dots and colours.

change is inevitable.

How many times have you heard the phrase ”you’ve changed”, coupled with frowning and a nasty look from your friends?

What does change even mean?

Change is inevitable - and once we come to realize that, and accept it, we might avoid using the previously mentioned phrase whatsoever.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, because I’ve found myself in that situation a few times in the last year or two.

The fact that I’ve changed, in my old friends’ view means I’m not ”the same person I used to be in high school’.
Well, I would be worried if I WERE the same person as the one who tried to find her way through puberty and all that ”silly highschool-nonsense” [it’s neither silly nor it’s nonsense, but you get my point here].
All of my friends were used to the fact that I would always be there if they needed me and that I would always arrange our meetings [even if that included mad text-messaging all 5-10 of them, because I were the only one willing to do that].

Things have changed - I have changed - but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Realizing that not all of them were my real friends [or, for a while, they might’ve been, but I can’t find a point where it all started collapsing], I’ve changed my attitude towards people.
I’ve become more skeptic, more attentive and somehow stopped giving so much of myself into friendly relationships.

There’s one thing that hasn’t changed - my ability to admit I was wrong, to say I made a fault and to, in the end, apologize.
I’ve always tended to forget other people’s mistakes, considering that everyone sometimes makes them.
But that principle hasn’t been applied on me from others; somehow they always remember every little detail of every one of my mistakes and, moreover, they force discussing the ”dirty laundry” when new issues and problems come along.

I’m not the only one who’s gone through change; all of them have. Some changes I don’t approve at all [because I think they’ve become more reserved and narrow-minded] but I’ve never judged them because of that. It’s a domino effect: you change your habitat, your circle of people and the institution you gain your knowledge from; of course some of your opinions will change.

But here’s the problem with the ”old high-school crew”:
I’ve found myself being surrounded by people who not only gossip about others they don’t even know and comment passers by [a habit I also had in high-school when I was too insecure to dance in the disco, but apparently so ”confident” I could talk shit about some random girls or guys], but they force gatherings and always bring the dirty laundry in the bag with them.

And then - they tell me I’ve changed.
I take a deep stare at their faces and silently say goodbye to my high-school friends; I have changed, indeed. But the fact you can’t embrace that only means the only thing we’ve got left in common is our past.

Why do they hate us?

Why do they hate us? - by Mona Eltahawy

”They don’t hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says.”
Great article, read it here.

rain

I don’t like rain.
Which isn’t quite true; I don’t like rain when I need to step out of the flat and go somewhere.
It can continue raining for hours if I’m in a warm room watching movies or listening to music - I don’t care even if there’s a complete downpour right outside my window.
Which isn’t completely true either. I start thinking about my family and whether they need to go somewhere - if they’re on a business trip or the rain caught them on the way to the shopping center.
I guess I’m a pretty moody person. Whenever rain comes knocking on my roof, I always feel some sort of dismay.
I wake up feeling nostalgic, teary-eyed and the only thing I can actually stand doing is reading or typing this kind of bullshit.
Apart from the already mentioned movies and music, there isn’t much that I’m capable nor willing doing.
Right at this precise moment, thousands of little raindrops are hitting the streets in my city.
I think I’m going to watch them fall for a little while.

just a quick comment.

I read this post today which says that Israel has become the first country to ban underweight models in local advertising.
In the article, Dr. Rachel Adato, a gynecologist and the law’s sponsor, remarks: “On the one hand, maybe we’ll hurt a few models. On the other hand, we’ll save a lot of children.”

How is, exactly, banning skinny models going to save children?

People are overreacting over the Body Mass Index instead of focusing on healthy food. There are many skinny women, like myself, who have had a low [also sometimes cited as ”anorexic”] BMI throughout their whole lives. Does that make us sick? Does that make us ”bad role models”?
I don’t deny that there are bulimic or anorexic people as well, but putting everyone into the same box just doesn’t make any sense.

The key is variety: the model industry should stop pursuing only one body type, and instead choose a variety of different types, but - most importantly - not excluding any.

the smell of spring.

It feels like spring, even though it’s the beginning of March and the meteorologists are already creeping us out with the next phase of The Day After Tomorrow [and I mean it - on Sunday temperatures should start dropping].
But, hey, I can almost smell spring, and I can’t wait for those glorious moments of chilling on green grass.
[even though I somehow have the feeling the only ‘chilling on green grass’ will take place in front of the academy building in short pauses between classes which isn’t so thrilling.]
Everything seems nicer during a sunny, warm day. Doing the laundry, cleaning the dishes, getting out of bed, even studying for the exam seems to take less effort than usual. Even the kids suddenly appearing at the park where you’re learning and trying to concentrate on ”big words” like ‘the new art paradigm’, ‘transcendental’, ‘semiotics’ or ‘epistemic’ don’t annoy you too much and you don’t wish to shoot them.
It’s like they’re saying: ”hey, finish with that literature of yours for hell’s sake and enjoy this day”.
They surely have a point there.

Angelina Jolie came to Croatia - again.

Angelina Jolie visited Croatia a few days ago. If you still don’t know that, then you certainly didn’t watch Croatian national television that day which postponed some of its program due to Angie’s arrival.
They transmitted the event live, along with interviews and hoards of squeaking fans.
I admit it - if I had been there, I guess I would’ve been one of them as well; shrieking out loud and trying to catch a glimpse of her.
In the news they announced her as ”the most famous actress in the world”, and although I don’t deny her acting skills, I must ask myself why there must be a show every time somebody famous crosses the borders of our country.
It is a small country, indeed, but is the coming of an actress to promote her new movie really something that needs to take up 15 minutes of the news?
I’m wondering whether that kind of media exposure is made because of the people who long to watch celebrities on their tv screens, or is because the media insists that people forget about more serious issues and slowly keeps on brainwashing all of us.
What’s the cause and what’s the consequence?

Are we so shallow that the view of Angie on the screen keeps us happy, gives us some sort of satisfaction and, suddenly, we are so proud that she chose to visit our country. The mayor of the capital came to be part of the event [and even managed to say the wrong name of her new movie - twice] and it all became a big show for the hungry crowd.

I can’t say how thrilled I was when I heard that she had left.
Because my parents and brother insist on having the tv on all the time [even though nobody’s watching, but, hey, why not waste some electricity?], the news almost made me sigh with relief.
After all the details the reporters had fed me up with - when did she arrive, what she likes most, how does she find the whole atmosphere, where-the-hell’s-Brad? - it was a pretty nice feeling not to hear anything about her anymore.

I’ll take into consideration the other side of the story - maybe, just maybe,  it might not have been an entirely bad thing after all; considering how many murders, crime and corrupted politicians are the main base of basically every evening news, maybe from time to time it’s even refreshing to see that not everything’s so black.
It might be brainwashing, but at least we can forget about all the gloomy reports the media scares us with on a daily basis.