...

Time
by Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Who had this brilliant idea
of cutting the time in slices
Slices which were named YEARS
He was a genius individual who
got to industrialize hope
by making it work to the limit
of the exhaustion.

12 months are enough to make any human being
get tired and have a breakdown.

Then, it comes the miracle of renovation
Everything starts all over again, with another number
and another wish to believe
that from now on it is going to be different.

Happy New Toe!

I know I said that I'd only return here next year. However, something has happened to me that I needed to register in a post. Those things don't happen every day, so I couldn't miss the chance to type about it... I know it is not really important, but it has been painful.

I remember that around this time last year, I wrote a list of my New Year's Resolutions. I have kept all the same resolutions for this year again, since they are timeless sensed, they will be all true for 2006. I'm on vacation still and don't want and don't feel like posting anything different for now... but hey? I'm typing something here... Too late! I'll say it... It's about my foot... more precisely, my right big toe!!!

Funny that I also needed to talk about PAIN, but my pain has been a lot more physical. I got my right foot toe sprained or twisted, don't know how to describe exactly! Just imagine a foot that was folded in half. That happened while I was trying to rescue Tibby from an imminent death. She could have been slaughtered by the neighbor's dogs. "...what a nice way to start 2006..." i know it! I had to climb up a tall wall that is when the accident happened - bad landing... ouch!

I'm a mix of weird and irresponsible person for this I didn't rush to the hospital... No I didn't do any bandages or rub any medicine on it. I just let it hurt... I did check on the web some sort of tests to find out whether my toe is just sprained or actully broken... so here it is:

How to Know if Your Toe Is Broken:

Trying to determine whether your toe is broken or just badly bruised is sometimes difficult. When in doubt, see your doctor. (how come there are steps to find that out, if only doctors can help? Aie aie aie)

Steps:

1. Remove your shoe and sock, and feel for any deformity. Gently run your fingers up and down your toe. If your toe feels crooked or lumpy, it's more likely that it's broken than sprained. (My big toes have been crooked since I was born. And now what?)

2. Wiggle your toe. Severe pain suggests the toe is broken. (Wiggle? What the heck is "WIGGLE"?)

3. Listen to your toe while wiggling it. If you hear a grating or popping noise, a piece of broken toe bone may be rubbing against another piece of toe bone. (I've pictured that description, oooouuuch, it hurts more now!!!)

4. Check for swelling. If your toe is puffed up double its size and the skin is stretched, you may have broken your toe. (Gee! If my toe swelled double its size, I think I'd noticed it. It doesn't look that bad, but it does hurt like hell...)

5. Compare your injured toe to the same toe on the other foot. If the injured toe looks shorter or deformed, it may be broken. (Ok, now then I see. It's broken, or it could, may, might be possibly broken... I still don't wanna see a doctooooor!)

6. Check your temperature. Within 2 to 3 hours after a bone breaks, the body's natural defense mechanisms kick in to raise your temperature. A fever above 99.6 degrees F suggests the toe is broken. (I felt it warmer two days ago... no, I won't accept it!)

7. The only sure way to know if your toe is broken is to have it X-rayed. (Oh great! So all the PAIN that I had to go through by taking each step of this test was just a huge waste of time???)

Apparently my right toe has passed all the tests! It's getting fine... I'll be OK!!! Hubby placed some ice on it... That helped! Tibby has thanked me for having saved her life... That also has helped! My brother-in-law sent me some soothing photographs of the most amazing places of this planet... They are helping forget the pain! Later, I'll ask him if I am allowed to post them here. My mom too has done her part. She's sent me a living room set for Christmas as a total surprise. Now, I have more reasons to prostrate my fat body on a comfortable sofa and do absolutely nothing.

Vacation Self-Portrait Tuesday!!!

Be back next year!!! Gone resting!!! ;-D

ME M e mmee...

I received through e-mail, for the second time, a personal questionnaire from Marcele. "Marcele, I just now realized that I wrote your name incorrectly in that post I'd dedicated to you." The idea is to reply the email by listing our own personal answers. Some of my responses may shock you, Marcele. But y'know, it's been a long time we don't meet so many things have changed in me. You'll get over this. We always get used to new things... hihihi

1. What is your full name? Laila Christina de Bragança Cavallera Onasis von Murdoc.

2. What color pants are you wearing? Light brown, it's made of jeans and stretch. I love the pockets of these pants.

3. What are you listening to right now? German Beer drinking songs - Ja, ja, ja das ist wahr!!!It's a CD that a student of mine bought at an Oktober Fest!

