lust but not least

Here I am with monday madness again.
I simply love lists, games and memes, I think I'll go for more...

1. Name 1 comedy movie you've seen.

Not talking about my face in the mirror, I suppose...


I'm a bulimic movie eater, there are too many movies I'd like to name, so I'll go for this one, which has no competitors..




2. Name 2 black and white films you remember seeing.

I've got this thing for very old German black and white movies. I love the expressionism and the vibrant energy in the scenes, the dramatic music (most of them are silent movies where only music talks) and most of all the real love for cinema, every single framing oozes with interest and experimentation. It must have been such a thrill for directors such as Lang or Murnau to be involved in the newly born art..

3. Name 3 dramas you thought were worth watching.


I thought they were worth and I still do. Different from each other, they all cut me in the deep. The Piano is one of my favourite movies ever.
As for Woody Allen I like his movies so much that I can even forgive him tasteless things like Melinda&Melinda..


4. Name 4 television shows you watch on a regular (or semi-regular) basis.

These are almost the only things I watch on tv:
1)E.R (I hardly survived Dr. Benton leaving the show.. there are things a woman simply shouldn't go through...)
2)Desperate Housewives
3)Sex&the city (for the zillionth time)
4)Six Feet Under

5. Name 5 things that, in your opinion, are advertised on television too frequently.

"Everything" is not a valid answer, is it? ok but... did you ever take a look at italian tv or italian advertisments? It's almost all about sex and empty-headed women so.. mmm.. let's say
1) telephone companies
2) phone numbers you can call to buy cell ringtones and games (don't know if they exist out of Italy, I hope not for the world's sake)
3) frozen food (exception made for Sofficini...I'm addicted to them and totally in love with the little chamaleon-reptile-whatever in the commercial..)
4) silly and expensive children toys
5) diet pills/anti-cellulite pills/livehappyandcareless pills..

Yesterday Minnie stayed for the night.

I like having her home, when we're both happy it's like having a pajama party, we laugh until we snort, have hot chocolate and talk about men, sex and life till we fall asleep.
When one of us is blue or angry, spending the night together is our way to run for cover. To cling to a life belt made of chamomile and fluffy comforters.

This time was of the second kind. She had a fight with her kinda boyfriend, the Horse Whisperer I'll call him, and she called me asking for company, trying not to think about what a rough moron he's been and about his clumsy manners that really piss her off.
We went out for dinner and talked about it a lot. She talked. I listened. There wasn't much to say, it looked she'd made up her mind. Looked she finally saw that he's not enough for her. Not sensitive enough, not funny enough, not even polite enough. So I think she'll call it quits.

Isn't it a good sensation, I thought? I mean, being in control. Having the last word, somehow.
Leaving someone hurts us - oh, it does - even if less than being left. It doesn't change the fact that we end up being alone (which is not so fun), but it makes us feel stronger at first. Or so I thought because it made ME feel stronger, in the past. Now I understand that, in my case, it was a misleading sense of power and strenght. Don't get me wrong, it's good to make the right decision, to be brave and choose and all that stuff. You know, better alone that in ill company.
But for me, for my obsession of being in control, my sheer terror of letting someone else taking the helm, well... it wasn't healthy at all. Learning to let myself go has been the most precious lesson I learnt from loving Mr.Charms.

He made me feel home, safe and sound in his arms' nest and I'm very grateful because now I know what I'm looking for in a man. Thanks to his reassuring attitude I learned to be a sweeter person, a cosy home for a man to come back. I finally got the point that I had no real need to be in control, because real life cannot be controlled or stopped. In good and bad. See what a gift our story gave me? As the saying goes, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Oh, this doesn't mean that in the end he's not been a real asshole who'd deserve to be eaten by an army of red ants.. Gosh, it would be great, uh? I'll post a picture of that when it happens.. LOL..

Tonite Sam invited me to dinner at one of her friends'. She's nicely introducing me to some friends of her. I like meeting new people, like the way people talk when meeting for the first time. I enjoy small groups when everyone can express his/her feelings and people really look in each other's eyes.

This evening I expected to meet one of her friends, a smart girl she said. It showed up to be a girl I already met and talked to some months ago, and which I actually liked. I met her in June or so, in a lovely village in an island near here. She was with some friends of Mr.Charms' friends and he actually didn't know her too.
So our meeting tonite was quite funny, you know all that stuff about who could have imagined and what a small world this is and blah blah.

