Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too?

These days I have enjoyed an unexpected break from daily duties. My Friday classes were canceled, so International Worker´s Day holidays let me free until next Wednesday. Well, certainly I am not fully exempt from schoolwork at the moment (semester´s exams are around the corner again) but at least I have some extra time for writing essays. 

On Thursday evening I visited my parents´place. It was really nice because I could study harder with no better halves around to get me distracted all the time. Besides, I met many friends once my work was done: two of my long-term darlings came back from Japan after visiting my sister (http://petitsuisseinformativo.wordpress.com) and we had a great time talking about their adventures. Moreover, I was given many charming presents that deserve their own post.

Though there are no pictures from last Thursday meeting, I have many others from a little assembly with my secondary school friends a short time ago. There´s something nice about meeting old friends, right?

Another good thing about this weekend is that I almost nailed down the details about my academic research work next year. It sounds like I am finally working on North American horror fiction in the first half of the XX century (specifically the work of H.P. Lovecraft and its circle). I am really excited about this as long as it is going to be my first serious experience as a literary researcher at university.

 Of course, I also spent some quality time with my mother and my youngest sister. She is twelve years old now and I can say she is following the personal footprint of the family, which means she is becoming a little nerd. I am very proud of her! On Saturday she made me drive her into the local human evolution event and she had lots of fun learning about Neanderthalis and Homo Antecessor. She aldo made me promise to take her to the premiere of Dark Shadows in Spain. She is a sweetheart, isn´t she?

Finally we went for some shopping together, and it was full of funny suprises. We found a little treassure to combine with the customized shoes my friend Morgan gave me for my birthday (above).

In general, we had a great weekend.

So tell me, have you done recent findings of any type?

 

How to stop being a Goth

This weekend a friend of mine let me know about a blogger who, some time ago, made a post about how to leave the gothic scene. The polemical entry was called "Style advice for gothic girls in rehab". It was published about one year ago but you can read it in the original website (http://acapulco70.com/consejos-de-estilo-para-goticas-en-rehabilitacion/). It is written in Spanish, so if you cannot read this language I am sure you´ll find many traslators online.

I read the post several times and dedicated some time to find out what made me feel exactly and why.

I felt deeply dissapointed by its general undertones, but also because of the sarcasm and little sensivity of the author. As a consequence, in this occasion I´ll be trying to explain in which points I think the writer is wrong and how her review is, from my perspective, offensive and poorly built. 

First of all, the introduction or approach is pretty belligerent by itself. I´m going to do my best for translating. After a couple of lines about common style mistakes during youth, it is said:

 "A goth girl who wants to change realizes that there is nothing as sad as a woman in her thirties striving to wear a vinyl corset and interacting with teens like the most natural thing in the whole world".

  Why do I think this is disrespectful? Obviously, there is nothing nice about saying that a person (independently of his/her preferences, tendencies and manners) is ridiculous just because his/her lifestyle is non-conventional. Out of this, I do not feel myself identified in this first description: I am nearly thirty years old and my friends share, generally, my age. I am a young adult and I have healthy relationships with classmates and colleagues at work. In relation to the "vynil corset", well, it is not my cup of tea but I don´t think wearing PVC makes you less than human. After reading the introduction one can start appreciating a certain kind of prejudice in the whole thing. Let´s move on.

The author goes on to describe what makes a gothic closet unmanageable.

On the one hand, she explains that every goth´s wardrobe is composed just by black items in a wide variety of clothes more or less ruined by the usage. Well, I think is pretty naive to take this for granted, isn´t it? Personally I (as many of other gothic ladies out there) like to wear a rich variety of colours, those includying purple, crimson, moss green, scarlet etc, and I do not wear old stuff outdoors. Old clothes are used at home if they´re cozy or just removed for making room to new things.

On the other hand, this person insists in the goth "tasteless" pointing that we all use ruined stocking and sexshop accesoires (?). As a solution, she suggests to classify our clothes in two different categories: Halloween products and garbage. 

 Then, she proposes to us getting all the fashion magazines we can find and/or checking an alternative post in her blog where we can read a list of fashionable basics, this way we´ll find style guidance. Everything here lacks of sense. First of all, this person is convinced that gothic style is based in cheap costumes. I checked her list about basic items for women and, as I thought, it was full of things that I own myself. What leads this lady to think that we (poor little creatures) do not have a pencil skirt or a couple of boots with cords if they are almost a daily basic for many our outfits? Besides, we are supposed to wear just current new fashionable stuff chosen by other people (the workers of Vogue, Harper´s etc) who do not consider our tastes or personality.

After all, the reader suggests to erase all our pictures from the internet, all our music from shelves and PC, and all our contacts from Social Nets (we can add her, she says, to start new and normal relationships). Moreover, we MUST stop talking to our friends. Delicious. 

Several people left comments in her blog but she was pretty rude with them, even when many tried to make constructive critics. 

I am not against changes. 

Many of my long term friends left the scene long time ago and I kept having a good relation with them because I love them as they are.

 The real sad thing about this post is that she defends that all those radical changes in our lifes have to be done because we are not normal. We are not what is desirable and, as a consequence, we do not have a real place in society. Society keeps the right to tell eveybody how to behave and this, my friends, is dangerous. Cultural studies and philosophy call this attitude alienation.

Risen from the Dead

The picture, the artist and the model.

Portrait by J. Carou

Hello, dears, how are you doing? I hope everything is fine.
As you may have noticed, I´ve been away from the blogosphere for a couple of months. This was not a decission, but an urgent necessity as long as my life went mad. After Christmas I started working hard for my semester exams which were really difficult. My current subjects were all about grammar and history, so never ending studying seasons became compulsory. I began spending five or six hours on the library in a daily basis. No time for books, movies, walks and of course no time for blogging. However, I ´m glad to say I got brilliant qualifications in this occasion, so effort was worth it.

                                                                                

The artist and I.

March came and my semester tests went away but I had to go back to my reading schedule for literature classes. Besides, I started looking for a new job because, sadly, my boss isn´t able to hire me anymore (damn you, financial crisis!).
My Easter holidays were not completely relaxing either (in Spain spring break is a little earlier), but at least I found little time for myself. I am even able to steal some minutes from day and recovering my blog at once. Besides this, on Thursday The Gentle One and I visited the art exhibition of a friend. We hadn´t seen her work before I am glad to say she´s a real artist. The whole collection was formed by hyperrealistic portraits. It was simply amazing.

                                                                                

My friend Elisa

Many of our pals went to the exhibition as well, so we had a great time chatting, drinking and tasting the lovely vegetarian snacks made by the place owners. It was really nice to break up the routine. So, tell me: what have you done to escape from the routine lately? What special plans do you have for holidays?

The girls just wanna have fun