the spine of time

time is a difficult element to deal with. sometimes a rigid structure, sometimes a blurry fog... where's the spine of time?

in the period I was living in philadelphia my time was structured around my creative work, creating art was the spine of my time. As I had a grant, I could wake up in the morning to work in my projects and be working all day, without the worries of finding money to pay the rent. That peace of mind, gave me also an availability to be with people in a different way. I had time to make friends, just TO BE. Here in Lisbon, my time has no structure right now, I haven't found work until today. So last days were lasy, just feeling lost, without being able to concentrate myself in any creative work... I was still moving some stuff to my new place, dealing with some practical things like going to the bank, insurence, and also to try to read, organize ideas but... Without any particular objectif besides the one of finding work, I found myself walking around the city, without any particular direction, sometimes it was nice, lisbon is a beautiful city.




I feel tired and I am sleeping a lot. I guess this city makes you like that... I know I have to find a new spine of time everyday, but sometimes it happens that I loose its track...

Tomorrow I'll start a new job, a short one, just 3 intense weeks working in a documentary. My time will be totally different from these last days. I will be working with a brasilian crew and we'll be shooting in Lisbon and other places around the city I really like, also places where I lived before or where I shot some of my films. Later we'll go to the north of Portugal for a week or two. I think that will be very nice, to travel in Portugal, in the countryside.

en transito

hola amigas
hola claudia

te leo ...
a~noro sentirme como tu ...
sabes, la gente puede estar deprimida y triste en cualquier parte del mundo ...
claro, la novedad de salir de casa siempre es un factor que impulsa y lleva a unas fuerzas mas alla

y la realidad es que aqui en america nueva hay tanto: tanta tecnologia y facilidad para todo!
es verda hay mucho que aprender de aqui ... y mucho mucho que desaprender tambien!

tambien hay mucho que aprender de estar alla donde no se quiere estar! es balance...
entiendo que no quieras perder tu momentum ... eso es aterrorizante.

pero observa mira tu casa alla = espectacular!

por eso es que compartimos este blog por estar en el in bituin
ni aqui ni alla

yo conozco muy bien de esto

la verda es que por tres a~nos no he estado casi en ningun lugar
si no mas bien en un in bituin total
y ahora que voy a pronto aterrizar en un lugar = nueva york a fines de abril, me esta dando un panico!!!!

se dice que se quiere lo que no se tiene ...
pajaro en mano mas que ciento volando

o que sera que sera?

cuantas preguntas y vueltas da el mundo

la vida es una tombola tom tom tombola de luz y de color!!!!!

one step at a time forevermore

i trust you.

i am trying to trust me ...

love and good things

be were you're at that is all that matters for now.

this is my house in lisbon...

It's funny that since I arrived I am much more in touch with my friends from philly than from here. I mean I am meeting people here, but they seem so far away from me the way I am now, as I changed a lot but they cannot see it and it is very difficult to explain how people change deeply. Of course they want to know how was it, but what I can tell them it's just so poor... that's why I feel my friendships in philly are so important to me now and I wish I could be staying, because I really feel my life is there at this moment, I was feeling happy there, maybe for the first time, at least in such a continuous way, being able to integrate myself with my art and others, without limitations or boundaries... just experiencing that flow was amazing for me.

You say about "the ballad..." that is "simple, direct and human", nice choice of words because it's how I feel myself and I am happy that I could put that in my work. When I started making films I was very concerned about the form, not exactly the technique but how to put things, ideas, feelings into film form, how to create beyond the rules, how to make something new... I discovered the pleasure of the camera and editing and I found I was talented for that and found out that film was the way for me to expresse myself and the world around me. My master - an old film director who lived in Japan for 10 years - used to say I was TOO talented... For a long time I thought how is it possible to be too talented with the camera or whatever?