4. What was the last thing you ate? A chocolate barr.

5. Do you wish on stars? Nah!

6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Red. Love red. It's not my faaaaaavorite color, but it coats well.

7. How is the weather right now? Damp, a little cold, and foggy - not a typical day at this time of the year.

8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? To the mother of a student.

9. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Marcele has sent me this me-me-me list of questions. I've posted here, just scroll down this page, a text that simply says it all about this lady. What else can I say? I simply love her!

10. Favorite drink? "Red" wine.

11. Favorite sport to play? Sumo Wrestling. I nail it.

12. Hair color? Dark Brown.

13. Weight and height? 1m 63cm, 60 kilograms.

14. Siblings? Jennifer, 25 and Fernanda, 22.

15. Favorite month? January - it's my birthday month and the birthday month of many people I love and care.

16. Favorite food? SALMON - raw, grilled, broilled, fried, roasted... SIMPLY SO GOOOOOD

17. What was the last movie you saw? Donnie Darko - for the fifth time!

18. Favorite day of the year? October 31st - Halloween!

19. What do you do to vent anger? I cry/ I write/ I draw/ I cook/I study/ I email friends/I clean/I mess/I blog/

20. What was your favorite toy as a child? An old red Remington Typewriter.

21. Summer or winter? WINTER

22. Hugs or kisses? Both.

24. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? Wth? I'm posting my answers in my blog... HIHIHIHI

25. Who is most likely to respond? No one, since I am not sending the answers to anyone. I've done it before - about a year ago in fact.

26. Who is least likely to respond? I have no clue (I'll keep Marcele's answer).

27. When was the last time you cried? Yesterday. I cried but right then I was kissed and comforted.

29. Who is the friend you have had the longest? Lu, or Luciana. I´ve known her since we didn't know what alcohol was.

30. What did you do last night? I watched a movie, had beer, and pizza.

31. What are you afraid of? Raising a monster as my kid.

32. Describe yourself in one word? FREAKINESS.

33. Favorite car? I ain't a good driver. Hate drivers in general. I don't pretty much care about cars.

34. What´s the thing you like doing the most in your life? Writing, teaching, cursing, studying, learning, scratching my ear canals with cotton swabs, reading, listening to others, eating, drinking, melting stuff, having the jitters from a creepy good psycho-thriller movie, and talking to the ones I care.

35. Favorite flower? I hate the sun, but I love Sunflowers.

36. Who do you admire? So many folks: J. M. GONÇALVES; FERNANDO PESSOA; GARCIA LORCA; LUIZA VALENZUELA; MAIAKOVYSKI; TOLSTOY; UMBERTO ECO; FRIDA KAHLO; FAULKNER; EDGAR A. POE; CHARLES SPENCER CHAPLIN; CLARICE LISPECTOR; ALLIGHIERI; FREUD; EDNA PURVIANCE; MARIO PRATA; HILLARY SWANK, ISAAC EPSTEIN; DAVID BOWIE; ALAIN TOURAINE; KUBRICK; NIETZCHE; JUDY DENCH; POLANSKI; BOB BURNQUIST; HEMINGWAY; BEAUVOIR; SHAKESPEARE; JOHN CLEESE; CHARLES SANDERS PIERCE; BARTHES; SAUSSURE; CARLOS DRUMMOND; SUSAN SONTAG; MARLON BRANDON; SAMUEL BECKETT; OSCAR WILDE; FRITZ LANG; NOAM CHOMSKY; GOYA; MUNCH; MIRO; BURROUGHS; BORTOLOTTO; MAGRITTE; KANDINSKY; NERUDA; POLLACK; DALI; CHICO SCIENCE & NAÇÃO ZUMBI... and some others that I could not remember to name here.

37. Type of job? ESL teacher, writer, and translator.

38. Favorite day of the week? Mondays.

39. What did you do for your last birthday? I went to a nice restaurant with Roberto (my hubby).

40. How many states have you lived in? 1 in the US and 3 in Brazil.

41. How many cities have you lived in? 1 in the US and 4 in Brazil.

42. What do you collect? Pens. I have thousand of those: scented, glittered, colored, classical, kids-like, ballpointed... all kinds.

43. Favorite kind of music? Polka, Nordic Folk music, and Celtic.

44. If you could be someone else rather than yourself, who would you be? I'd be a male version of me... I'd be called Lailo and I wouldn't have pms... GREAT!

45. How many languages do you speak? Portuguese, English & Spanish. I've studied German for 5 years now and I also took two semesters of French back in college, but with not much headway.

