terça-feira, 25 de janeiro de 2011
Scissor-Tired
I guess I'm feeling different than yesterday. I wouldn't say that's better or worse, just different.
The school didn't seem such a provocative place, it was full of paper cutting and colors, things I appreciate.
Drawing and cutting and singing French songs in my head, counting un deux trois under my breath.
Didn't know scissors could make me so tired!
segunda-feira, 24 de janeiro de 2011
The Girl With No Opinion
My head is bursting with the need to express.
I hear endless monologues inside myself to an invisible or absent audience. Or better than monologues, I hear entire lectures and speeches I give to the world and then I think, oh god, I've got to write this all down, where's a pen, where's some paper? But alas, none are to be found or, if they are, the pen stops at the first touch with the blankness.
Suddenly it becomes too much and words so little and ridiculous.
I wanted to follow through today and see where that led me and I promised to myself that I would not under any circumstance erase everything afterwards as I do so so so so (too) many times.
The school. The school, classes haven't even started and there's so much to say here. I am reporting as psychologist-english-speaking-student undercover spy. They all know this, but they don't actually KNOW, because the implications are undercover. I know there will be moments where someone will catch on to something that isn't quite right in the equation me being there in my position, but I my plan is just to keep them distracted and keep a low profile.
There are so many times when I just have to shut up, literally. Just be quiet, Maya, daze off, cut your little classroom decorations in silence and just go along, because there is so much I disagree with or that really bugs me in a lot of the assumptions or attitudes that go along the whole school thing. That sentence didn't even make sense but I'm not going back to correct or revise it. Let's just keep going. Kudos to you if you are able to follow. I have to shut up when I hear the English being spoken so poorly, I have to shut up when I see that the bilingual purpose isn't really present, or at least the way I understand it, or that way I LIVED it. Especially the way I lived it. I guess this isn't an EAB, I'll just have to make peace with that. Actually, I have made peace with that. It's a Brazilian school with Canadian liscence to kill and a whole lotta people speaking English. But it's not bilingual or multicultural...How can I explain? I can say this better in Portuguese - a vivência não está lá. Speaking English for the sake of speaking English in a classroom is not bilingual education. I have no idea where I get this from, there is no conscious theory behind this, I have no idea what famous person I would have to cite, I'm just getting all this from a feeling.
I guess it does annoy me, because I have to shut up so that people don't realize, by mere contrast, that they're just pretending something.
But in the end, I know they're not PRETENDING per se, they genuinely believe in all that. I don't want to be the one to crush their ideal.
Fine. So there's that about the school. And it broadens, there is so much more in my imaginary speeches and rampades.
It goes on to include anything that includes much of an opinion. I have come to consider myself opinionless these days...not really consider, I am discovering this little fact. Which reads into: I am discovering that I am quite indifferent to many matters nowadays. I am indiffirent to many things which if said outloud sound atrocious and unhumane. But truly, the indifference lends itself to irritation which grows into a much more embedded anger and temper tantrum with the world. I don't want to give an opinion because I don't care because I am angry in fact, with all this that makes up the world, at least the one I'm living in. So really, if the whole thing went up in flames, I think I would actually feel pleasure (see, the part about atrocious and out loud thinking?)
I read some psychology texts and I feel angry. It's all theory. Theory about something that is lived. Let me explain...like when I write a paper on some issue, I feel like I'm being so fake and unauthentic, for I am having to report to a theoretical level and make reference to other people who said something on the matter to talk about something that is lived. I live something, then I have to theorize about it, and the lived gets buried under that theorizing. It sounds like madness, it feels like madness.
