, how she lowered her eyes. And all those lies burping out of her lips, unaware that she was so far from the truth, holding on to a past that someone made up for her.

That's the thing. The person who reinvented history to suit herself and this wounded mother, this girl who seems unstoppable. Her, i hate.

Too raw
I counted five people wearing scarves this morning, mostly girls. It is November cold today. You know, the kind of weather that chills you to the bone even though the sun is bright as a top grade student after giving the right answer.

I collected three scarves of my own from Escorial this weekend, as part of the 'let's get the winter clothes back home' project. That included the camel coat my mum bought for me in Bilbao and some CDs. Music can also keep you warm, right?

It's getting colder by the hour. Or at least i feel that way. But i don't think anyone should trust my feelings right now: they're too raw and full of lies.

I'm not choosing

Do you see something tempting?
Or is it just another beautiful thing that broke?

Close to me
I've waited hours for this
I've made myself so sick
I wish I'd stayed asleep today
I never thought this day would end
I never thought tonight could ever be
This close to me

Just try to see in the dark
Just try to make it work
To feel the fear before you're here
I make the shapes come much too close
I pull my eyes out
Hold my breath
And wait until I shake...

But if I had your faith
Then I could make it safe and clean
If only I was sure
That my head on the door was a dream.

I'm walking on a wire, like the girl in my dreams, going back and forth on the trapeze. I used to listen to that song, that 'Close to Me' enchantment The Cure wrote for an entire generation, for ages. And then this morning this particular music slips into my computer, my brain and my biting lip. Music for the confused.

I've talked so much these past days, i feel my mind would love to have a nervous breakdown. I've tried to help out other confused human beings. I've issued theories on love, disease, pain, anger, tenderness and any emotion you can think of. I bet you can think of many more. I've tried to figure out my own emotions as well, by talking them inside out. Over and over. Again and again. My tongue is really mad at my brain.

I pull my eyes out / Hold my breath / And wait until I shake...

Items on my mind

Empty streets
Baskets of blackberries
Uncomfortable laughter
Open fields somewhere near Kansas
Purple shoes
Vinyl records
A friend tripping down the stairs
Two kittens

What do you see when you close your eyes in the middle of the day?

One thing at a time
I remember him telling me, about a decade ago, that i had to stop thinking things over, time and time again.

He used to give out and criticize me for 'drowning in a glass of water', for endlessly analyzing life over and over. I would look at him while he'd roll his eyes and i tried to keep my mind blank.

After all the years, he still has his theories about my focus on things.

The latest, issued last spring, was that i worried so much that i completely missed the important stuff.

Unfortunately, he wasn't being as positive as this sounds today. His bottom line was that i haven't got a clue of what a real problem is.

Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes is where i'm standing. I've been trying to balance it all out, but it's been difficult. I know something, though. You gotta stop listening to unhealthy advice. You've got to block certain attitudes out of your life, especially when you're feeling fragile.

These past months have been turbulent in my mind and around me, but there comes a time when you need to put everything behind and stop lamenting your fate.

I'm taking one problem at a time. One major worry at a time. One possible solution at a time.

That should help me sleep at night.

Back to the Fives

1. What food do you like that most people hate?
I love spinach salad, flat coca-cola and carpaccio.

2. What food do you hate that most people love?
Mushrooms. I hate it. It makes me sick. I think it's a punishment to even set my eyes on one. And the smell, the texture... egk!

3. What famous person, whom many people may find attractive, is most unappealing to you?
Actually i don't really get George Clooney and i find David Beckham is a little soft.

4. What person, whom many people find unappealing, do you find
attractive?
I think Eminem is totally hot.

5. What popular trend baffles you?
Any trend that makes teenagers look like replicants of each other.

You-Know-What-Season
It was an average afternoon in this city. It wasn't too cold, there was no rain and i was considering doing some grocery shopping or go make up hunting. I decided against both options: i'll get the cosmetics at my Bobbi Brown class next week and i had to get a present for a coworker first. So there i was, yesterday afternoon, going up one of the main arteries of Madrid's used-to-be-push district.

I was heading towards the commercial temple known as Corte Inglés, in which i hadn't set foot for ages (i.e., real ages, something closer to months than weeks), walking along with the human river. My eyes were wandering from window to window while my mind was, as usual, miles away. The last traffic light turned green and i proceeded towards the Temple.

But something made me stop. I looked up. There they were. One of the sides of the place was already covered with light-bulbs. There were some red, some yellow-gold, some blue. I lowered my eyes and pretended nothing had happened, but the stirr inside was there for the rest of the day.

Watch out. You-Know-What is almost here.

Do you really remember those 80s lyrics?



Instructions:
Click on my shoe. Fill in the blanks. Each blank uses one word and no punctuation. Please use a #2 pencil. No food or drink allowed in the testing facility. This is your brain on the 80's, any questions?

Not particularily loving
I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything this morning, since my co-worker has decided to kick-start the day by playing this awful music full freaking volume.

I wonder why i keep checking the selection on my launch cast for fear of disturbing others in case Alanis goes too wild.

I'm not particularily loving this season, no matter how much i was looking forward to it since mid-summer. I guess it's the weather, the rain of changes pouring over us, the storm blowing inside my mind.

I hope winter finds me in a more suitable state of soul. And a nicer home.

Virus killed the party
I halloweened my weekend in bed with fever. Not my idea of fun. Definitely my idea of scary and spooky.

I watched this film, this one and this other one.

I had a lot of time to think, but I unfortunately wasted it by sleeping my brains out. I had vivid dreams. I had interesting conversations (at least two, which means there were two interesting people to talk to, considering my state of mind & soul) and I skipped a lot of solid food.

My strange disease, probably called mutant flu, vanished this morning, which as you might have guessed is Monday.

Life sucks. And then you catch a cold.