All fun and pleasant till this.

- This story's not over yet. He needs you more than you need him. This doesn't mean he's not having some kind of affair with another girl, now. I mean, he surely is seeing someone else. Yeah, maybe a 3B (big-boobs-blonde). But that's not the point. The point is: this story is not over yet.
- Well, I hope you're wrong. Anyway I don't think so..
- I'm not telling you that he'll come back with flowers and a wedding ring. I think he'll come back because he's sexually bewitched by you as you are by him. And this makes the story unfinished.
- Lord, you really don't like me..otherwise I can't see why you're wishing me such a crappy future... I don't want to deal AGAIN with undecided men who beg at my door once in a while, mess with my heart but don't give a shit about me in the end.. I want to be happy and content, I don't care if it's not with him, I just want to take care of myself now and to do so, have to cancel his face and his presence from my mind. So I CANNOT THINK ABOUT HIM COMING BACK IN A FEW MONTHS, after who knows what.
- You MUST think about yourself and take care of your life, do what you please, go out, meet your friends...just wanted to tell you that he'll come back. Some day. Cause it's not over. It can't be.

Talk about the worst eve to a boring Sunday. Talk about feeling like breaking a bottle of beer on her skull. Couldn't she just shut up and keep all that "I can read omens" stuff for someone else? Why did she need so badly to psychoanalize me/him/the rest of the world?
Why did she feel the urge to be so blunt?
And why am I so scared she could be true?

This is my result in "what kind of food are you?" test... My goodness!!

You Are Italian Food

Comforting yet overwhelming. People love you, but sometimes you're just too much.

As cute as she can be. That's Minnie. She's young and lively, sensitive, understanding and reliable. She works in a car rental, looks forward to getting a degree in Anthropology (in less than 1 year, we hope) and has quite a definite idea of what she wants to be in the future. Her smile rarely fades and her bright eyes are always sparkling with interest and curiosity about people's life and friends' feelings. I cherish her motherly manners as much as her smart sense of humour. I cannot fully handle with the stiff attitude she sometimes has and the pride that keeps her away from people when she's angry. But time spent with her is always filled with laughter and coziness, girlish talks and true confessions. She's my little sister, my younger side, a shining star.

I met SikBros some three years ago, attending a briefing to start a new job. He sat in the front row just like me, and seemed to already know all we were trying to learn. He was so silent and serious I felt bashful. A few days after that a mutual friend introduced me to him and we all decided to study together to pass the final test. That's how I discovered he was, simple as this, the perfect friend. We liked each other by instinct at first and since then the bond between us has grown stronger and stronger. I never experienced such a non-sexual deep love for a man - except my brother, and maybe that's why everyone at work thought we were siblings. I left that job 2 years ago and our time together is less than it used to be. This makes me sad at times, but it's ok. We keep in touch with daily mails and meet as often as we can. He makes me laugh till I'm out of breath and I could spend hours listening to him talking, whatever subject he chooses he knows how to make it interesting. And, oh, he can bake the biggest and crunchiest pizza in town!!

Seaweed lives in a town 1-hour-plane away from here. She's in her late thirties and one of the most interesting women I've ever met. She's sophisticated though very concrete, she can range from fixing broken stuff with hammer and nails to a formal dinner at the Japanese Cultural Institute. She has been through so so many rainy days though is as sunny as a June afternoon. I'm amazed by her strenght at work, her being so trustworthy with her family, her sensitiveness when we talk. She's the one I rely on for making my thoughts clearer while sprinkling hard things with irony and humour.
We've seldom met during the last 2 years - plane tickets are not so cheap - and I'm looking forward our new sabbath!! ;-)

These are some of my dearest friends. We're very different from each other, our connection lies in the deep and I couldn't do without none of them!

Just wanted to show you all how beloved they are. Just wanted to say thanks. Especially to SikBros who just invited me to lunch!

I'm so hurt I can't tell. I'm so hurt I cannot seem to collect enough English words to make a sentence. I'd rather write in Italian but it would be too painful. This is some kind of a shield.

