Unlucky day...part 2.

Well, it seems that today I feel ‘strong’ enough to keep up with my story. So, I ended yesterday saying that I was going to attend my Chinese classes. I still can’t believe it, but, eventually I caught the right bus, in the right bus station, at the right hour, and (I still can’t believe it now) it took me to the right place, on time. ‘Hallelujahhhh!!! In the end I apparently was having a little bit of luck. Yay!!! J
How naïve I was. I thought for a second that I was actually being lucky, but then (believe it or not, but this is the absolute and only truth) the class was suspended due to the teacher’s sickness. I was about to kill myself. How could that being happening to me? I mean, I’m not a bad person, at all…at least not intentionally. I’m a friend of my friends, I buy sweets and candies to my siblings, I recycle as much as I can, and I’m against testing on animals….c’mon I even had good marks in my A-level exams!! So, did I really deserve THAT??!! No, for God’s sake, NO!
But then, as always, the worst part was coming, because as you’ve probably guessed by now, I missed the last bus to my house. No joking. It’s kind of funny when I think about that now. Oh no! It’s hilarious when I remember that, in my way home, it started raining and I had no umbrella ( but I had hundreds of handkerchiefs!!). So yes, I made my way back home under a heavy cold rain, but hey! No wind this time. That was progressing. And you can make your journey a bit happier with some music. Well, certainly you can’t if your mp3 player’s battery is empty. Great. But… you can always sing in the rain, right?
No, don’t panic. I didn’t. Too many strange looks at me that day.
Aha! And then, in the second most humiliating moment that day, I accidentally came across with the person I had a little crush on. That’s so perfect!! While I was waving to him, with a big smile and saying ‘hello!’, he didn’t even put his eyes on me. I mean, I’d rather him to hate me, at least he would realize that I exist and it won’t be so miserable to say ‘hi’ in the middle of the street to anybody. Anyway, a couple of dirty old men standing near me gave the salute back, so I can’t complain, can I?
By the time I got home, I was soaked (not as much as all my important, note that, IMPORTANT papers were, but anyway) and I felt that I was beginning having a severe cold. And……… voilá! My favorite part. Not then, obviously, but it is actually a great moment for a comedy film or just something that you’ll tell people and they are going to be laughing at you for the rest of your life: aha, I forgot my keys at home and nobody was in. Isn’t that just incredibly unreal? I mean, these things never happen in real life. Well, they do in my world. I remember thinking ‘I can’t believe this is happening, this must be a sort of punishment or something like that.’
How my unbelievable story ended? Well, I had to wait an entire hour for my mom to get home, in the freezing rain, with all my university stuff, and feeling terribly sick.
It’s not that bad if you compare this with REAL tragedies, now it is just a quite funny story, but in that moment I felt very miserable. Of course, I was sick for a long time, but luckily I didn’t get pneumonia or something worse, so…
That was my worst-luck-ever day. Since then I’ve been working on my luck and now I am able almost not to miss one bus in a day. I’m progressing!

There are days when it's better not to getting out of bed...

Ok, now, who on earth has the worst luck ever when it is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life? Well, apparently, I have. But no, it's not my intention to expose here all of my misfortunes, no, I’m decided to use this story as a kind of therapy, I don’t even care if this interest people or not, I just want to laugh at myself and my luck; I think is the best in the end and, an important lesson I’ve recently learned: life could be hard and senseless sometimes, but we must try to look for the positive point of view in every situation we could face with. In my case, I used this for making my family and people around me to laugh at that unlucky human being that I am. And that’s a good thing, I think.

Let’s start.

I’m not the kind of person who likes to get up early(pretty early, in my case) in the morning, with a splendid smile in the face and in a very good mood. Ok, no I’m not, but hey, I respect if you do (for God’s sake, do you???!!). So, when you’re that kind of person, who has to wake up early, but by chance, your mobile phone alarm clock doesn’t rings that day, even worse!, when you realize that it is 7 o’clock and you have already missed the bus that takes you to the university, in an important day, oh God, you just want to go back to bed! I ran behind the bus, I ran as I’ve never run before, but I missed the bus anyway.

And, as people always tell me, I’m different. Because that day(the-most-windy-day-I’ve-ever-seen) I should have stayed home, (like a sensible person would have done), instead of trying to get to college on foot… could I possibly be more silly? 3 kilometers in a windy day could seem years, trust me. So, that was me, with my heavy rucksack, my boundless folder full of papers (half of them went with the wind, obviously) and a dozen or handkerchiefs or so (as you imagine, I lost a pair or more in my way). Now I can understand the strange faces of people in the street watching me. But I just hate that! When you’re in your most ridiculous moment, making weird movements with your face and your body because of the wind, and noticing how people in their comfortable and warm cars are staring at you with a smile. You want to kill them, although only because you want to get in their cars and get warm.

