Saint George's Day

Let's talk about the best day in the year: Saint George's Day!
For me, it's the most beautiful tradition that we celebrate in our culture. I think is a magic date because the streets fill up with culture and gorgeous red flowers.
The rose has always been valued for its beauty and has a long history of symbolism. The ancient Greeks and Romans identified the rose with their goddesses of love: Aphrodite (Venus). Besides, Christians identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ and it was adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs too... Anyway, it's so perfect!

Above all, it's an explosion of inspiration. How many writings are created when this tradition arrives? This year, I've the honor to work in a book shop...it's crazy but really worthy! Everybody has to read something this day, everybody wants to discover a new book... people look for new stories, new adventures,... only for one day, most of the people believe in the reading's magic.

Beats of poetry

While I was rereading "Dead Poets Society", I found this O'Shaughnessy's piece of poem (page 56):

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

First of all, I didn't know why I liked it. But then, I realized that it was the rhythm and the rhyme that moves me. For this reason, I've come to conclusion, that this two elements are indispensable for poetry and music. What do you think?

Mobile phone terms

Today, it's been a cleaning day. I've tidied up my english notebooks and surprisingly, I've found a big list of mobile phone terms: abbreviations for writing faster and with less letters. It's an amazing slang! That makes me think that language is constantly changing.

So, let me show you some examples!
I'm going to organize the list in different levels:

LEVEL 1 (easy to guess it!)
ASAP : as soon as possible.
COZ: because.
DA: day.
EZ: easy.
H8: hate.
L8: late.
LV: love.
PLS: please.
NE: any.
M8: mate (friend)
Y: Why?
B: be


LEVEL 2. A bit more difficult! Go ahead!
NP: no problem!
PAW: parents are wathcing.
PPL: people.
SUM: someone.
TMB: text me back.
2MORO: tomorrow.
2nite: tonight.
RU: Are you?


LEVEL 3. That could be hard!
TTYL: talk to you later.
TYUM: Thank you very much.
WUD: What are you doing?
IyQ: I like you!
IM2GUD4U: I'm too good for you.
WYGOWM: Will you go out?
URA: You are a star! (this is impossible to guess!)


And what is the meaning of SMS? Do you know it?
Short Message Service!!!

Sublime

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, but of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

In aesthetics, the word sublime means the quality of greatness or vast magnitude. So, nothing else can be compared with it!
This concept comes from an ancient philosophy but in eighteenth century, there were a british philosphy that theorize about it. Shaftesbury and Edmund Burke are some of the most important philosophers. However, Kant talks about it, and Victor Hugo touched on aspects of the sublim in many of his poems.
They used to explain it with nature: big storms, huge waterfalls, volcanos erupted, heavy avalanches,...
In spanish, we can compare it with the increase of adrenaline...a "subidón" :).
There is a really famous painting that illustrates it. "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich. However, all the romantic paintings wants to find this concept: Turner, Friedrich, Constable, Dahl...Nevertheless, I think that in this aspect, Turner is the most representative painter.

Curiously, there's a music group called "Sublime". Awful! It's so pedantic!

Painting clouds in a canvas

Have you ever contemplated the sky and have thought: "I've to draw it"?

In the history, there have been some artists who has thought about it. Dahl is one of them. He insisted on the thorough study of the nature.
Johan Christian Clausen Dahl (1788-1857)is a Norwegian romantic painter who has revolutionized the landscape paintings of the XIX century. He belongs to "Dresden School", where the most important painter was the romantic Friedrich. I'm sure you've heard about him. However, I think that his real master was the nature.
Of course, Dahl's oeuvre has many types of landscapes: marines, with shipwrecks, moonlight scenes, pastoral idylls at sunset, ... but I only want to talk about his landscape studies. He's one of the pioners of open-air in the early 19th. He did little outdoor oil sketches of the sky, in different moments of the day because he wanted to explore carefully the changing processes of nature.


So, today I'm going to recommend something really absurd:
look at the sky!

Some comments about Cristopher

"And I kept my eyes closed and I didn't look at my watch at all. And the trains coming in and out of the station were in a rhythm, like music or drumming. And it was like counting and saying "Left, right, left, right, left, right,..." which Siobhan taught me to do to make myself calm. And I was saying in my head, "Train coming. Train stopped. Train going. Silence. Train coming. Train stopped. Train going"... as if the trains were only in my mind.