I just came from my counsellor. After our talks I usually feel if not good a bit more hopeful. Or a bit more sensible. Or whatever but this lousy crappy desperate garbage.
It's like my blood ran away, I'm cold as a stone and feel I could faint in any moment.
I'm drowning. I'm re-living all I went through when Mr.Charms left. The same void in the middle of my chest, the same cold, the same fear.
And the same rage and fury I tried hard to deny. Lord, I'd beat him with a baseball bat if I only could reach him.
I'm angry at myself for how much I trusted him and his feelings, for how I've let my feelings show. He talked me into our story, I was reluctant and somehow shy, now I can say I was afraid of letting myself go. But I eventually did.
Now I can say he was unconsciously trying to make a point out of it. He was (and is) emotionally unexperienced, he was... well, kinda practicing love for the first time. And you know how it is, it's like growing up, after a while you feel you can fly with your own wings.
He felt his power over me. He felt empowered by what he had proved to himself. Lord, he felt a man. He felt he could live without me just when I felt I couldn't do without him. I've let him have so much power over me that now he has the strenght to run away forever. I feel stupid and naive for all the pain and suffering I'm trying hard to survive at, while he's going out with friends and making out with some other girl. Ok, maybe not yet, but that's not the real point. I feel lost. All of my rationality is gone, stolen by his cruel words and his sudden runaway. There's no use in crying but I can't help it. I'm numb and a total wreck. I feel sooo old. And I don't know how to forget, turn over a new leaf, face the loneliness and survive. Is there a way to believe in ourselvers, to believe we ARE worth?

Today's a copyandpaste day, so here I am with monday madness

I spent a very relaxing sunday with my ex family-in-law and this morning I felt like staying in bed for one month or so, just wanted to have a hot tea with milk and read a book I bought on Saturday, which actually I don't like but don't want to give up...

Wish to post something else in the afternoon..

1. diamonds or pearls? Pearls, everywhere (earrings, strings, rings, whatever). Yet, a huge solitaire is not so bad.. ;-)

2. paperback or hardcover books? Hardcover for those I read on the couch, in perfect silence, sipping a mug of hot chocolate, with the cat on my lap. Parperback for those I would read at the beach or wish to share with friends.

3. carpet or hardwood floors? Carpets in all rooms but the main room (too many cats sharpening their nails on them...)

4. dogs or cats? cats, of course!

5. fluffy or firm pillow? Fluffy, until I'll be able to do without.

6. fine point or medium point pens? Medium or even bold

7. clocks a little fast or on time? 20 minutes fast for my morning alarm (I hate hate hate waking up) , on time all the others

8. mahjong or spider solitaire (or other)? Mahjong, Free Cell, Tetris.. whatever keeps me from working...

9. wall calendar or desk calendar? Wall calendar, but I actually don't like calendars.. I forget to look, so they're useless...

10. 'Survivor' or 'The Amazing Race?' erm... well.... WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY??

Today I started my morning here at work quickly reading some of my favourite blogs and rambling through the news. I casually met with this blog. I have to admit it was a perfect way to start (life knows so well what we really need) and that's where the quotations come from.

I don't feel like working at all. The new offices will be ok in a few days, we'll soon move there and... well, the new rooms already make us feel we're the stars of a fiction. Yeah, Six Feet Under, the corpse role. Lord, you ought to see it...the "open space project" has been dropped for weird wooden brown cubes. I wonder how we're going to even put desks in those microscopic niches where just an urn would fit!!!
Yeah, I shouldn't be so old fashioned, what's wrong in lighting candles and praying on the floor, surrounded by (tiny) flowers, just to say, instead of sitting at the desk for a change?

Don't want to sound too sarcastic but I've been in an awful mood for the last two days. I argued with one of my co-workers and wanted to fight with all the rest of them. Yesterday evening I lingered on the thought of choking one of the girls in my aquagym class - and folks, it felt soooo good just thinking of it.. - so maybe it's time for me to take a break. Try to have some real fun.

Which always leads to the same inner question: how on earth am I supposed to have fun or feel good without Mr.Charms????

