Memories of a Beatnik - Diane Di Prima

So I opened the book and (as I had read one just recently, that didn't belong to me) thought: "this one. I'm gonna mark it all over. A book to mark it all")
I noticed on the first page, an underlined paragraph, from a previous time that I started the book.

"Or, as my eleven-year-old daughter recently said to me, remembering the early years of her childhood: I really miss those old days. They were hard, but they were beautiful."

So yes, I do think / I still think that the moments in which you open books are completely and utterly perfect.

Un Mundo Feliz - Aldous Huxley

Letter to Naida:

I'm trying to write a bit every day, and also read. Just finished reading a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Oh so inspiring and challenging, such a philosophical science fiction tale. I love when writers analyze humanity. We are so weak yet beautiful.

It's such bad weather here, thunderstorms and floods everywhere. At least mornings smell like rain, and that's nice.

Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter to Naida

Hey N.

I just finished reading Devotion. I found it disturbing for a bit, until the end of the fictional story, as I thought Patti was genuinely romanticising a relationship between a 16 year old girl and a 30 year old man. "Not everything is beautiful you know?" I kept saying in my head while I read those sexual encounters described in such a poetic manner. But yet her writing is otherworldly, honestly. She is such a great writer and she gets better and better... which is incredible.

She got me on the last pages, as she always does, she has this way of ending paragraphs, chapters, lines, that is enchanting. At the end of everything she does, it leaves you with the sense that she was creating something beautiful all along. Like "this is where she was going, and damn it is beautiful".

While I was reading the last pages I was breastfeeding Lucas and started crying. Lucas noticed and touched my tears with his hands. I feel so related to how she describes the urge of writing. How after every inspiring experience you are so drawn to sit in your working desk and create something your own. It seems to me that every work of art that crossed my way was there to make me create something.

She says literally "that is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action."

I saw my self every time I read a book, I tried to do it with a notebook right next to me, so that I could close the book at any point and write down the thoughts that that reading brought to my mind. You might see it on the books I left at your house, scribblings on the sides, from rimes when I didn't have my notebook with me.

I think it's incredible how she turn that anecdote about being able to see Camus's manuscript into a perfect illustration, demonstration, explanation? of how it feels to be a writer. 

I'm going to watch a horror movie with Frank.

Love S.

Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter from Naida

Hi S.

Wanted to tell you that I just finished reading the book Devotion. I stopped for awhile but then I saw the new edition with P. Smith on the front page by a till in Waterston's bookshop so I picked it up and read it until there were no more pages to read. I like the photos of the winter :) and I am not sure why I would like to meet P. again. Thought I was finished not only the book but with that as well however obviously not. It's like I am waiting to see her in London again.
The cold is certainly approaching, first day of October. I had such painful period pain that in the middle of the night I had to spend two hours in the toilet vomiting and who knows what, I was drained in cold sweat that my t-shirt was all wet. Somehow I was thinking of you, those long hours you had to endure in the hospital while in so much physical and emotional pain. You are so far away yet so near.

Let me know how was your time in France, let me know, let me know :) Give a little kiss to Lukas from me. X

Just Kids + Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter to Naida

Hi N.

Yes I totally agree with what you said... This is the exact huge realization I had when I read Just Kids. Especially regarding writing. I thought, I also pay so much attention to small things and everything to me is worth of a paragraph of beautiful words. I never thought someone else would find it interesting or of any value, until I read Just Kids and felt, that as much as I found her words beautiful, someone else could find MY words beautiful too. I never felt she could do something I couldn't. It was the other way round. And I know deep down that I have inspired people, even if I can count them with one hand, that's worth my existence.

I recognize this process she describes in Devotion, kind of finding signs on everything. Feeling that the Universe is guiding you into creating something special, and every time you find something like this, like a word on a tombstone, you can hear the Universe talking to you. Patti would call it God I guess.

I wanted to share a song with you as you share so many with me. I couldn't think of anything special until I thought of her. Sharon van Etten. With her sad voice. I used to listen to her late at night in the car with my friends Arturs, parked somewhere in Stoke Newington. I have a story in my head for a script, and for some reason, her music is the perfect soundtrack for it, I can't detach it now. Everytime I listen to her I think of my characters, young and broken Salli and Emma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKJTL9wgHbY

And below, a photo I took of her in a concert, it was stuck to the wall in my room in Turnpike Lane.

Devotion - Patti Smith

Letter to Naida:

I am really looking forward to going to the South of France this September. Still not sure if we are going because of how I'm feeling, but I'm pretty sure I'll feel fine by then. Since I moved to Europe I saw a lot of similarities between this intellectual side we have in Buenos Aires, to the French. Every little town in southern France has an Art studio of a world-famous painter, and their parks are adorned with statues celebrating artists, writers, and philosophers. I can tell that art and culture is a natural thing that French have in their life without even looking for it, and I like that. I just started reading Devotion and Patti Smith mentions going to a small town in the South of France, I thought what a nice coincidence. It's where she found the word "Devotion", in French, on a tombstone. Maybe I would like to go see the word devotion on that tombstone in real life. <3 I'm really enjoying Devotion, it's connecting me with that side of me that wants to write. I needed that and was thinking about it for a while. Maybe that's why now my emails are longer and I send them more often haha