Oh! Another thing to point out: do you know how hard it is to walk (or drag in my case) with strong head wind? Well, I do. It makes your progress slower, and I felt as if I was in the slow motion mode. Of course, it took me three more times to get to my destination, but I eventually did after 2 hours, hundreds of papers and a couple of scarves lost and being a bit humiliated.

“Ok, it was not that bad, I missed the first class, but at least I can attend the other ones”, I thought. Poor me. I didn’t know what was about to come. When I went upstairs to my next class, some of my classmates told me that the lesson had been suspended. Oh no. I started laughing and crying at the same time and they looked at me as if I was mad or something. Again. I started complaining about how I hated my life and that stuff but then I thought “hang on, you’re a strong (?) and mature(?) woman, you can deal with this.” So I recovered myself and went to do something productive with my desperation.

After been waiting during two unproductive hours, I could eventually attend my next class: Catalan language. Lucky me, because I have zero command on it and is my least favorite subject. Is not that I hate the language itself or something like that, it’s just not my cup of tea. And after 2 hours in the class my classmate and I were some kind of ‘ The Octopus Boy’ and ‘ The Sea Horse Girl’ trying to save the underwater depths and the marine life from the evil plankton. Uffffff… I’m sorry 'bout that. I guess those lessons are just too much for me.

I was intellectually exhausted when I got out to the class and after that I had to go to the Official Languages’ School for my Chinese lesson. But, as lucky as I am, I missed the bus that supposedly had to take me there. Again. I was about to give up and come back home when my little and stupid common sense told me that I definitely should go there. So I just did.

Unluckily, I don’t feel mentally strong enough to write all the misfortunes that happened later, so maybe I’ll post them tomorrow. I kind of feel miserable now!

BON IVER

I’ve been currently obsessed with this wonderful group, and now it is one of my all-time favorite bands.

The band was formed in 2006 by American indie folk singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. His story still amazes me in some way.

A year ago after breaking apart from his band DeYarmond Edison, and breaking up with his girlfriend, Vernon went to his parents cabin in Wisconsin to hibernate for the Winter and he stayed there for three months. He did not intend to write or record any music during that time, he just wanted to be alone in a cold place; however, his creative instincts could not be sedated.
And, eventually, he wrote and recorded his first album there, a masterpiece called ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’. Vernon played all the instruments during recording and each song was edited with a large number of overdubs, which help the album to keep that ethereal and nostalgic feeling. He must of been feeling all kinds of melancholy because ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ is drenched in a sort of lonely, sad feeling as well. You can almost feel him searching for whatever answers he was seeking, all alone, holed up in a little cold cabin in the middle of nowhere. These feelings are tangible in the lyrics and the acoustic strums of his guitar. With his guitar and his haunting raw voice, Vernon recorded the album by himself using just a very basic small recording set-up, and, as he declared, some other small things that he made or found lying around.

When the album was finished, it was almost not released, but then, Vernon gave the album to two of his friends who encouraged him to sent his creation to some labels just as a group of demos. The album was released by Vernon himself and it had a significant positive reception, making Bon Iver quite popular around the net.

After that, Justin Vernon was signing to the indie label Jagjaguwar which gave Vernon’s album a proper and decent release. The album was re-released in 2008.

The listening of the whole album is such an experience, and every time I heard it I feel like I’m in the middle of a snowy woods, watching the freezing sunrise. In my opinion, all the tracks are just brilliant, but songs like ‘Flume’ , ‘Skinny Love’ and ‘ For Emma’ are simply superb and genius. An experience for all your senses.

In January 20 of 2009, was released the EP ‘Blood Bank’, the continuation of ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ which features four tracks, among them, the excellent ‘Blood Bank’ and ‘Woods’.

The label Jagjaguwar said about ‘Blood Bank’ that ‘as much as Emma is about the cold, the Blood Bank collection is about the warmth that gets you through it. You can feel the air move. Like a fire you've been stoking for hours and finally got to sustain itself, the heat blisters your face while your back is frozen solid.’ I totally agree.

This extended play had also a good reception, even arriving to the top of the UK indie chart in 2009.However, and despite his success, Justin Vernon has said that he will be recording his songs and making albums without producers and engineers because, as it is proved, he is capable enough to do it by himself.