46. What was your coolest trip ever? To New York City.

46. Most beautiful city: São Paulo, all the way.

47. Sexual symbol: Benício Del Toro.

48. Where will you spend your next vacations? Vacations... What is that? Can anyone gimme the definition of this word???

49. What are the places you´d like to visit one day? Marroco (Marrakesh), Mexico (Montrrey), the Amazon (Manaus), and Thailand (the entire country).

50. Describe the person who sent you this: Marcele is an angel to me. She's a totally free-spirit. She's a one-of-a-kind young lady. Marcele's smart, sweet, friendly, a complete human being! I simply love her and the fact that she's my greatest friend of all times!

awh... those buttered slugs...

I've always said that humans are pathetic material. There is nothing more pathetic than an individual with diarrhea. All started two weeks ago. I still don't know what caused this 'malade'. I've probably gotten food poisoning - "I should've simmered those slugs longer", or maybe I've drunk something that made me sick -"There should be caution signs on bathroom walls saying that toilet water isn't drinkable - damn!"

I just know that I've been like that for the last two weeks. I can't eat anything because my body cannot hold anything. I feel like melting from inside... (10 minutes pause to rush to the ladies' room...) I'm back! Wow! That was stinky!!! Where was I??? Oh, yeah - diarrhea!

...And the most pathetic is the irregular schedule that this condition put us through. It's truly insane. I need to leave classrooms in the middle of lectures to take that watery crap... yew... But i am the one who's lecturing for God' s sake! That just turns the situation a lot more embarrassing. I'm just lucky enough not to have my family around for Christmas. I bet I'd have my bowels working while on the streets buying X-mas gifts. I also have my sleep disturbed three or four times during the night so that I don't soak my bed sheets with that caramel fudge... Uhmmm! I am feeling like having a sundae now. Damn again! I'm not supposed to have any sweet stuff because it can worsen my condition. How pathetic!

I've already...

Looking stupid or goofy in front of others is something so easy to me. I am a teacher so that explains why I get involved in embarassing situations quite often since we, teachers, are always needed to speak in public, be around the crowd, and try to get attention from so different folks. This way I can say that I am the queen of bloopers. Even way before I turned a teacher, I' ve always found myself in silly situations like tripping on the streets downtown, bumping into tables or chairs, getting physically sick and having to vomit in front of classmates... Gee, the list is endless...

• I've already sneezed while singing in a choir our national athem in a elementary school when i was seven. The worst had not been breaking the song in the middle of an important passage. The problem was having splashed a liter of this green and sticky catarrh straight to a girl's curly hair who was standing right in front of me; I could not hold my nostrils since we had our hands busy holding the songs lyrics;
• I've tripped and fallen countless times. The worst was falling and sliding my ass down the stairs of a church altar on the day of my first comunion. This time was not my fault since they'd required us to wear those stupid long garments that made us look like the pope. And I have also invented a new hobby - falling off from revolving chairs - it is necessary to get some fast spins a little before your body gets to collapse from that piece of furniture. I highly recommend this new passtime because it can really amuse people around you.
• I've already recited poems and sung in public... Ah, I may've forgotten to say that ducks and pelicans reach better tunes than I am able to. I've sung drunk in karaokes. I've sung non-drunk in small stages of conservatories and city theaters. I normally sing while driving - like to check out the faces of other drivers when they see me chanting -. I sing all the time while pissing in public washrooms, cooking, correcting tests, and lecturing all the time. I've already gone up a stage of a british pub in the USA with an elderly originally from Liverpool and we sang "TICKET TO RIDE". His wife even got to film and picture that rare scene of a boozed old british gentleman singing Beatles with a drunk Brazilian chick lost in Uncle Sam's land. It was exquisite, I must say.
• I've let a whole lasagna get burnt - I had simply forgotten it. The worst was to know that that lasagna was for an important dinner that my parents were going to serve at our place. I was not so young when that happened. Shameful. By the way, forgetting things is my best talent : I always pay for my grocery shopping but sometimes I forget to bring them home; I've already planned to barbecue and forgotten to get the beef. I've already gone to Blockbuster to return films without the DVDs, or to the bank to make a deposit without the money... it nevers ends...

PIZZA FRIDAY BLAST

Check out this photolog! It is Felipe's - my sweetest pupil. Blog readers, you will get to see a snapshot taken by me of a great ESL group of students from my school. I snapped that photo in the lounge two weeks ago. Pitty that many folks could not show up. "PIZZA FRIDAY" - that was the name of this cool day. We ended up having 12 different flavors of those. I even had pizzas leftover for the rest of that weekend. I'll post the pizza shots next time. What is the coolest thing is the card they're all holding. That is an ID-card from our school granted to them exclusively on that day which gave them a password to access our brand-new on-line English pronunciation laboratory. We were so having fun that day!!!