doing films I realized - and even more in my creative time in philly - that I was forgetting a bit the content, my feelings were not clear or direct or simple... my ideas were blured, poetic, but with my camera I could give some beauty to things, I could trick myself or my subject, give them the tension and mistery I was feeling. I was abstract and the communication with the public was possibly also not very clear, I was not trying to send any particular message or make a statement, I was just creating atmospheres, sensations, forms (narative forms, editing experiences and so on). And I still think there is a lot of beauty in my first films and I like them and it is interesting for me to watch them and see who I was, who I am now. I think that is one of the big reasons for me to do films: to understand myself better and the world around me and people and relationships and human condition... yes, the human aspect became more and more important and now I think I can create many different levels of experience in my films, one is more direct and others underneath, like layers - I guess I could finally do that with my new script (Mobile) and it was very important to do it in a script / written form because forced me to really think very carefully in every single detail and in the orquestration of the whole. it took me around 3 years to be able to do so. and that is what interests me right now, to be able to talk with people, to portray their lives I must get close and understand them, so I need to be simple and direct, that is the key I was looking for. America taught me that, not in the sense of the "story / plot" and the "message" but even by my understanding of english language, so clear and direct... that made me think in a different way, also the computers, which made me think more logically... which for me was good!

and now here I am, in a place where people get sad and depressed because they cannot do their art and because they have to wait so long... and I'm afraid to loose the energy I had in philly where I was feeling so inspired from everything and all the friends I got and all the environment was giving me that dynamic... being displaced there, without roots or attachments made me look at myself and all around me in a very different way and I got deep inside to search for new things also outside of me. Being displaced, at first, was kind of painful, then was an inspiration and lately I was feeling part of the place (I remember walking on the streets smiling, just because I was feeling so happy!) and now, it is here in lisbon that I feel like a stranger...

claudia

en sandwich [ed]

estoy aqui en la filadelfia [con la que suen~a claudia]
yo teniendo leves pesadillas de una tesis a la vuelta de la esquina

i am here in a sandwich of immediate past and up and close future
here in philadelphia [place claudia dreams of re turn ing]

all com press ed in the pre sent
voila here i am!

no place to turn to hide
in a sandwich in which the only thing i see is being here very present

with all that is as is.

i wrote this tuesday nite [saved it as a draft]
publish it tonite = thursday
and yesterday, the day in between it finally snowed- lightly flurries- [t]here: philadelphia
now here = NY
it is very cold now. actual winter here now.

In Between ... past and future.

In Between ... past and future.
I finally graduated from college here Philadelphia, the city Claudia misses and the city misses Claudia. I'm in between past and future, difficult past in Tokyo, great past in Philadelphia, and unknown future that I wish to be full of joy and discovery, even with some pains, I'd want to take it.

Where I'm going to be?

I've been in Philadelphia since summer 2005, came here to just finish my undergraduate degree. It was simple. I was planning to hate America, finish school, and go home where all my friends are.

then what happened?

Philadelphia has became my central place of creation, where I can come up with ideas, work on stop-motion animation, and getting support for it from people. It has grew in my heart so much.
I discovered the strongest passion for stop-motion animation production with great creative partner.
If I go back to Tokyo, I won't have space and film equipments to shoot animation, and people who support me and encourage my creative activity, and no more collaborative work with my partner!
Yes, I'm really afraid to lose all that. Tokyo is full of reality that hurts me.

Nothing goes as I plan or expect. In another word, I think there is no connection between past and future. You can't cling to either of them. We all have to live in this moment, even though sometimes we become ghosts and lost in past and future of ours, with sentiment, sadness, happiness, and dreams...

Oh Claudia, Mr.Consumption has accepted to one of the small film festival!

