Tangerine's PoV

The Divine Child is a novel proposing a new point of view, a novel of choices. Pascal Bruckner offers us in this book an answer to the question “What if I could decide not to be born?”.

Madeleine Barthelemy decides to give a good education to their children before they get born. Starting with the first month of pregnancy she begins the geography lessons, music and also mathematics. In order to obtain better results she contacts Dr. Fontaine who refuses at the beginning, but he eventually makes Madeleine’s children the most important thing in his life, his only chance to make himself known around to world for his methods of prenatal education.

After the foetus achieved the skills of an university student they asked for newspapers, they needed to know what was happening around the world. They finally got a little bit dissapointed so that Louis decides to stay inside his mother’s belly, he decides not to get born. His sister, Céline decides to get out of her temporary home and unfortunatelly as she was going out she started to forget all that she had learned; when she finally got out she wasn’t even able to speak. That made Louis believe he made the right choice, so despite of the sufferings and anger of his mother he decided to stay in. How is the life inside your mother’s womb? How much can a little boy fool the nature and science and live inside his mother?

Interesting quotes:

Louis talking to his mother:

Madeleine: “Little boy, stop acting childish and get out with your sister.”

Louis: “How ridiculous! Asking a foetus to stop acting childish.”

On Thursday we will finally find out if we will have a boy or a girl (of course if he wants to show his/her face). Meanwhile I wanted to see what the Old wives would say, as I have some suspicions that he will be a boy (maybe because since I’m pregnant I have became allergic to earrings).

Nevertheless the test did not help too much. The results:

You have a 52% chance of having a boy.

 And you have a 47% chance of having a girl.

I had a 50 % chance before of having any of the two, and now I have 52% chance to have a boy. Does this result mean that I have a 1% chance to have a cat, or a dog, or maybe a horse? I don’t understand this, but well, when I studied mathmatics things used to be different.

And Here’s Why I got this result…

You are carrying the extra weight out front, so it’s a boy.
The hair on your legs is not growing any faster during your preganacy, so it’s a girl.
Boys are carried low. You are going to have a boy.
Sleeping in a bed with your pillow to the south indicates that you will be having a girl.
Your feet are not colder than they were before pregnancy. You are having a girl.
You refuse to eat the heel of a loaf of bread. You are having a girl.
Dad-to-be is gaining weight right along with Mom-to-be, which means that you’ll have a boy.
The maternal grandmother doesn’t have gray hair (dyed or natural), so a girl will be born.
You had morning sickness early in pregnancy, so you are expecting a girl.
You are not looking particularly good during pregnancy. Therefore, it must be a girl, because girls steal their mother’s looks.
Your chest development has been quite dramatic during pregnancy. You should expect a girl.
Since the sum of the mother’s age at conception and the number of the month of conception is even, it will be a boy.
A needle on a thread held over you belly moves from side-to-side, so it will be a girl.
Your urine is a bright neon yellow color, so you will have a boy.
You have a craving for salty or sour foods, which means that it is a boy.
Your nose has been spreading, which indicates a boy.
You have been craving meats or cheeses, so it is a boy.
Your baby’s heart rate is 140 or more beats per minute, so it’s a girl.
You have no desire for orange juice, so it’s a boy.
You are having headaches, so it’s a boy.
Your belly looks like a basketball, so it’s a boy.
You show the back of your hand, so it’s a boy.
You use the body of the mug, so it’s a girl.

On Thursday we will see if the Old Wives are right or not. At least it has a 99% possibilty to be a human being.

I really wanted to take some good photos today as until next year I will not see the city so full of flowers and books, but it seems Gods were against me. I have even lost my last chance to take some good photos of the Sant Jordi bread, as until I got to take pictures of it I only found some crumbs on the table. That’s very nice of you, B, but you could have waited at least one minute. Still I have taken a photo of what was left of the bread. Originally it was white – yellow (almost white, like flours and nuts) with red lines. Similar to what? The catalan flag, correct answer. That’s what’s left of it.

If you want to see how the bread really looks and how it can be made you can visit this page (Spanish only).

