CANTO DA CEREJA

  There comes a point in life when arguing with stupid becomes bad time management. Not because you’ve run out of arguments. Not because you couldn’t produce the receipts, the dates, the screenshots and a rather impressive PowerPoint presentation. It’s simply that intelligence and maturity are not automatically included with adulthood. Some people grow older. Some people grow up. And some merely acquire birthdays. They mistake arrogance for confidence, cruelty for strength, silence for victory, and their own version of events for internationally recognised fact. Adorable. There was a time when I explained myself. I answered. I tried to understand. I gave people the benefit of the doubt long after the doubt had packed its bags and left the country. Not anymore. Silence isn’t weakness. It’s editing. You remove the unnecessary characters and the story immediately improves. No final scene, no twenty-page explanation, no desperate need for the last word. Just a very elegant: next. Beca...

FORGIVE AND FORGET? HOW FRIGHTFULLY CONVENIENT. 🍒 There is a particular sort of person who recommends forgiveness immediately after doing something that would benefit enormously from being forgotten. They say it gently, of course, as though offering you chamomile tea. “You must forgive and forget.” Must I? How fascinating to discover that, after providing the offence, they have also appointed me Head of Disposal. I have considered the position carefully and must decline. Forgiveness may set us free. So does gin, and gin has the decency not to demand moral superiority in return. Forgetting, meanwhile, is not a virtue. It is bad filing. And some documents ought to be kept,  preferably dated, signed and in duplicate. Portuguese justice has taught me that every document requires another document confirming that the first document was, indeed, a document. To the machine itself, with all due respect, which, in British English, means precisely none:  fuck you . I do not believe in r...

Lo vivido no se olvida. Tampoco hace falta. Hay cosas que se recuerdan con una sonrisa, otras con cierta nostalgia y algunas que, sinceramente, habría preferido no vivir. Pero todas dejaron algo. Lo bueno me dio alas. Lo malo me enseñó a elegir mejor dónde aterrizar. Durante mucho tiempo pensé que ser fuerte significaba aguantar. Dar otra oportunidad. Intentar comprender. Perdonar una vez más. Encontrar explicaciones para comportamientos que, en el fondo, no necesitaban ninguna explicación. Hoy pienso diferente. No todo merece una segunda oportunidad. No todo merece una respuesta. Y, definitivamente, no todo el mundo merece un asiento permanente en mi vida. Tengo cicatrices, sí. Pero también tengo algo que antes no tenía: claridad. La claridad de saber quién soy. De reconocer lo que quiero cerca de mí. Y, sobre todo, de saber perfectamente lo que ya no quiero. He aprendido que la paz no consiste en que todo sea perfecto. Consiste en dejar de permitir que lo que no puedes controlar cont...

  I've been deleting things lately. Old words. Old thoughts. Old versions of stories I no longer feel like keeping. Not because they weren't true when I wrote them. They were. But something being part of your history doesn't automatically earn it a permanent exhibition. Some things deserve an archive. Some deserve a footnote. And some, quite frankly, deserve Delete. There is something wonderfully satisfying about deciding that a chapter no longer needs shelf space. No ceremony. No explanation. In the dramatic rewriting of history. It happened. I wrote about it. I lived through it. And now I'd rather use the space for something better. That might be one of the underrated pleasures of getting older. You realize that closure doesn't always require one final conversation. Sometimes closure is simply deciding: I've given this enough fucking paragraphs. Delete. Empty trash. Carry on. And somewhere in the process, you discover something rather ...

Apparently, at sixty, I'm supposed to calm down. Dress sensibly. Choose sensible shoes. Wear sensitive colors. And generally become a slightly quieter version of myself. That sounds exhausting. So I went to New York Fashion Week instead. Because if there's one place where nobody asks you to tone it down, behave yourself or dress your age, it's New York. Fuchsia. Ridiculous sunglasses. Trainers instead of heels. Coffee in one hand and absolutely no intention of becoming invisible. Perfect. I've never understood the expression “act your age.” Which part of sixty am I supposed to act? The part that has survived enough bullshit to stop caring what people think? The part that finally knows what she likes? Or the part that has enough shoes to know that sensitive ones are wildly overrated? Age doesn't make you boring. Giving up does. And I have absolutely no plans for that. So if you're looking for me, I'll be the sixty-year-old woman in fuchs...