THE BARDO OF IN BETWEEN

For Claudia, who is just back in Lisbon, so happy to see you...soul 2 soul

Life is a flow and in this flow we construct and disconstruct our identity at every moment with every new experience. Like everything , identity is impermanent, just take a closer look, we are changing with every breath and step we take.
Who am I ? who is this I actually ? where is it ? it is forming and unforming, in evolution, in revolution, like a spiral. I is just a reference for organising experience, some kind of harbour for consciousness in our dual world. My body is the home for that no-body, for the I is like the waving of a tepistry. like Penelope, I undo it a night, because of the pretendants...
Identity is wild as the elements, under special circumstances it dilutes, dissolves, cristalises, evaporates, like water it is flexible and can can adapt to all lanscapes but it can also grow to a flood and kill you. We all know some people kill others in name of identity and pertenecy to an identity.
Identity is always in transit. it is THE place in between, but we don´t even notice it...
Life goes through it for there are no bounderies for the life flow, no borders, no countries, no you and no me and that is what we have to learn here, to love without obstacles.
In the west, through the speed of technology and material life, people are getting to discover they are in between. In between countries, places, homes, cultures, constructing identities that are so complex a patchwork that their original idea of identity crasches, often toguether with their sense of security ( the purpose of all this identity stuff anyway). It is an irony that in the material , highly technological and scientific part of the world, this fact is just beeing discoverded now, unfortunately, toguether with the collapse of anthropological diversity, through globalisation and speed of life.
In tibet ( or what is left of the tibetan culture) , we are entering now Loosar, tibetan New Year, and it will be the year 2133. Tibetans have always had a word for describing in between . It is called the Bardo. Everything is a bardo, we are always in transition between a state and a new state. So life itself is a bardo. Death is a bardo. Becoming is a Bardo. That is why all is a flow. That is why I do Taiji. To express that flow. In Taiji, I discovered, in the beginning you pay attention to perfection of postures. Then you start realising the transitions are important. Then transitions get more important. In the end, the posture stops existing, because there is no more, beginning or end posture. That is when you transcend the form. Stillness in motion, the motion of stillness.
that is where west met east inside of me.
Gabriela

limbo in NYC

New York is my limbo now. an empty zone to rest and think about the past year living in the states.
a space of transition between Philadelphia and Lisbon, literally in between.
a time for friendship - thanks Noemi! do nothing, just to be...

a space in between
to rest, to sleep, to be overwelmed, to be afraid... to be sad... so many things happened... I feel confused, I want to come back... I don't want to go home... what will happen?

no words, just silence...

in New York I discovered a
super silent land!

on the streets

I was downtown to buy the device to be able to have wireless internet. Since I arrived I am disconnected and I feel kind of detached, almost isolated in this new reality. I need to start working and for that I need to be online.

So this morning I woke up and went out by car. It was humid and foggy. When I went down the hill I couldn’t even see the river. I parked the car in my old neighborhood, I got my usual spot (where there’s no need to pay) and I could see the windows of my old house, the one I lived in before I left. The curtains have flowers now. I walked down the street and everything seemed very familiar. But it was not a particular happy feeling, just a dry memory. It’s interesting how there are so many little memories that were lost for so long and then appear, so vivid. That is happening to me a lot, not just on the streets but when I open a box and find some object that remind me a story, a relationship with someone, pasted moments… But this time I feel very distant of all that. I see the city and people walking in it in a different way. I can’t really identify myself here. And now that feeling is much more clear than before. Even if there I felt like a foreigner almost of the time, I know now that I do prefer that feeling than to be a stranger in my own town. I was having these kind of thoughts while I was walking and looking at people on the streets

It seems to me they are rude and disrespectful. I hate the way men look at women on the streets. I really get mad! I have forgotten about that too. It’s also amazing how many older people I see on the streets, it’s like there’s no youth in here, that’s kind of frightening, how is it possible to look at the future without young people? That feels sad, as the time has stopped here. And people walk so slowly and they look so alienated and sad. Their bodies are rigid, self-contained, self-repressed… I spend all day trying to connect me to the internet and it didn’t work. An entire day and I couldn’t had the internet hooked up, it is so frustrating…

new year

I started moving into the new place yesterday. It’s such a beautiful house, very good energy, very quiet, it’s feels like countryside not the city; the air is fresh, super-silent! :) I still feel tired from the trip, I still can’t sleep well, still lost in time and space difference... I am landing, first the body, then all the rest… I feel I needed to create my own space after more than a year abroad living in rooms in a foreign city. This house is perfect for my actual state of mind: it doesn’t have any doors or walls as boundaries, it’s all connected. It’s not exactly an open space but all the spaces communicate between themselves in a very organic manner. I feel I’ll read much more here…

