A girl who writes

Date a girl who writes. Date a girl who admires the calligraphy of Ancient China more than the latest fall line. She has ink smudges on her fingers, sometimes on her cheeks. Date a girl who comes with a list of unfinished poems, underdeveloped characters, incomplete plot lines, who has been writing since she could read.
Find a girl who writes. Look for the girl with frazzled hair and a pen behind her ear. She’s the one who spends hours deciding which new notebook to buy, only to cave and buy three, the one who rarely makes a grammatical error. If you were to search her bag, you’d find scraps of paper with incomprehensible notes and pens whose lives have ended a long time ago. That’s the writer.
The girl who writes can be seen anywhere, if you look for her. The girl who writes is always looking at you, and anyone else. She knows inspiration can be found in everything. She’s the girl you’ll find on a park bench, pen behind her ear, another in her hand, jotting down things with great, great concentration, just because coffee shops are loud. She will however be carrying coffee in a travel mug. If you looked inside the mug, you’d notice the coffee was finished – the girl who writes needs caffeine like water. Bum a cigarette off her. Notice her eyes give you a full appraisal before she hands you a cigarette. She’s profiling you.
Say something.
Don’t ever start by asking to see her writing.
Tell her something you’re sure she never knew before. A random fact, even. This will grab her attention. This will make her think, ‘what kind of plot twist is the stranger offering to the protagonist?’ When she brings up e.e. Cummings and Plath, don’t act like you know who they are if you don’t. She will test you. Ask her about them. Ask her about her favorites. Ask her if she’d like to go see a movie with you.
Always surprise her.
In reality, it’s not that difficult to date a girl who writes. Accept that she will not show you anything she’s written until she’s ready. Understand that sometimes her stories aren’t developing the way she wants and she will be angry, bitter. Be patient, be jealous of her love for worlds you can’t even begin to enter. Buy her new books, new pens, new notebooks. Surround her with words. Dedicate songs to her. Leave little notes in her lunch bag. Words, for the writer, are more intimate and personal than a sensual touch. She hears their whispers, feels them, embraces them.
If one day, you walk into the house, and she’s in a foul mood. There are pages scattered everywhere. She’s watching TV, which she never does. Don’t ask. The words got the best of her. They put up a wall and as much as she pleaded, as much as she paced, drank coffee, took a bath, went for a walk, pace some more, as much as she played with synonyms and antonyms, made comparisons, expanded the plotline then brought it back to where it was, she could not get through the block. Don’t bother comforting her. Buy paint and a canvas, let her attack it. Carry her to the bed and let her attack you. The girl who writes does not need soothing and comfort, she needs an outlet to rid herself of the overbearing emotions that are sadness or anger. Before she can write again.
The girl who writes knows exactly when a break is needed in a story. The girl who writes expects a climax. But the girl who writes is also almost never in control of her story. The characters dictate to her what they would like to do next. The story is as thrilling for her, the writer, as it is for her close sister, the reader. She relishes in these surprises, in these sharp turns, in these unforgiving assesments. She dreams of the day when her story, her life story, will be as classic as Poe or as tormented as Brite. This day that she waits for, this will be the day her story will begin.
On the day when she timidly, a deep blush rising on her cheeks, extends a bundle of loose sheets of paper, some old, some new, towards you, you’ll know you’ve successfully captured the heart of the girl who writes. Read everything she has given you, unless she stops you. Recognize, and tell her, about the beauty of her words, the conviction of her prose, the pain behind her poetry. Don’t look at her with pity when she hands you a poem about a broken heart – following it, you’ll read one about you and how maybe her heart was not so broken after all. In any case, the girl who writes does not accept pity. She is the amazon goddess of the writing world. She is the soldier, the fighter, the good guy. She is stronger than a house of bricks and her writing keeps her demons in place, holding them down and releasing her.
Date a girl who writes because she will change your world. She will bring color into your grays. When you propose, she will have known for months that it was coming. She could read your body language from miles away. She will say the simplest phrase you have ever heard her say – yes, I do – and then she will begin to carefully craft the story of your lives. Through ups and downs and births and deaths, through funny family moments and trips to unknown places (in search of new inspiration), through misadventures and inky cheeks, through everything, anything, and all that is not yet written, the girl who writes will be the doe-eyed, love-struck narrator of the story and you, her forever after knight in shining armor.

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.
Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.
Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.
Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.
Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

hay secretos que se guardan porque podrian hacer daño y otros que se mantienen ocultos por el siemple hecho de que nos incomoda revelarlos.

