STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER

All you need is love!

I went to the movies the other day. I decided to go for "Across the Universe". It tells the story of a group of friend who move to New York during the 60s. It's about the hippies, drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll, friendship, peace vs. war, the civil movements, the struggles of youth and definitely also about love. The story unfolds to the sound of the Beatles. I was a bit suspicious at first, and once again, although I am not a Beatles fan they seem to be all around me here in NYC. Nevertheless, as the movie went on I completely surrendered myself to it. Above all it was a hymn to New York and I was in the first row.

Is there anybody gone to listen to my story

The reason why I am telling all this happens to be a girl. Better yet, two girls. So here it goes...

It feels so right now Hold me tight

JC (Jorge Cadete aka Jean Baptiste) was the first person that I had met in New York to leave. He was immensely missed. But now, I was on verge of losing yet again. I had met Soraia through some friends and co-workers. She was doing an internship with an NGO and was also sort of becoming a cultural attaché for me.

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true

It was friendship at first sight, since I tend to have it easy with people who hardly ever stop laughing. She was as smiley as she was feisty, but she was a good vibes kind of lady. Well Soraia, was quick to get on my good side and also shinned strongly as an example of "where there is a will there is a way!" She had the same academic background in International Relations and was on the road for some time building a name and creating her own path. She filled me with that strange superpower of belief that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Even bizarre coincidences like her ending up in Stuttgart soon after leaving New York... Another thing about Soraia is that her last name means Salvation.

I get by with a little help from my friends
Yea, I get high with a little help from my friends
O, I'm gonna try ith a little help from my friends

A month went by, some friends come to visit me and through them I met Lee. She also struck me immediately with her easy and honest words and everlasting smile. She makes you believe you can do anything, since she is a living example that a day has more than 24 hours. She is also one of those people who could make you start your own comedy show - she laughs at 90% of the things you say. (By the way, I am one of those guys who read the article stating that laughter is good for your lungs, heart, brain, soul and mood - long live the happy people with wrinkled faces!)

One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together right now over me

Later on Lee came to New York. We were going to the Block Party concert together. After the concert we started talking and immediately I was thinking of kindred spirits. We were having a conversation about moving abroad and the tolls of it.

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day...
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful, and so are you
Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

I had once read a Milan Kundera book. I recall a part where a woman is explaining how when you move for a long period of time you became a foreigner to everyone. You lose the identity of your homeland, people, friends and family, since for that time you have gone a different way, evolved differently from them. When you get back everyone has evolved differently from you and you feel disconnected. Furthermore, everyone expects you to blend in and act like it is business as usual, and not otherwise. What might have been one of the most incredible experiences in your life tends to be neglected, since you are obviously the only one feeling attached to them. On the other hand, you never became a true national on your new country, since you have a cultural and personal background that is different and can't be erased. So being, you are stuck in some sort of personal island. You are just an emigrant, a foreigner to all.

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

In the midst of this conversation, I realized once again how NYC was the perfect place to be an emigrant. Here everyone is an emigrant and so it is easier not to be left out. Another thing that was mentioned was that you always get fresh start. It is good to get away, see different things and experience a new life, but it is really hard at the same time to leave everything behind, meet new people and start new routines. Sometimes I think that people back home don't have the slightest idea how challenging it can be. We were going about this and Lee is really amazing to talk to, but I had to work the next day... I dropped her off with a friend and went back home, to "Canada".

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

I would eventually come across Lee one more time. I was having one of those hellish days and she bumped into me in Greenwich Village. I was happy that a friend would find me among 8 million people. I walked with her to SoHo and lifted my moods for the rainy days to come. Another thing about Lee is that her last name means Salvation.

Hey Jude don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better

The last night I met Soraia before she left for Portugal, I had just seen "Across the Universe". I loved it. She hated it. We spend a long time arguing. This is my tribute.

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And so goes the story of the two girls who could immediately save me from any bad mood. Whenever they were around laughter flew free and an intense light of hope was always around. They made me dream of the endless possibilities my life has for me to discover. That is the reward of going abroad...

Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

ps. thank god for mos eisley and for starting a trend!

Love is all you need!

MOVE IT BABYLON!

Am I dead, Angel? Cause this must be heaven!

New York is a gigantic pick-up bar. Bodies hover throughout the City and tend to flow towards each other constantly. New Yorkers must get some kind of human magnet implanted whenever they enter the City, either it is by birth, plane, train, boat, car, etc. It is completely amazing to witness this animal attraction, but a couple of drinks, some music around and there it goes… Some places just have a pleasurably smell of sexy attached to them and kinky is all around. I like to be among this atmosphere but I consider myself to be the silent observer, with a lot of theoretical non-proved knowledge, so maybe someone else’s opinion is to be taken in to more serious consideration. I am a warzone journalist taking pictures while people gladiate sensuously. I am the most boring guy to go out with…

Apart from being sexy, what do you do for a living?

Today I was talking with a friend and I said I felt I was a New Yorker. Probably this is the only “Not a New Yorker” tag I have attached. In my defense, if other people had my dancing partner they would gladly give into the some tag. Anyway, I sometimes must seem a superhero (at last!) because having a long distance relationship around here seems to be the Mission Impossible meets Ken (from Barbie). Not getting down to business is a mastermind trick all by itself and sometimes you have to stand alert and work those brains not to get cornered.

Are those implants?