Last year I spend the New year’s eve in New York City in a nice party with people I didn’t really know. This year I’m home, a new one, once again. The weather is warm and the river was beautiful today, a little bit foggy in the morning, silver when the sun was shinning. Even that seems out of reality. I mean… for some things is like I’ve never left, but doesn’t sound like real, it’s strange, like I am living in a dream… it seems all my feelings here are activated by subliminal memories, things that I’ve never thought about it for a long time but they are the ones which give me a sense of belonging. I can’t even think about any example to make you (me) understand that, it’s just a general sense. With friends as well, it’s seems we saw each other just yesterday and that is a very good feeling, is the proof that friendship can remain...

About work I don’t have any idea what is going to happen. This week was just to land, spend some time with my family, to move in… I am still trying to understand what I feel – still feeling overwhelmed! It makes more sense I guess. And it’s strange that I am not connected, I mean, online. It will be a delay between my writing and the time you’ll read this. It’s more like a letter, which is not bad necessarily.

As I told you there’s no wireless in Portugal, I mean, not like America – everything is so slow here --today was the second time people thought I was a foreigner, which is funny… and looking at people on the street I think I can kind of understand why. People here look so constrained, so passive, so slow and afraid... I think now my body language expresses a certain awareness that people here find like foreigner. Maybe that’s why I feel I don’t fit here…

air

I am in the airplane, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s night outside and I am a little bit confused with the time. It will be 5 hours difference. I am seating in the middle of a boing 747, listening to Suzanne in my laptop. Finally I am crying. I can’t help it… Around me people are sleeping, others watching films in little screens. Lonely and bitter this feeling of being crying in the middle of strangers.

I am in the plane to Lisbon now. I got a seat by the window. In London they are in the terror craziness! Just a bag allowed (impossible!), people walking in the airport without shoes, laptop in my hand… London is foggy and cold. It’s dawn. The plane just crossed the clouds line. Surprisingly the sun is shinning and the clouds bellow reminds a land of ice. By the window it’s warm and that feels so good…

hmmm. Just fall asleep for a bit… We are getting down to Lisbon already. The plane makes an unusual direction and crosses the river, goes until the beginning of the ocean and crosses the river again. It’s all so blue! The airport is in the city, so we flight very close to the buildings. The structures are not very aligned, but the new highways create a new landscape, things I had forgotten about Lisbon and all that is beautiful.



Just got to my parents house a few hours ago. Just eat and talk after driving by the river and ocean. I missed that blue…There’s no wireless internet in Portugal ☹ and I can’t configure my computer to their internet, I don’t know why… anyway I’m too tired to try, I’m using their computer, like that I don’t think I can use Skype... I’ll try tomorrow again. The fireplace is working in the living room by the Christmas tree and that feels comforting, but the house is very cold. Here houses are not prepared for cold… people thinks it’s always sunny and warm but inside it feels colder than Philadelphia. My sister will come soon with the kids, it will be nice to see them, I’m sure they grew up in the last 6 months. That’s so much one misses when being away… My nephew started primary school last october, he’s now 6. She’s 3.

I came to rest in bed but can’t sleep. Listening to Suzanne again… I have a lot to do tomorrow… have to buy the car insurance so I can drive to the city, see the house to rent, see some friends… I feel I need to make a lot of decisions and I’m afraid I can’t find work easily… I just don’t feel prepared to be here…