I've been reading...

Yesterday I decided what would be the main subject of my final these at the Polytechnic. It is something I start liking some time ago, just meanwhile I become more interest about the identity of the cities and how the field professionals such as architects, designers and researchers could decode, analyze and try to understand the city and its habitants given signs to produce new ways of dealing with this relationship.
That studies, will not only give me the opportunity to enhance knowledge, become aware of the history and culture of the place I am living, get to know all the urban, migratory and economic processes Torino has been through but also and mainly try to develop a suggestion for a new visual identity for the city.
Well, that is just the initial thought. I have to figure out in what scale should I work, for example my own neighborhood or the entire city? Or even the metropolitan region composed by small cities around here? I'd say I prefer the small scale, such as Borgo San Salvario.
My own quartiere has a lot to do with the West European and African immigration into the EU richer countries and the traces of cultural mixture are everywhere. I'd like to be able to connect and integrate all this people from abroad and try to make them feel here as their home too. Creating this connection with the places, ones tend to become more respectful and take better care of things as well.
I believe also that this have to do with the feelings and sensations such as happiness, contentment and joy in spite of the madness of the uncontrolled urbanization and the high speed of contemporary relation processes ands the giant amount of available information.
I don't know, but maybe that's the reason people get unhappy and unsatisfied nowadays. For me, the open possibilities and the enormous information access create a feeling that every effort you make to try to follow the moving events of life seams not enough. I feel this often. Even trying to do as many things as possible to keep going, I have this feeling that I'm letting some things behind. And that sometimes make me sad.
But that was just a thought among all the context reflexion.

Well, I'll transcript a part of the back cover describing this book I'm reading written by the Italian architect Mario Botta and a well-known psychologist Paolo Crepet called Dove abitano le emozioni - La felicità e i luoghi in cui viviamo.

Le nostre emozione dipendono infatti anche e sopratutto dai luoghi in cui passiamo il nostro tempo: i colori, la luce e l'organizzazione degli ambiente possono generare solitudine, benessere, disagio, stimolare creatività o noia. (...)

Let the semester begin! Go!

It's incredible how just the expectation of a good thing in the near future can bring a whole new way of seeing and dealing with daily situations.
You probably have noticed that I am a changing humor kind of person, on extreme ups and downs. I can't help it and I just can't hide my feelings also. If I am in a good mood you'll probably see me singing, laughing and making fun of everything, but when I'm blue I simply wanna be quiet, on my place, thinking about whatever is bothering me. Sometimes I don't even wanna talk about it, just because I think I'd be annoying the others...
I'm happily, nowadays, with good thoughts and a lot of plans. I also have taken some challenges this semester such as studying, working, start writing my final University project (which I gotta present next July)and teaching English to a Romanian sixteen year-old girl here in Italy. All at the same time! But on my side I have a good hope that makes me do my best and go through it all.
Probably that will make me grow in many ways like being more responsible, organized and dedicated (since last semester was very slow and boring at school). Not spend my salary and save for a reason, work as many hours I can and dedicate my weekends on studying for college and for the things I am interest - Graphic Design lately!

Well, that was just a normal post, because I felt like writing a little bit. So, see ya.

This pic was from one of the classes...Researching to make it funny. Cute ahn? =)

Learning

I woke up this morning not thinking at all how my mood would be. Neutral. I don't know, maybe just keep doing all daily habits. As work was slow for a while, I decided start reading a book I've downloaded from internet about Graphic Design in the 21st Century (Taschen, 2003).
Surprisingly, some old ideas and goals I've put in my mind to achieve in the near future start seam to be accomplished. Some time ago I decided to inform myself better and develop my art senses as well my professional skills (not well-understanding what profession will be so far).
For a while I've been practicing hand-drawing as well as computer assisted design. I've already have some ideas to make true, but I think some lecture and learning will do just fine first of all.

Well, what i really wanted to write about was an essay that grabbed my attention. It's from an American designer named Milton Glaser (b.1929), actually one of the most - if not the most - respected and active designers in the USA and was presented at the 2005 AIGA National Design Conference in Boston, MA. I've found it while researching in his own web site(http://www.miltonglaser.com/) and it makes really good points about art, design, publicity and the role of the professional in society.
Here we have some pieces of the essay:

"Many of us have been troubled by the passivity of the American people towards the events of our time. Part of this condition must be attributed to the cynical use of fear our government has employed to control peoples’ judgment after the trauma of 9/11. This was made possible in part by television, my favorite whipping boy, and the most persuasive means of indoctrination in human history.(...) Television combines news about the war, Paris Hilton’s career, global warming and Geico commercials into events of equal importance. The result is an enormous population that believes nothing matters."