I guess in this sense I am an artist at heart. I do not want to theorize, I abhore it actually, I want and need to express what is lived. That is all. I express what I live. And I need the expression to be pretty, I need it to be aesthetic to me, for then my world makes sense. The theory put on top of this removes me from what makes sense. Many times I read a text about whatever in Psychology, let's say, psychopatology or personality theory. Inevitably it happens that at one point or other I lose faith in the author or the text, for I get the gut feeling that this person has not lived what they are writing about and are talking about what they construct around the subject. For example, when writing about a patient, it drives me crazy how we are supposed to be able to describe what that person lives and interpret this based on some theory or model. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. For as much as we can listen and listen to someone talk, and as much as the setting is set up to give as much allowance for authentic showing, WE WILL NEVER KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE someone's life as they live it. We just can't. All we can describe is a construction that we made of what that life must be like. So, consequently, it drives me even madder that we are supposed to elaborate on this and interpret and give meaning (and values!!) to all this. What a crazy psychotic thing to do.
I feel out of myself at this moment, I literally am feeling removed from my body and I grow light-headed and faint. It feels like I'm leaning forward and almost falling, the computer is tilting in all ackward directions. But I am just here, and the computer is just here, nothing has changed. My muscles are cramped up in my shoulders, I wasn't aware they were scrunching up like they did and I wasn't aware that I am barely seeing the screen in front of me.
I need to stop.
domingo, 23 de janeiro de 2011
Albachiara
Let's hand it over to Vasco Rossi...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEj8vyNZAJI
Albachiara
Respiri piano per non far rumore
ti addormenti di sera
ti risvegli con sole
sei chiara come un'alba
sei fresca come l'aria
diventi rossa se qualcuno ti guarda
e sei fantastica quando sei assorta
nei tuoi problemi
nei tuoi pensieri
ti vesti svogliatamente
non metti mai niente che possa tirare attenzione
un particolare, solo per farti guardare
e con la faccia pulita cammini per strada
mangiando una mela
coi libri di scuola
ti piace studiare
non te ne devi vergognare
e quando guardi con quegli occhi grandi
forse un po' troppo sinceri
se vedi quello che pensi
quello che sogni
qualche volta fai pensieri strani
con una mano ti sfiori
tu sola dentro a una stanza
e tutto il mondo fuori...
tutto il mondo fuori!!
Years of ackward teenagedom came rushing back to me as I heard critique after critique of my clothes, my body, skin, hair and my glasses.
"Você é uma menina linda, mas
o MAS é uma apunhalada no peito...
mas, tem que dar um jeito nisso aqui...cabelo lindo..mas essa franja...(puta merda, as pessoas não entendem que não posso fazer nada agora, ela tem que crescer?!?)
mas, e esses óculos?
mas, a pele...
mas, essa blusa velha, não dá!
Eu sei que nem todo mundo tem que ter a sensibilidade de saber que já passei muitos anos da minha vida sobre-peso, com as roupas "erradas" e fora da moda, escondida e criticada pela minha mãe, desesperada para ter uma filha "bonita" e "normal". Que parasse de ler um pouco. Que dançasse um samba.
Depois de um tempo parei de ler quase totalmente. Aquele ano de 2007 em que parte da minha alma foi sugada e leitura era impossível. Em 2009 dancei um samba...parei...mas enfim estava em um lugar que ninguém falava muito mais do peso, do cabelo, o jeito, do assim e assado. Da pele talvez sim, essa nunca deu muita trégua.
Ai nesses últimos meses pensei em me resgatar um pouco...claro que haveria conseqüências, não posso dizer que estou surpresa.
Today just wasn't my day again.
Marcadores:
family,
I am in poetry,
irritation,
o passado no presente
sexta-feira, 21 de janeiro de 2011
Oh no, no, no...
And here I was thinking that Education was about love, encouragement and stimulation.
Oh no, no, no, Ms. Gestalt-Psychologist, there is so much more.
I had never really considered the political side of it all, and boy, what a shock yesterday, sitting in a meeting talking about, "what character traits do we want to instill in our children, what would the "ideal" child be and how can we work this into the classroom?"
Hein?