Paying homage to this beautiful lady:

This one is to you... ... ....

Marcele , you are a cute girl... "cute" is too shallow, you deserve greater and better word. You are simply gorgeous. Yeah, blog readers, she's gorgeous. She's astonishing in her outter and inner beauties. I love this young lady. I may be sounding like Sassy who wrote a post about her great friend Liza (or LiSa... dunno???) some weeks ago. I don't care if I seem to be imitating someone else's blog. In fact, Marcele has done it too. In her last post, she decided to write a few nice things about some weird folks - I was included in the list. Sure! Thanks, girl!!!!!!!!!!!

Marcele Aires Franceschini has been a great friend of mine for a long while. Our friendship grew during college years. Pitty that we live so far from one another. Although, the distance has never messed up with our connection. She's got this shiny aura, don't know exactly how to call, that sort of energy that glows on her from miles. She's a free-spirit pal who has the most powerful talent to develop and understand literature to its deepest surfaces. Her imaginative mind has inspired me a whole lot. I just can't believe she called me a "philosopher"... That was wildly great!!!

Like you did to me on your own blog, I also copied and pasted here a picture of you from ORKUT ...And not only that... I'll publish here my very first passage of a post in our mother language. That was my response to a topic in your community about the movie "Last Tango in Paris". The topic we were discussing was about those invisible "bridges" that connect souls, people's lives... You know, those crazy thoughts about syncronized experiences and encounters of fate. This bridge that has connected us is made of concrete and poetry!

Sometimes our lives' bridges get to cross!...

"...Sei que está falando de amor; mas terá que admitir que amizades são essenciais para uma vida equilibrada. Lembra Mar, que te conheci pela primeira vez, de verdade mesmo, lá no vestiba da UNESP no final de 1992 em Presidente Prudente???? Te conheci pela Patrícia, com quem tinha feito cursinho em Londrina naquele ano! E ela... a Patrícia, acabou morando comigo em 1993 em São Paulo, para fazermos o cursinho do colégio ETAPA no bairro São Joaquim da capital paulista. Lembro-me tão bem de ti naquele dia de prova... Também, com essa sua luz que irradia até em sala escura de revelação de filme fotográfico!?!?!?! Você estava com uma saia enorme, estilo indiana, e usava óculos redondos com lentes azuis quase metálicas. Quem diria que em 1994 nossas pontes se cruzariam nas salas de aula da Universidade Estdadual de Londrina????? Quase tive um ataque porque te reconheci, mas não tinha certeza... Mas... Sim... Era você!!!!!!!! Sabe que sua amizade preencheu em cheio o vazio que a Pat deixou comigo! Depois que saí de Sampa, nunca mais nos falamos. Exceto pela troca de algumas humildes cartas no começo daquele ano fatídico para mim: 1994... HEHEHE!!!!! SMILE BABE!!!!! I am already having a blast with these words... Te adoro pra caralho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "

Curiosity Fact: I can't agree more that I am f***ing weird. You are so RIGHT!!!!

Brill, Zest, and Fab

ADVERSARY

My rouser’s edge

Focusing on you

Dealing with you

Dealing with the adversity you bring

To me…

my loved ones,

my people,

my world…

Adversary

Source of all adversity

You are not my enemy

Without you

I could not relent

Without you

I could not grasp

My rouser’s edge

• By 'D.

...by my Pessoa

Fragile Little Sister

by Laila Chris

Little sister was never listened to. So she ran away. Went to a place where she thought good listeners would be there. Later on, finding out she was mistaken, little sister took a plane. Settled down in a distant land where no one would listen to her again, after all the local community did not even understand her mother tongue. Fragile little sister then decided to try once again, for the second time, to move away; so she packed, tied her hair all up, took a deep breath and jumped off of an airplane. The parachute luckily worked. Little sister landed on a deserted soil. This time she knew no one would listen to her because there there was not a trace of human existence. There, there were only her lungs. She yelled. Screamed to the top of her voice - no echoes whatsoever. She was again not being listened to... not even by herself... She then realized that running away in order to be listened to was not right. That was cowardness. Waste of time. She prayed to die. That was her only way-out, but nothing happened. In the end, little sister noticed that she wasn't being listened to because the others were in fact deaf. They would never listen to her even if they wanted to. God had made them deaf. God did NOT want her killed, so little sister cursed God. Since He could listen to her... since He was the only one who could listen to her... He made her deaf too!