"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
~Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), American psychologist

I'm afraid this is the answer. I mean, I know perfectly well that I will have fun and feel good and lighthearted and so on and I hope it won't take too long. It's just that I can't feel it'll happen. It's just that being rejected makes me feel I'm the most unworthy trash in the universe, no matter what.
Things happen, if Mr.Charms doesn't love me anymore it doesn't mean that nobody will. He is not the problem. He is just the smaller part of it. It can sound obvious to many but no to me.
Don't get me wrong anyway. I deeply feel for him and I miss him so so badly it hurts at every breath. Clearly enough he does not and I have to face it. 'Cause this is my hammer and nail, the eternal dilemma: I could even face losing someone (sooner or later) but it seems I can't face being abandoned.

Not without some (lots) of the hard work mentioned below...

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." ~Carl Jung, (1875-1961),Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalyst

First comments have arrived. Don't know if it's because of my English and how I write or because of the things I write but some of you just labelled me as strange.. thank God nobody said weirdo, but who knows? maybe in a few days... :-)
I feel flattered and sad at the same time in seeing myself reflected in people’s words, it’s a completely new sensation.. have to taste it a little bit more before knowing what to say… except that writing is sooo soothing, obviously. And that today I’ll take a break from love pangs and talk about something else.

It’s a rainy and boring afternoon here at work while I write my daily post. As cazface says, I know the internet here should be just for work but…
Our offices are being renovated and transformed and at the moment they look like a seething ant heap, with masons and workers talking aloud and swearing just one step away from my desk. The final result should be kind of an open space (instead of single rooms) with artificial lights and air conditioning (instead of windows..) where a dozen people will fight, mutter nasty words, hate each other as hell and try to poison each other coffee.. Ok, ok, that’s too much… maybe they won’t mutter..
At the moment I don’t know if I’ll keep my current position (I’m the only one in a single room), but I do hope so.
It’s not some kind of “I’m afraid of changes” thing. Not at all. It’s just that I love my little window and that tiny piece of sky I can see.
It’s not that I don’t want to adjust myself to new things. No no no. But you see.. no natural light, no natural air (while we could have kept it all), 8 hours a day, eating your lunch at the desk.. They could just put a wheel on the wall and call me a hamster.
It’s not that I can’t stand the people I work with.. it’s just they’re so so so annoying that even their screens turn black not to reflect their faces. Isn’t this a sign? What? Screensaver? Mmm...that’s just ONE possibility!
I actually get on quite well with a threesome, they’re humorous and smart and they’re good in what they do. But I have no words for the rest of them . They’re all women and the smartest thing I heard from them was something about those awful china objects meant to be given as souvenirs at weddings (if you’re not Italian you may not understand this, so thank your God). Of course they were “delighted” and “thrilled” and all that stuff for checking a catalogue and helping one of them in choosing the best (???) monster… souvenir, I mean.
So, can you really blame me for having them all slaughtered with a stapler? I mean, for wishing to keep my room…

Today's the day. My youngest cat just learned to use the cat flap. Like Alice she goes through the mirror, leaving the kitchen and landing on the terrace-wonderland. She's 4-months-old and has lived in my flat for three weeks now, sharing space attention and food with my older cats. The male has accepted her but the female simply left the house and at the moment she lives in the terrace, sleeping in a cardboard box like a homeless and refusing food if I don’t stay next to her. She's always been a bit weird, I took her home from the city cat orphanage in late 2003, struck by her ginger fur and her quiet manners. She was already 6 years old or so, and was said to be "quite peculiar".. actually she immediately showed a funny personality that made us all call her Gollum.. she still comes in search for cuddles AND looks behind her back in fear for a serial killer or something.
The male is a siamese-like 1 and a half years old hurricane. He can open doors (and working on unlocking), has a smart look in his clear blue eyes and the awful habit to steal everything eatable in the house, especially cakes or bread. In fact I'm afraid he's looking forward to have diabetes or become a Sumo fighter.
All of my cats came in different ways and different moments, but they have one thing in common: they always came when I needed comfort and felt like taking care of someone when there was no one willing to be taken care of.
The only exception was my first cat. He was a pink-blonde male named after the white cat in Disney’s Italian version of Alice in wonderland and I adopted him while I was still living with P. He was huge yet not fat, and went totally crazy for chestnuts and pizza. We used to take a short nap together on the couch, laying on one side, his furry legs tied around my neck like a baby, until P. called me for coffee and cookies. He was so much more than a cat, he kind of answered when we called, loved the people I love and flirted with the people I would have liked to flirt with. He sat on my lap like a kid when I had tea with friends, made everyone laugh with his human-like manners and left me on an awfully sunny day, poisoned by a neighbour.
When I found out I cried sitting on the floor. Everyone who’s lost a pet friend knows how it feels. After him I had some other 5 cats or so, and I enjoyed having them all, but no one has ever reached my heart the way he did. No one has ever shown the need for my attention the way he did, no one has ever really been MINE.
If there’s a lesson in life (and I’m sure there is) maybe this is part of it.
Feeling that someone needs us and our affection seems to make the difference. Knowing to be needed make us feel we’re worth.
This is the first step. But this shouldn’t be the measure to give OUR love in return.
Accepting the others’ independence, learning to love without engulfing the other or being absorbed by him. Learning that real life is a non-stop improvement only if we want it to be, and something better is always waiting for us. IF we don’t stop walking. Maybe what we need it’s just one more step away.
Besides, while the first pet is unforgettable, absolutely unique and irreplaceable, with men is totally different…

