Hello...Introductions and Such.

[Oda a la Tormenta]

Hello Everyone....my name is Elizabeth, although my forum name, "Oda a la Tormenta", comes from my favorite ode from my one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda...and it translates to Ode to the Storm. Call me whichever you like. ⛈

I'm 31 and I've recently been given a possible diagnosis of Asperger's.
I sought out therapy for a myriad of reasons and we landed with this, as we sort through other things as well. This possible diagnosis feels more like a relief and less like a weight as most in others shoes would view it I guess Because it explains a lot for me. The more I learn about how I've functioned my whole life being for certain reasons and not because I am broken or odd as most have seen me or left me, the more I can process and move forward. Instead of feeling incredibly lost in the world around me as I have for a long time. Whatever the outcome, I'm thankful at the chance to get know myself better.

Thanks for taking the time to listen, I hope to know you all better very soon.

 

[JackSkellington]

Hello, welcome to the site!

 

[Katleya]

Welcome!

You've come to the right place.
Glad to hear that you're taking in the news in that manner, it can be a bumpy ride for some.

I've never read anything by Neruda, but one of my favorite Spanish-speaking writers is Chilean.

Do you have any special interests, or any pets? Or superpowers, because, let's face it... we're basically X-men in disguise

 

[Keigan]

Welcome, this is a fantastic community.

 

[tree]

 

[Warmheart]

Welcome to AC, Elizabeth!

 

[Oda a la Tormenta]

@Katleya I sing and have since I was 10....and I have what my sound guy friend calls Bat Ears...due to my sensory issues I hear everything...which is a blessing and a curse in music industry I suppose.

Music is my prime way I calm myself, along with scent being next. I also love poetry. Neruda, Borgues, Satre, Bukowski, Angelou, Cummings...the list goeth on. Tolkien and CS Lewis are also my very favorites.

Who is the Chilean writer you like? This sounds interesting. Half of the poets I love have to be translated.

Everyone here is so nice....thank you for the welcome...it has been bumpy to this point but hopefully not as bumpy going forward.

 

[Katleya]

Aah, the Bat ears. I have that, too, but I never had an occasion to give music a serious try (not professionally, though, just as a leisure activity... I'd feel more comfortable starting with lessons and then carrying on with that as a pastime, it's just not the time yet).

I do love music as a means of calming down. I'm terrible with poetry, I struggle with the abstraction, but for some reason, Cummings was so far out that I didn't do too bad with his work when I was in school (go figure).

The Chilean writer is Luis Sepulveda, I like his short stories. I like Borges and Horacio Quiroga as well, but they're not Chilean, so it's irrelevant.
When you said the works had to be translated, did you mean translated into English? The phrasing leaves me under the impression that you read them in their original language anyway

 

[Nitro]

 

[Oda a la Tormenta]

I would love to give the authors you like a try! Cummings is a New England staple (where I'm from) but he is odd for sure, an acquired taste. I like when he does the visual poetry the most.

I work in a bookstore. I forgot that in my hellos.

Yes that is what I meant. I buy the bilingual versions of the Spanish speaking poets I love....it makes for such a beautiful read and I can continue to work on my Spanish(that admittedly remains dreadful.)

Music is my first love and always will be. I'm confident that when the time comes for you to explore it more, you will enjoy it even more than you do now

 

[Oda a la Tormenta]

Oh also I have two cats

 

[Katleya]

I would love to give the authors you like a try! Cummings is a New England staple (where I'm from) but he is odd for sure, an acquired taste. I like when he does the visual poetry the most.

Have you ever come across anything by Henri Michaux? Another "acquired taste" for sure. The guy experimented with a wide range of drugs, but is most famous for his (dark) writings on mescaline. I can't recall which one they had us study, it was either La Nuit Remue or Misérable Miracle. Literally the only recollection I have is a poem about a stain on the wall. That's it. Hence why I can't find the title no matter what I google
I'm starting to realize my school had the weirdest choices when it came to literature, so now I sound all pompous, when in reality I haven't even been exposed to the classics.

For Sepulveda, you could start with The Old Man Who Read Love Stories. It's got a dark, sometimes humorous quality about it, and it also references the political climate after the coup. [Hmm, on the "life under the dictatorship" note, I would recommend Mario Benedetti's Primavera Con Una Esquina Rota. I'm sure you're familiar with Benedetti's work already, he wrote a lot of poetry, too, but I haven't read any].
Quiroga will be refreshing after that darkness; he was influenced by Poe, but there's a mix of magic and something else I can't quite define that I found really entertaining. His Spanish is much easier to read than Benedetti's, too. You could actually start with Cuentos de la Selva, which is supposed to be a children's book, but it's not childish at all. The rest of his work is a darker kind of fantastic (think Guy de Maupassant, or, again, Poe). I hope you like it, he's incredibly underrated.
Okay, this is getting strange: I don't actually read that much fiction, but it seems I can now add "Spanish-speaking literature" to my special interests

As for the cats... I'm very partial to that. I love cats. I share my life with one, a tuxedo.

 

[Oda a la Tormenta]

@Katleya how insightful! You don't sound pompous to me, just very well informed on a topic you enjoy. Thank you for these amazing recommendations, I shall be on the search for them! These titles, in the way you describe them, flow very well with a lot of the current things I read so this is fortuitous . As for Michaux he sounds fascinating but I've never heard of him...some of the others I have heard of and some I have not so this will be an interesting literary adventure and a foray into the new...and for this I am grateful

Also...new literary superpowers for you!

 

[Katleya]

Haha, finally some powers that aren't hurting!

Michaux was a Belgian writer, born at the turn of the twentieth century (or shall I say turn of the 19th century? More than 100 years ago is what I mean), so he experimented with the same type of things as, say, Aldous Huxley: LSD, mescaline as we've discussed already, that psylo-something in mushrooms, and cannabis. What makes this interesting is that he had a very scientific approach to it, and those experimentations make for some fascinating reflections on mental health and psychiatry in general. I tend to have a soft spot for writers who were misfits and explored psychiatry (Quiroga has work like that, too, I think, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet). I'm an avid Philip K. Dick reader for that reason, I don't necessarily agree with his work, but as an Aspie pariah with some bad experiences with psychiatrists & hospitals until I got my official diagnosis, I can certainly relate to some extent & understand some of the motifs. Maybe I like dystopian works so much because I feel I'm living in an NT dystopia?

At any rate, I'm glad that it flows well with what you're currently reading, that's perfect!

 

[Streetwise]

welcome to AC

 

[Bolletje]

Welcome, welcome, fellow cat lady!

 

[Molly]

Hi @Oda a la Tormenta Elizabeth is one of my middle names, welcome!

 

[SusanLR]

Welcome to the group.
Great place, great people and sounds like you have some
great interests.
I love music and have the bat ears too. Or as some has called mine: Cat Ears!
Music is the best way to calm myself too. I need it to sleep by and some nice mood music to keep going in the house all the time while doing chores or just relaxing.

 

[Gracey]

Hello Elizabeth and welcome

 

[StephF]

Hi there. ¡Bienvenido!