I hope until next year Gods will stop being angry with me and will let me take some photos (I hope the little alien, human to be, will also let me take pictures). For the moment here you can see the rose and the book.

I have also been meditating today about two questions:

1. Why people that say: “I will never give a present to someone just because it’s Valentine’s Day/Sant Jordi/Etc’s Day; if you really love somebody you give him/her presents when you feel it” give presents to their wives/husbands the week before or after the “special commercial day”?

For this I don’t have any possible answer for the moment. I need to sleep the question or ask Luis, a colleague of ours that gave a gift to his wife on tuesday but he won’t give her a rose today.

2. Why there are so many broken roses on the streets on Sant Jordi?

B says it is because girls get angry with boys and start to throw them petals (It kind of hurts as on Sant Jordi roses are not cheap at all). On the other hand, I believe that those are 15 years old girls that have secret boyfriends and don’t want their mothers to know nor they know how to lie and tell it was a colleague that brought flowers to all the girls in class. Any other idea?

La Diada de Sant Jordi is a Catalan holiday celebrated on April 23, something similar to Valentine’s Day. It is also known as el dia de la rosa (the Day of the Rose) or el dia del llibre (The Day of the Book). In this day lovers use to exchange gifts: the boys give roses to their girlfriends or wives, and the girls give a book to their lover. All the streets are full of roses and you can hardly find a woman without a rose in her hands. This is my first Sant Jordi here and I was quite impressed as in the last days I have seen catalan flags all over the place (in cake shops, in florist’s shops, etc). Actually the rose I have received has a small catalan flag on it (it’s hard to find one without it, I know B tried to).

It is expected to sell a quantity of 5,5 millions of roses today and around 500.000 books, half of the books that will be sold during the whole year.

It is nice to walk on the streets and see all the roses exposed to attract more buyers, see the boys and girls walking hand in hand, one with a rose and the other one with a book, see them kissing and wishing their love will be always like that, a sunny day like today.

Also, today all Spain celebrates the Day of the Book and for that here goes the poem I have chosen for this special day:

Soy, éste.
El que tú imaginas.
Aquel que dibujas con cada párrafo que pasa.

Y cuando me lees,
soy tan tuyo
que hasta me inventas.

Y no termino en el punto.
Me cuelgo de algún rincón
del laberinto de tu ser,
y soy de ti un trozo.

Me llevarás hasta en la mortaja
y aún después; atado a tu alma
surcaremos el infinito,
desde ahora juntos… (Marzio Girola, Soy)

Week 18:

How’s the baby?

According to  the scientists the baby should measure up to 15 cm now and should start to do that particular activity that babies most like: sucking their thumb. I still think he’s a boy even if in the last two scans he turned his back to us shamelessly and we could not confirm it, but still, something inside me tells me he’s a boy (maybe because he likes to play Ronaldinho inside my belly with my ovaries). Anyway, if she’s a girl I promise I will not make her wear the blue clothes we bought for the little baby to be. As in both cases the name would have the same initial I will call the little bulb A for the next two weeks (I hope he/she will open his/her legs and let us admire his/her little treasure “You’d better start opening your legs if you don’t want to live naked the first days of your life”).

I think the baby has a special relationship with his father. A few days ago B was ill and when I thought he was better I felt asleep. A few hours later I felt a strong pain in my belly which made me wake up in 0,30 seconds. I found B sweating, with fever and feeling very ill. Also when I get angry with B and I shout or anything similar I feel A kicking my ovaries. I know he cannot hear anything yet, and that he can feel what I feel, but why don’t I feel this when I get angry with any other person? B may have a new ally. Lucky him.

How’s mom?

The belly is getting bigger and bigger everyday. I still cannot understand how I don’t put on weight and I have such a big belly. I hope the next time I visit my doctor I will find an answer to this.

The first three months passed but I still feel exhausted sometimes. Luckily spring is here and the light and the sun gives me more energy, otherwise I would still do nothing but work and sleep every day.  It’s true what thy say; that after the first three months you start to feel better. B is starting to notice this also, I don’t get angry that easily and we are getting along very well these days.

As starting from the week 20 A will be able to  hear I will start to prepare a music selection that will not include Pantera (right, B?), and that I will play for the baby now and after he is born. Will he recognize the songs when he hears them after he is born as scientists say?