Think I sunbathed for the last time this year. Yesterday was a shiny hot Sunday and I went to the beach with my hilarious sweet ex almost-husband P. He went swimming and I laid and rested in the sun. Read a few pages of an awful book he had and tried to enjoy in spite of the grip in my stomach. That's how it felt, for all the day and night until lunchtime today. I never stopped thinking about the man who said to love me but left in the still of the night three weeks ago. I'll call him Mr.Charms, just to say a name.
Anyway, back to my sunny Sunday with "ex n.1". I hoped his company could lighten that stony grip I had inside, he's that kind of man who makes you laugh till you cry and let go of all your dammings. We were a couple and lived together for almost a decade and now we deeply love each other in a brother&sister way. You know all that stuff about the roads that part in growing up? yeah, that's us. I'm lucky to have him as a friend and I know he feels the same.
He's sincere and real, tender and funny.
So why am I so restless after a day like that instead of being happy for not having spent in on the couch watching tv, drowning in my own self-pity (I could make a business teaching people about self-pity..)?
I think it's 'cause I'm tired, weary and sick of collecting wonderful EX somethings..! Which basically means that I'm tired of being an EX myself. I want to be something for someone in the present, not only in someone's past. I want to be now and not then. I want to be a lover, flourishing in someone's hands, sharing and sprinkling joy as a fountain, not storing, accumulating feelings and waiting for something to happen. I'm growing up (good) but also getting old (not so good), and I'm afraid that when that Prince Fckuing comes I'll be too deaf and blind or scared to even notice. Ok, ok, maybe I won't be deaf or blind..only in my menopause!

Today I'm off work and woke up late, staying in bed as long as I could until the phone rang and a friend entered my silence. Getting up late is a very elementary way to make time go by almost without noticing, and it's MY way to run for cover. As long as you stay tucked in bed, in this artificial uterus, life cannot harm you. Or so you hope. Anyway, as pain is starting to soothe - because it is, thank God - I'm feeling much more comfortable staying home with the kittens and taking care of everyday stuff. Only a week ago the silence and the emptiness of the rooms here were unbearable, as I sat on the sofa cold as a stone trying hard not to call him and pleeeeeeeeeeeeease-come-back-weep over the phone.
Gee, how useless and vegetable we sometimes allow ourselves to be..
That's why today's recovery plan includes:
1) baking 24 devil's food cupcakes
2) starting a knitting project that's going to make me look like a real sexbomb
3) having friends home for a pizza&movie night
As for tomorrow, do you think some Scarlet O'Hara line would do?

posting for the first time and feeling a bit nervous. that's what it is.

after breaking up with their lovers some people get a haircut, start a trip all over Asia, stuff themselves with cakes and cookies and ice cream (ok, not so bad for a few days...), force friends to go out and "start again with life"... some write music (Alanis Morrissette to say one, built quite a fortune on being left and bereft)...me, I start blogging.

Not so much of a reason, you think?
Well, if it keeps me away from a chain saw and a slaughter I think it's definitely the best thing I can do at the moment!!

Can't wait to know HOW it went, WHY he left, WHAT we did and all the rest?
Well, don't know if I'm ready for that, think I'll settle for a little chat before diving in the deep...

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