About Art:
(...)"Not long ago, I reread EH Gomrich’s magisterial Survey of Art History which begins, 'There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.'How liberating, the question is finally answered—if there is no Art, Design cannot be considered Art.'
If we need a definition of Art, the Roman literary critic Horace provided an elegant one. “The role of art is to inform and delight”. Form and light are hidden in that definition. It’s an idea I enthusiastically embrace. Of course, informing is different than persuading. When one is informed, one is strengthened. Persuasion does not guarantee the same result.
Delight is the non-quantifiable part of the definition that speaks to the role of beauty. What artists make is a gift to humankind; a benign instrument that has the possibility of affecting our consciousness through empathy and shared symbolism. We are affected not through logic but by a direct appeal to our limbic brain, the source of our emotional life. Although we don’t fully understand how it functions, I’m drawn to this mysterious part of our work, which we frequently describe as metaphysical or miraculous. These words may simply mean that we still do not understand what our brain is capable of."

Well those, among many others, were thoughts and questions I've already had myself and I believe supported in good references he found a good way to discuss that.

As I keep on learning and realizing things, I'll be happy to write this down. Even if no one so far knows or reads this page.

Mari

"We can reject the passivity and narcissism that leads to despair, and choose to participate in the life of our times."(M.Glaser)

Bloody Sunday

Sometimes I wish that as much as we wanted something that could become real.
I have no guarantees but i truly wish we had a chance. Maybe it's not the right moment. I know that. But I can't help feeling this way.
Once probably I've insisted in something I wasn't sure but deep inside I knew I could have some else better than. Now it's very different.
I felt I could be me and also feel good about it. That surely means something.
I hate this situation. And I don't even know what I can do about it.

I wish I could write better tonight...but I don't.
I just know I still dream about you.

How soon is now?

I am human and I just need to be l...
Just like everybody else does.

(The Smiths)

Random thoughts

Life sometimes put things in front of us so we can face them.
I think my biggest fear is to pass through life without doing nothing expressly good or important, not for what people think, but for myself. Today I was at work and constantly thinking how desperately boring my life should be if the days were just like this.
What's wrong about the idea of doing something you really enjoy for living? Recently I discovered what kind of job would make me happy.
I don't have the illusion that all the time I'll be satisfied and pleased with the tasks of an office, for example... The thing is I'd like to feel good about what I do. See results.
Right now the only thing that slow me down is my own idea I couldn't do it. I am trying to find a way tough.

All those thoughts came with the news that I probably will have to stay a little longer in Italy. I had two opposite opinions about the subject this afternoon chatting online (in office hours, shame on me) whit a friend I have never met and whit my ex-boyfriend, one asked me if that wasn't too much time staying away from home, family and friends while the other felt happy about the opportunity I am having.
Now, which points of view should I stick with? Probably the first one was how I felt about it and the second how should I face it.
I am not comparing those different people, I am just proving myself that that person once I chose to be with me is in many ways the ideal for me.
That also makes me a little bit sad about how things ended up... Well, the point is not that. It's all done now. (Half)happily ever after.
At least me.

It can looks silly, or even stupid for some people, but I really feel something is missing. I think it's care.
I swear that some days I dream awake for a hug... A sincere and long hug. That's all it takes feel protected and supported. That's life making me understand and accept things we can't change.

Saudades

Hoje o post vai ser em português. Acho que não quero o inglês porque preciso me expressar da maneira mais simples possível. Como sou na realidade. Pra isso uso minha língua, pra tentar dizer sem qualquer possibilidade de dúvidas o que realmente estou sentindo.