Message to non-pregnant people

I am angry with people in general today because nobody lets you sit in the bus/metro/train/anypublictransportationatall. And I don’t speak about myself here, I still can stand and support my belly successfully, but the poor women that are in 8 or 9 months can hardly stand, and still are seen as “enemies” when they enter the public transporation and are not offered a seat, and if they are this happens only when someone has to get off the bus/train/stuff. This works like this with pregnant women, with old people and with anyone who needs special attention. What makes me really sick is that a lot of the persons in a bus/train are women that were pregnant someday and know how it feels. And these are the women that you will later see fighting for solidarity and women rights. Shame to you all!

When I was little I remember there were a lot of magazines in which people told their sufferings (My story, Real stories, etc.). You could see on three or four pages the story of a girl that was abussed when she was little: that made her feel better (it’s always good to share) and lots of people read that and felt sorry for her and maybe felt identified with the girl. But why is that? It is true that when you write about your traumatic experiences it is easier to deal with the past, but why do people read that? I remember going home by train and seeing all the women in the train reading this kind of magazines, and you can still see this only that now this is not only present in magazines, but also in books.

But, in Great Britain, where people are seen as very cold, how can these kind of books get to be written and get to be bestsellers? Actually in Britain there are 3 such books in the top 10 best-selling papebacks. The atitude in Britain is changing, people are not afraid anymore of telling those intimate things and it seems there are a lot of readers for this new genre. How is this possible? Brendan O’Neill explains it is this article.

After Borat made a Romanian village look like Kazakhstan and Romanian sound like Kazakh, it’s Coelho’s turn to have a Romanian main character in this latest novel, The Witch of Portobello.

The fact that Borat was filmed in Romania was not a reason for happiness for the villagers in Glod, the village where Borat was filmed (means “mud” in English). The villagers accepted to do what Sacha Baron Cohen asked them to do thinking Borat would be a documentary to present some reality related to the poverty. As USA Today tells us: “Staicu accused the producers of paying locals just $3.30-$5.50, misleading the village into thinking the movie would be a documentary, refusing to sign proper filming contracts and enticing easily exploited peasants into performing crass acts.”

This is what the villagers say about the experiences they had to live during the filming of Borat:

“They made us put a cow in our living room, and they made it defecate and urinate in the house. Everyone’s angry because they didn’t pay them the way they should have”

“We thought they came here to help us — not mock us”

“We haven’t got anything here. We haven’t got running water. We can’t even bathe. We are poor people, but we are still people.”

Full article here.

After all this Coelho chooses as main character for his latest novel a Romanian girl, born in Transilvania in a gypsy family and then taken to Beirut by her adoptive family.

“When war breaks out, her adoptive family move with her to London, where a dramatic turn of events occurs! Athena, who has been dubbed ‘the Witch of Portobello’ for her seeming powers of prophecy, disappears dramatically, leaving those who knew her to solve the mystery of her life and abrupt departure. This gripping new novel is filled with the themes Paulo fans know and love: spirituality, relationships, destiny, freedom.” (Fantastic Fiction)

Is this the image of Romania around the world: a country full of gypsies with supernatural powers (as in Mama Omida)? I really hope not, as there are other movies that were filmed in Romania that have nothing (or little) to do with gypsies:

Youth without youth, the latest film produced by Coppola

Cold Mountain

7 Seconds

A few days ago the Telegraph published an article about Bucharest, about all the changes it suffered in the past years and about it’s actual image. Actually, yesterday when I was in Bucharest I got the feeling described in the article walking through the wide boulevards, admiring the old&new building, the newly appeared flowers, and all the green that surrounded us.

“The wide boulevards, elegant historic buildings and vast squares are distinctly Parisian. The language, café culture and – follow any man’s gaze – ubiquitous striking women make you think of Italy. And the new generation of highly-educated, English-speaking young professionals in this cosmopolitan city are dripping with designer brands from their clothes to their cars. This may not be the picture of Romania as we know it, but its capital, Bucharest, has seen a rapid transformation over the past four years.”

Full article here.