I really like the main character of "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time". In spite of his problem that today I'm not going to talk about it, I think he's a nice boy. He pays atenttion to everything, every detail. Maybe he could be so weird, but in fact, we should follow his way. For instance, who whatches carefully the patterns that there are everywhere in our lives? There are a lot of beautiful little things that we don't usually see but they exist, and they could make us vivacious.

I like the book so much. I think the writer, Mark Haddon, has managed to be the voice of the character, and he explains us perfectly his point of view. I think it's a great book for this reason. It's not easy to do it.

Some notes of Barcelona

Barcelona gets up at seven o'clock with the rhythm of the cars and the agitation of the little bars and sleepy cafés. It's like an old computer rebooting: a slow and lazy process like a ritual. I'm not sure if it could be the best moment to describe a cosmopolitan city like Barcelona. However, it's the moment that the city begins to smell. I like beginings more than endings. In a working day, all things go by naturally, without any motivation other than the routine. I prefer these kind of days, they are more pure than sundays or public holidays. I also like them because they often give me some ideas for a new story or a new article. Maybe you could understand me better if you take a mental picture of a journey by subway like I live every working day:

A business man talking all the time with their fashionable mobile, dozens of university students showing off their coloured folders, a pretty young women reading a book that you know, people with earphones listening canned music, strange and funny talks about what are Obama's familly wearing, hundreds of newspapers with ridiculous headlines (ADN, Metro, 20 minutos, !Qué más!...) and...sometimes there's something specially interesting than you could explain to your closer people.
It's really entertaining :).

Actually, my subway stop is in the center of Barcelona: Catalunya's square. There, I have to see a lot of poverty and people under the effects of drugs or alcohol. When I see them, I feel powerless because I can't do anything for them and moreover, I've been taught that I have to be cautious with these kind of people.
Maybe they haven't got up yet.


I think The Rambla is the most singular point of my city. I admit that it's so touristy but it offers a tree-lined way with lots of poetic places: little pet shops and flower shops, human sculptures, legendary fountains and lots and lots of historic buildings. I think The Rambla is like a tree: it has many branches with other stories. I also love the narrow streets of Gothic neighborhood!

PD: I hate something about The Rambla: the smell that comes up of the first bar near the subway. I've no idea what it is but it's disgusting!

Rain in my shoes

Today it has been a raining day, so I'm going to write something about it:

The rain always sounds. It's not music but it could be a rhythm.
The rain often changes your mood: there're some people who like it and there're who hate it.
Personally, I hate cold water, wet shoes, frozen toes and fingers.
However, I love listening to rain when I'm lying in my bed as I am in this moment, with clean sheets, after having a hot shower.
Besides, I like the raining aesthetics: puddles, gumboots, raincoats,...and specially, umbrellas.

I'm fascinated by umbrellas for many reasons. They are a classic complement that it has never changed. Maybe they should, I don't know. Moreover, in general they have bright colours and patterns. That's why they are objects that don't have to follow any fashion. People usually wear muted colours, so with an umbrella, there's a nice contrast.
Umbrellas have a curious form. It's a half sphere but ¡t's empty. Nevertheless, it's a dynamic structure. One day, my Renaissance's teacher opened an umbrella to explain the Brunelleschi's cupola of Florence's cathedral. You could understand it better with a picture:

That was a funny anecdote but it was a really illustrative class too.

Umbrella also opens the door to our imagination: movies like "Singing in the rain", coreographies, and my favourite romantic scenes!!



I love the image of a couple kissing under an umbrella while it's raining. The umbrella becomes a perfect shelter. There's nobody more in it, only the two lovers. I think is once and for all a magic picture. Last year, I used to paint lots of couples. I show you one of my creations:

Nursery Rhyme

My father used to repeat the first phrase of this Nursery Rhymeto me . He found it really funny, and I don't know why!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away
Apple in the morning - Doctor's warning.
Roast apple at night - starves the doctor outright.
Eat an apple going to bed - knock the doctor on the head.
Three each day, seven days a week - ruddy apple, ruddy cheek.

I eat an apple every day (it's my snack)! Should I worry about my health? I like this fruit because it's sweet and crunchy. Besides, it cleans my teeth. I also love Snow White's tale. When I was I child my dream was having Snow White's character in a play. I specially like the moment of the apple's bite. And this dream became true!