Esta manhã fui a um velório. Sim, uma missa de corpo presente do pai de um colega de trabalho aqui do escritório onde trabalho.
Não fazia muito tempo tinha ido a uma missa na cidade de onde origina a parte da família da minha mãe aqui na Itália. E tinha me emocionado bastante.
O engraçado é que nunca fui católica fervorosa e várias vezes chegava a criticar muito a Igreja como foi e como é hoje, o que deixava minha mãe um pouco chateada comigo, porque pra ela, esse era a herança que ela gostaria que eu levasse: as coisas e tradições que ela aprendeu na família dela, principalmente a religião.
Bom, o principal é que hoje foi o sentimento mais forte de saudades que eu já senti da minha família e da minha casa no Brasil. Vendo meu colega chorar pelo pai, eu comecei a pensar o quão longe eu estou e o quanto eu estou perdendo da convivência diária com meus pais e minha irmã. E que posso perder isso de uma hora pra outra, imprevisivelmente.
Sei que muitas vezes a rotina e o dia-a-dia trazem um monte de problemas, irritações e brigas sem sentido, e acho que por isso muias vezes não sinto tanta falta da convivência (isso e já ter morado fora de casa 5 anos da minha vida durante toda a faculdade) mas ainda assim queria poder tê-los perto naquele momento.
Abraçar minha mãe. Ela é a pessoa que mais me lembro quando penso no aconchego. Naquele momento de cansaço, preguicinha, confidência... Um cafunezinho no cabelo.

Bom, eu quero pensar que tudo isso que eu estou vivendo é uma fase muito rica, e posso dizer livre, da minha vida. Longe dos meus, dos amigos, sem alguém nem ao menos pra pensar. Mas estou construindo quem eu sou, pra mudar e voltar de onde eu vim (ou ainda pra ir pra um outro lugar, quem sabe?) melhor!
Pensar que vou vê-los logo também ajuda. Daqui a uns meses...

Pois é. Hoje só bobagens sentimentais de uma boba sentimental.

Essencial

I've already written once that I would like to re-live some of the feelings I used to have when I was younger. As I remember, my fear was about the things I couldn't understand or the things I hadn't experienced so far such as a weird sound coming from an empty room, a particular dark part of the street I lived all my childhood or even the feeling of not knowing how to react or what to do when that special boy for whom I had feeling arrived at someone's 10th birthday's party. At the time all of this seamed so big!
Now, remembering all this things, that now may seam simple, at the time was all I had. I mean, all the reference of what the word problem meant.
But still, I reacted very different toward them. Besides everything else, I've never given up and I always managed some way of facing and solving my problems. And that curiously hasn't continued 'till nowadays.
Well, now I can say I'm managing things better, I had some bad moments in this road though. There were some times I just stopped believing in myself and thought things would never change.
But somehow, like everything in life, things have changed. And that will happen again and again for all our lives. For the good or not.
This knowledge, and the acceptance of this, comforts me and makes me appreciate better the moments I am having. Once at the time.

Even tough realizing some things, I decided return (or try to rescue) some of my essence and find myself again. Besides this writing I've been also reading and drawing more. Yes! Drawing was one of my childhood-adolescence passions and for a while it has been forgotten... Was put beside.
I practiced a lot last night, tried to improve my skills and to create something new. I've been eager for that.
That feels very good.

Again

Yesterday was the first post I made in this blog and after that my mind couldn't stop thinking about what to write here. I actually dreamed I was posting something.
I thought in many ways to start this. Maybe introducing myself would be a good start, but then I thought better and decided to let it happen while I post. With time, naturally, whoever read this will progressively get to know me as well as know what I do and how's my everyday life.
One nice thing I'd like to put in words was that this whole blog thing changed something about me. It's not that I've never had one before, with I do (and maybe another time I could address it here), the thing is I found a guy's blog accidentaly or even better, by chance, and start reading it. I just couldn't stop.
The most interesting was that I found myself in many of his texts. A lot of things I wanted to say or even the way I think and react about life were very similar. Of course there were different things also, but the point is that it's amazing how two people who have never meet (and probably would never) could share feelings and thoughts.
Well, that really made my morning... Uff! It's so difficult to express what I felt. Somehow, I stop felling lonely. Not in the common sense of the word, because obviously I have my family (that right now is a little distant from me) and my friends, but meaning that it's normal to feel the way I feel sometimes. Someone in another country could share a feeling that I have.
What I can say is that I woke up feeling good. Feeling I can change the things I wanna change about myself (now even more, because I noticed somebody else's evolution - all there, written and posted). It could sounds a little difficult for some of you, but I believe it all can happen in just a regular morning. Just like this one I felt inspired for it.
Writing is making me real benefits. This way I'll be able not only to achieve some goals I intend to but also know better myself. And the best part of that is to be able to be sincere and transparent, because more than once I felt like writing, but I always changed or tried to hide a little the real meaning fearing what other people would understand or think about it. Here I can just be.
Simply that.