Dealing with time and clichés

Time can be a tricky thing. You can get terrorized by the bearing of one minute, you can find yourself praying for a bad day to end when it’s 24 hours seem infinite, and you can be amazed of how fast one year has passed and gone, feeling like it was just yesterday that it all began…

On my last post I had said I would write during one hour every day for the next 27 days, but the truth is that when it comes to writing, my brain cannot stick to a tight schedule. Some days I wanted to write in the middle of the night for a whole hour, and some days I didn’t want to write at all.  To be honest, most of the time my mind was lingering on the same idea, but I was incapable of putting it into words.

It just so happens that things have a tendency to linger on me -or I have a tendency to linger on them. In consequence, time becomes this elastic, malleable, thing that can change its form and weight, whenever my mind gets in the mood.

For the last four weeks, the same idea has been prowling around in my mind, drawing circles over my head, giving me a couple of inspirational moments in which I enthusiastically wrote one or two paragraphs or came up with a title, and then followed long periods of questioning and doubting, of searching the right words and trying to find the meaning of it all, and finally drifting into other subjects.

The thing is, words seem so fragile and small, and sometimes even incompetent when one tries to use them to translate an experience into our language so we can share them with others. Our poor language struggles to keep up with reality, and sometimes it’s just not enough. Nevertheless, it is all we have, so we must try to squeeze its substance and merge it with reality, as much as we can. We must face the fact that we’ll probably end up with some lousy text every now and then, and with those incredibly cliché phrases like “seize the moment” or, “the present is all that matters” but that’s ok, let’s at least pat ourselves on the back for trying to communicate to the world what we think that is relevant.

But I must say, that at this point, I’m starting to find certain clichés quite agreeable. You see, I’ve realized that maybe it’s not such a bad thing that we always end up with this overly-used phrases, because that means that we’ve arrived to the same conclusion as everyone else, right? Therefore it means that we agree with the entire world on a certain point; and personally, I find quite reassuring the notion that there exist some universal thoughts, that in a strange, magical way unite us all as human beings, regardless our cultural differences.

For instance, let’s take this image that popped out on my Facebook newsfeed a couple of days ago:

Quite cliché, right? And let’s face it, it’s a little corny also. 

Nevertheless, it’s true.

So, after four weeks of being frustrated with myself for not being able to convey my ideas into something not so disgusting, embarrassing or cliché that I could actually feel good publishing, I’ve decided to embrace the inevitably cliché side of life, and not be so afraid of ridicule.

That’s why I would like to share with you 5 things that are totally clichés that I found to be true during my Erasmus year in Brussels, Belgium:

   1.    Goodbyes are always going to be hard to deal with.

Yes. It’s true, let’s face it: the goodbye scene never turns out as you imagined, (and don’t even think about planning it, it’s useless) it irremediably turns into this wretched scene, where you either:

      a.    Say something that you shouldn’t have said,

      b.    Didn’t say something that you should have said,

      c.    Pour into a river of tears even thought you tried not to, or

     d.    Act tough and pull off a cool attitude, (which means that you’re secretly holding in those tears until you arrive home and let it all out in your own corner of solitude).

Being the last of my Erasmus group to leave the city, I had to say goodbye to each and one of my friends, so I lived the goodbye scene with at least 8 persons that I really care about, so as you can imagine, I have done all of the above. Yes, from a to d., been there, done that. Now they’re pretty cool memories, but at the moment, I swear to God, it was always a tough task, and it was always different.

    2.    Italians do love food.

Remember that scene in “Eat, Pray Love” where the leading lady played by Julia Roberts indulges herself in a copious plate of spaghetti in the terrace of some picturesque restaurant in Rome? Well, Elizabeth Gilbert was right, Italy is all about food, and Italians do eat a lot of pasta.

I particularly remember how important it was to buy the “real mozzarella” for one of my Italian friends, and the delicious pesto sauce that I had the pleasure of tasting on an improvised lunch at the house of another Italian friend.

And in case I still had a doubt concerning the Italians and their love of food, my new flat mate arrived a couple of weeks ago directly from Sicily, and she immediately filled half of the fridge with, guess what? Tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, pasta, pasta and more pasta! Oh, and how can I forget, the olive oil, firmly standing in the middle of the kitchen table. Once again, I was amazed.

Nutella, pizza, calzone, mozzarella, pesto, 4 different types of bread, and countless types of pasta… personally, I can’t get enough!

-And I’m still dreaming with trying an authentic focaccia…

  

    3.    Traveling by train is the most romantic thing ever

We’ve seen it in movies, we’ve read it in novels; yes, traveling by train is as romantic and picturesque as we thought it was.

Even thought for Europeans it’s quite normal, I think that for us Latin-Americans is really something special, since we don’t get to travel like that in our own continent.

Personally, I love it.

    4.    Europeans are indeed intrigued by the Latin culture

The majority of people that I met seemed to be fascinated when I said that I was from Venezuela. (I insisted on the fact that, yes, the weather is fantastic, and we do have beautiful beaches, and yes, Venezuela is a country blessed by Mother Nature, but the rest of the picture is not so fantastic).

Anyhow, many of them were so enthusiastic about my continent that they even mentioned their desire of visiting those foreign lands on the other side of the ocean. The music, the landscapes, the tropical sun, and even the language, it all seems to them quite fascinating. We are indeed, exotic creatures to them, but the funny thing is that they don’t quite realize that they are also exotic to us.

    5.    The weather in Belgium is exactly as everyone says it is,

That is: rainy, usually cloudy and pretty cold. Autumn seems to be the predominant season here, with some exceptions of course, throughout the year. Strange things can happen like having an unexpected summer week in April, or having “summer days” like today in which the temperature is 17 degrees and the probability of rain 73%. -I’m guessing it will rain.

Frankly I can’t find a better way to finish this article than with the mother of clichés, the perfect phrase for the end of the Erasmus year:

-And I mean it. : )