clothing

“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves,” he once said.“ But for those who haven’t had the good fortune of finding this happiness, I am there.” Yves Saint Laurent

fragments

"our bodies stripped with the colors of the neon lights passing overhead"
"when you get on the trail, she said, it's like a dream" (Jess Row, Train to Lo Wu)

"everything changes completely for you about every four years"
"identity always worries me and memory and eternity"
"I like to eat well and live simply"
"I like to read with my eyes not with my ears. I like to read inside and not outside"
"...they don't see that understanding and believing are not the same thing"
"I never got over the fact that you are very likely to know everybody a long time and the difference between knowing them a long time and not knowing them at all is really nothing"
"you identity is not a thing that exists but something you do or do not remember"
(Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography)

"identity is not a thing that exists but something you do or do not remember" Gertrude Stein

a surprise

"when I was very small we always used to say let us toss up a coin to decide and then as it came down we always said and now let's do the other way. That is a natural way and if you are that way then anything is a surprise and if anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older or younger because the only think that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised" (Gertrude Stein)

from a dear friend

Let’s go somewhere. Let’s leave our skins behind and go somewhere beautiful. Let’s not worry about the world anymore, let’s leave our watches behind. Let’s experience something like we are the only two people in the world. And let’s leave our languages behind, let’s speak with our hearts. Let’s not pack any bags, leave all our belongings behind and let’s take just ourselves, two sets of eyes. Let’s sleep without an alarm clock, let the sun wake us up and let us lose all sense of time because we are time. Let’s experience something, leave our wisdom behind, let’s feel small and insignificant and be significant again. Let’s not think of borders, leave all our markings behind and just breathe because we are alive. Let’s not take photographs, let’s just learn to remember and choose to forget. Let’s not take religion, leave our beliefs behind because we believe in each other and that is enough for now. Myra Iqbal

in this quest to regroup all pieces of myself, I am bringing some old drawings to the light of the Internet.
http://ramonatodoca.tumblr.com/

"place names were the most powerful magic I knew. Still are." Martha Gellhorn

memory exercise

I remember cutting film negatives in the dark, I remember the purple-pink sky of Sweden. I remember falling from a tree on my back, I remember thinking that I will die right there. I remember playing hopscotch on a mirror my father stuck letters on, I remember not being allowed to go outside and play all day. I remember getting dressed in the dark to go to my nursery, I remember getting undressed in the darkness of a tent. I remember thinking that someone else's heartbeats are my own. I remember being convinced that my red shiny coat is made of lobster skin. I remember the metal mugs for tea in kinder garden and the plastic cups from high school, when tea was 6000 lei. I remember my wet toes and the warmth of the wooden floors at home. I remember my mother's soup and my cheeks burning from the open camp fire. I remember leaving, again and again, and I remember wanting to stay, at last.