a quiet week, exhilarating emails

the first half of 2009 went by and the new month began. it’s been a quiet week, but quite an extraordinary week at the same time. in fact, i received two exhilarating emails -- well, technically speaking, i was supposed to find one of them on 13th june, though; i just didn’t check it inadvertently. at any rate, the internet is incredible. i find a comment or two only once in a while if i am lucky. but, i never know who visit my blog all the way or what he or she makes of my post mostly, right? even if it is serendipitous or accidental, i have visitors without knowing. that's what i've now learned.

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someone who visited my blog was kind enough to get in touch with me via the net. martin zweiback, the sender’s name, seemed surely not familiar to me, while its subject was “me, natalie”, a film i really love. then i found that the email was, actually, from the screenwriter of the film. i was lost for wards. he felt compelled to tell me he was appreciative of my favourite films list in which he found his “me, natalie”. unbelievable. i’m just a fan of the film. it is i who is very appreciative of receiving such an email from such a great screenwriter like him! nevertheless, what brought him to this blog and made him feel like checking my profile?
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when i was fourteen, the film, which i hadn't seen yet, was a regular topic of chat among my girlfriends. so i asked my brother to take me to the cinema where “me, natalie” was on. i became a natalie, who should leave the nest and move to greenwich village, as i walked out of the cinema. i also bought myself a copy of screenplay of “me, natalie” a few years later. the impact those film and book had on me was huge and deep. almost miraculously, i still have the book. so i can tell how much natalie’s story meant to me. she was my hero throughout adolescence, while i was not able to live a life of natalie’s at the time.
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centuries later i saw the film and read the book written by martin zwieback, i am living a life of Independence just like natalie, anyhow. even though this is not bohemian greenwich village, i can’t complain, i am comfortable about myself. oh, and, another email? sorry if i sound like a braggadocio again, but i couldn't keep this to myself. so...another email i received it on friday was from a publisher whom i sent my book proposal at the end of june. a quick reply is always good news in this kind of case. he got back to me right after he found my translated book potentially readable. no matter what kind of snag i would hit, i am thrilled with my new project.

porteña

four years ago today, i arrived at ezeiza airport in buenos aires. why? because i had to. i had to leave london with a man who wanted me to start a new life together in buenos aires. we had lived together for three months in north london before i eventually said “ok” to his righteous plan: he sounded, at least to me, confident enough to realise it. i quit all of my writing jobs and we moved out of our flat. but, why buenos aires? i don’t know. he was just a dreamer and i was such a fool. argentina was entirely romanticised by his penchant for runaway dramas. he was actually on the run. soon after our porteño life began, i saw an imminent catastrophe coming our way. but yet, i was determined to love the city before my inevitable leaving, surely, alone.
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in buenos aires, located in the south hemisphere, leaves started turning yellow and brown everywhere in may. everything looked awash with nostalgia, sentiment or sometimes melancholy. i was sad because i had absolutely nothing to do. i had no deadlines to hit, we had people do dishes, laundry and clean the room. so, around noon, before the time when mr dreamer would come back from a local café, i would leave our apartment hotel in barrio norte for a walk to be on my own. i would stroll up to recoleta or down to puerto madero…i was like belinda of “follow me (aka the public eye)”, an old film starring mia farrow. but the one without being following by cristoforou, the praivate ditective. i wandered aimlessly day after day. was it aimless? no, it was not. i wandered lonely as a cloud to love the city. and in truth, i was growing to love buenos aires.