Things here are so natural and easy that anything goes as a pick-up line. Even – whatever – works as a fair confirmation of interest. The New York Tourist Office should use as a motto “No matter how your sex life has been so far, here things will heat up!” As to love, it depends. My most romantic friend in NY constantly cries about girls not wanting something more long lasting – and his long lasting would be two or three weeks, because romantics have a whole lot of love to give. He longs for some feed-back, some caring attention. The way things work around here he is lucky that every time he goes out heartbroken he immediately runs into some good looking blond or brunette or Asian or African-American, or tall, or slim, or poshy dame eager to give him some comfort in that period of passionate desolation. It is a kind of consolation prize that works in never ending circles that leave him completely mentally and physically extenuated. Poor lad!

Screw me if I am wrong, but haven't we met before?

Tonight I met a guy who was trying to score with a friend of mine. He was devastated after his 15 minutes investment lacked to pay-off. Strange enough he turned to me for an explication. “Portuguese girls are not New York designed”, I told him. Persistence would probably do the trick. But in a fast-love city as this, who cares? It is much easier to turn around the corner and stumble into someone ready, able, and willing. It is like the joke about the unemployed psychologist in Portugal. NY style it goes: “I was walking down the street and kicked a pebble from the sidewalk – four gorgeous naked people who wanted to get me in the sack came from underneath it…” Back to the lonely sad guy in all honesty I felt like telling him, “Look at yourself you fat baldy, she’s just out of your league man!” I mean, you should have seen the poor bastard. But it is how it goes around here. Everyone is cocky, brave and confident. And generally that does the trick. In any case, where there is grass, football can be played…

I've just moved you to the top of my 'to do' list.

Truth be told, they have the right to be. NY is the kind of place where any eye to eye contact can be fatal. I one time went to a night club where everything was allowed and aloud. It was my Pink Zoo Night. A bunch of guys barricaded one corridor and a kissing contest emerged from nowhere. It was seconds away from a wet t-shirt contest and far beyond. Most of all this was not a special night out. It was just a common New York moment in a NY club. New York is just different and wild and if she is like this I imagine what sex destinations are like, Thailand for example…

Are you O.K.? Because heaven is a long fall from here.

Another thing is that you have got a whole bunch of fatties around here, and these are obese like you never imagined type of fatties and sure you have your get-out-of-here-you-ugly-werewolf-woman, but you also have all the supermodels trying to make it in the City. Above all around here you have a treat for every taste. The other day, as I was crossing Abercrombie on 5^th Ave, I noticed two models inside the store. They were human models for the store. The guy was wearing an open jacket and showing his perfect abs; the girl – all legs – was wearing one of those so New York “I can see your tooshie” mini-skirts. Conclusion – Sex sells and so being, around here Sex is omnipresent and all-powerful.

Were you arrested earlier? It's gotta be illegal to look that good.

A lot of people come from afar. I have met more NY-made than NY-born New Yorkers. This also adds to the feeling of both freedom and longing for some affection. This is an explosive combination leading to the need of a warm body to hold.

Hey babe, wanna get LUCKY!?

Overall, I also believe the Portuguese are too strict and still have too many taboos hanging around. I have the strong opinion that it has something to do with our Catholic heritage, maybe the dictatorship did not help and maybe there is also some connection with our collective behavior (in my opinion Portuguese are always comparing, analyzing and criticizing others and this makes us uncomfortably reserved and unwillingly shy). Maybe the feminine emancipation is also at a retarded stand still momentum. Boys will be boys in patriarchal Portugal, but from time to time I tend to believe we have reached an age where woman have control over the commands of the sheets (and more and more the wallets, relationships and everything else). With this in mind, it is up to them not only to give in to pleasure, but also it is coming more and more to the time when they must take the lead - probably today as men get continually “sensitive” in order to accomplish the gender equality, we sometimes miss that barbaric thrust that intoxicated our ladies (and still seems to do the trick!).

Hi, my name is …, I like peanut butter, wanna fuck?

I have another friend who is afraid of going back to Portugal since here he has no effort and it is all gain. There is no percentage of failure. He just has to be in a bar or club and eventually some yummy situation will present itself. Incomparable to the hard work and dubious results back home… The other day the Brazilian connection even came up. How Brazilian girls are much more open-minded, or willing (many times negatively described as sluts sometimes out of jealousy) and that is what makes them attractive to Portuguese men. In a land of beautiful women like Portugal there should be more sexual freedom. 90% of sensuality is made of felling good about your own body and about feeling good about yourself.

So do you fuck, suck and take it up the ass or am I wasting my time on a Jesus freak?

All this because tonight I went to the Guggenheim’s First Friday. I have been planning to go there since April or May. I had missed on Nouvelle Vague, but tonight was the perfect opportunity. Jazzanova was rocking the turntables and the new Richard Prince exhibition was also too attractive to be skipped. It was my first Guggenheim visit and a great way of starting my Museum cycle. (I have been saving them for the rainy autumn days!) The Guggenheim is on the 5th Ave. “Museum Mile” across Central Park and being there was one of those “I am so fortunate to be in NY” kind of moments. I was lucky enough to find a friend from work who got me in without waiting in line. I borrowed some money also… Richard Prince’s exhibition is really cool and his works are completely funny. I found three beverage tickets on the floor and complimented myself with a St. Germain cocktail. I hugely enjoyed Jazzanova throughout the night. As I got ready to leave I reencountered my luck in the form of a newly-found jacket and promised myself to return there soon. The Guggenheim was really worth it, as New York always is!

The only thing your eyes haven't told me is your name.

ps. and I suddenly remembered walking those gardens of Peggy with you. Giacometti and some kisses.

http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/richard_prince/prince.html