The world of Child Education...It is like Bible School, just with different names and objectives. I'm too used to hearing about "helping people become their authentic selves" that I guess I haven't been living in the real world of what actually happens. Well, I do know this on some theoretical level, but it came as a shock to me as I saw it right before my eyes and even better, that suddenly I'm expected to participate in this "school plan".
So far it's just a bit funny, that's all. I hope it doesn't become a bigger issue for me and that if need be, I can promote my silent revolution from the corner of my toddler classroom. That's the good thing about being a T.A., I'm not the focus of attention or training in the ideological sense.
On a horse of a different color, all this makes my need for words stronger and stronger.
My little words, arranged and re-arranged; researched, thought over, painted in white, in yellow, what about purple? I'm going to be a translator, dammit. Better yet, I AM A TRANSLATOR. It's pouring out of me, the potential, the need and LA VOGLIA. Sempre questa voglia. And I'm dead certain that I'm going to make it somehow, tread my own path.
Sometimes I wish I could grab words between my fingers, pick them up in handfuls, pour them into my mouth, organize them on my desk...have them wave back.
quinta-feira, 20 de janeiro de 2011
Maple Bearness
(warning: this photo has nothing to do with anything except that I loved the little rat and I mean, there is a bear...so...)
So, here it is, the "dreaded" first day of the maple bear experience (T.A. at a Canadian Elementary School here nearby), but lo and behold, it hasn't been dreaded! I have been dealing with this whole thing like I dealt with entering (and passing the test, actually) UnB and like I dealt with my first trip to Italy. Naivite covers the whole thing, no expectations, tranquility, hoping for the best, actually not hoping, just knowing that'll be ok.
I have missed this feeling!! Welcome back!
Reconhecimento de terreno
Some considerations:
1) Quando traduzi o texto para a OIT, adorei - me senti viva, desafiada e realizada. E paga.
2) Quando falo em outra língua para realmente me comunicar, I glow and I get the tingles in my toes.
3) I need to travel every now and then or else I suffocate
4) In Italy something in me speaks louder than in any other situation
5) I'm living here now. But that doesn't necessarily mean I always should or will. There are shorter courses I could try as a test drive of something...Like the language and culture courses at UnistraPg
6) Para tanto, tenho que planejar, economizar.
7) Tem mais um ano de pagar IGTB. Isso é uma séria dúvida para mim. seeeeriously.
8) Um plano: Terminar o ano, me formar...Trabalhar um ano na maple bear/outra coisa e juntar o máximo possível e não gastar em nenhum outro curso para poder fazer essa viagem. Montar minhas prioridades.
9) Traduções podem vir de outros meios, por meios de contatos. Thiago da Raquel, OIT, Luciana...
10) Não quero mais dar aula de inglês!! Eu sei que é um meio fácil de ganhar dinheiro, mas quero MOVE ON, fazer outras coisas, descobrir outras habilidades e interesses e, acima de tudo, POSSIBILIDADES!
11) Investir na pós de tradução depois, semestre ou ano que vem, depois de sentir essas novidades de 2011.
12) Estou escrevendo tudo isso no nível das minhas entranhas, o único nível no qual confio hoje em dia.
sábado, 15 de janeiro de 2011
E sentiti stanca se vuoi...
"Put a language in your head and get on a train (B&S)"
Non voglio essere una ribelle
Non voglio convicere tutti quanti
Che son cresciuta più...
Negli ultimi mesi che gli ultimi anni
Non voglio guardare per forza il cielo
Per poi sentirmi una sua parte
Non voglio nè stelle nè chi
Per essere stella si mette da parte
E la mia storia la so solo io
E insieme a chi... mi ha amata davvero
E che insieme a me ha preparato
Una valigia e mi ha guardata
Dicendo tu corri, non sentirti sola
Che sempre con te ci sarò pure io
E sentiti stanca se vuoi
Te lo meriti a volte, amore mio
(parte di una canzone di Giusy Ferrerri)
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)