Nana´s philosophies for life

When my grandmother,  passed away a few years ago at the age of 90, she left me with a box of miscellaneous items from her house that she knew I had grown to appreciate over the years.  
Among these items is an old leather-bound journal that she aptly named her ‘Inspiration Journal.’ Throughout the second half of her life, she used this journal to jwrite down ideas, thoughts, quotes, song lyrics, and anything else that moved her.  
She would read excerpts from her journal to me when I was growing up, and I would listen and ask questions.  
I honestly credit a part of who I am now to the wisdom she bestowed on me when I was young. Today I want to share some of these inspiring excerpts with you.  I’ve done my best to sort, copyedit, and reorganize the content into twelve inspiring bullet points.  

Enjoy.

1. Breathe in the future, breathe out the past.  No matter where you are or what you’re going through, always believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Never expect, assume, or demand.  Just do your best, control the elements you can control, and then let it be.  Because once you have done what you can, if it is meant to be, it will happen, or it will show you the next step that needs to be taken.
2. Life CAN be simple again.  Just choose to focus on one thing at a time.  You don’t have to do it all, and you don’t have to do it all right now.  Breathe, be present, and do your best with what’s in front of you.  What you put into life, life will eventually give you back many times over.
3. Let others take you as you are, or not at all.  Speak your truth even if your voice shakes.  By being yourself, you put something beautiful into the world that was not there before.  So walk your path confidently and don’t expect anyone else to understand your journey, especially if they have not been exactly where you are going.
4. You are not who you used to be, and that’s OK.  You’ve been hurt; you’ve gone through numerous ups and downs that have made you who you are today.  Over the years, so many things have happened – things that have changed your perspective, taught you lessons, and forced your spirit to grow.  As time passes, nobody stays the same, but some people will still tell you that you have changed.  Respond to them by saying, “Of course I’ve changed.  That’s what life is all about.  But I’m still the same person, just a little stronger now than I ever was before.”
5. Everything that happens helps you grow, even if it’s hard to see right now.  Circumstances will direct you, correct you, and perfect you over time.  So whatever you do, hold on to hope.  The tiniest thread will twist into an unbreakable cord.  Let hope anchor you in the possibility that this is not the end of your story – that the change in the tides will eventually bring you to peaceful shores.
6. Do not educate yourself to be rich, educate yourself to be happy.  That way when you get older you’ll know the value of things, not the price.  In the end, you will come to realize that the best days are the days when you don’t need anything extreme or special to happen to make you smile.  You simply appreciate the moments and feel gratitude, seeking nothing else, nothing more.  That is what true happiness is all about.  
7. Be determined to be positive.  Understand that the greater part of your misery or unhappiness is determined not by your circumstances, but by your attitude.  So smile at those who often try to begrudge or hurt you, show them what’s missing in their life and what they can’t take away from you.
8. Pay close attention to those you care about.  Sometimes when a loved one says, “I’m okay,” they need you to look them in the eyes, hug them tight, and reply, “I know you’re not.”  And don’t be too upset if some people only seem to remember you when they need you.  Feel privileged that you are like a beacon of light that comes to their minds when there is darkness in their lives.
9. Sometimes you have to let a person go so they can grow.  Because, over the course of their lives, it is not what you do for them, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them a successful human being.
10. Sometimes getting the results you crave means stripping yourself of people that don’t serve your best interests.  This allows you to make space for those who support you in being the absolute best version of yourself.  It happens gradually as you grow.  You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you’ve known forever don’t see things the way you do.  So you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.
11. It’s better to look back on life and say, “I can’t believe I did that,” than to look back and say, “I wish I did that.”  In the end, people will judge you in some way anyway.  So don’t live your life trying to impress others.  Instead live your life impressing yourself.  Love yourself enough to never lower your standards for anyone.  
12. If you’re looking for a happy ending and can’t seem to find one, maybe it’s time to start looking for a new beginning.  Brush yourself off and accept that you have to fail from time to time.  That’s how you learn.  The strongest people out there – the ones who laugh the hardest with a genuine smile – are the same people who have fought the toughest battles.  They’re smiling because they’ve decided that they’re not going to let anything hold them down, they’re moving on to a new beginning.

Tengo ganas de escribirte en este papel toda mi inspiración… 
Tengo ganas de escribirte las palabras más dulces que nadie te ha dedicado jamás… 
Tengo ganas de escribirte en mil versos todos los sentimientos de mi corazón… 
Tengo ganas de escribirte en tu alma mi nombre y dedicarte una canción… 
Tengo ganas de escribirte en el tiempo nuestros recuerdos y nuestros anhelos 
Tengo ganas de escribirte en el cielo que tu eres el más hermoso lucero… 
Tengo ganas de escribirte en el viento el susurro de mi aliento la vos de mis sueños
Tengo ganas de escribirte en todos mis pensamientos, en todos los momentos…
Tengo ganas de escribirte que te amo…

que te extraño… 

 que te espero…