Caro Silva Rode's personal website
This seems to be the only post I make, so although I don't particularly enjoy writing it I will write it. Truth be told I've been kind of in a mood. Hope it passes soon! Dubliners, by James Joyce. For reasons unclear, likely just coincidence, I've read many book set in or about Ireland and Dublin as a teenager. It has become mythical for me. Incredibly enough, I hadn't read this one yet. I hope…
Antología de la literatura fantástica , compiled by Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares. An extensive selection of fantastic stories, some more clearly so than others. My clear favorite was Enoch Soames , by Max Beerbohm, which is in the public domain . It's a great story. You can clearly see where it's going since the beginning, and it gets there masterfully. I also really…
Last month I visited Uruguay for the second time since I moved out. The first time I visited I took my German boyfriend, who also wanted to trade a winter month for a summer one, and spent most of the time introducing him to everyone and showing him around in what I sometimes call a nostalgia tour. I am proficient at nostalgia touring. Doing it with someone else is always a bit disappointing,…
Every year when the summer starts it brings with it guilt. I finish work, come back home from the office, stand in our balcony looking onto the building's little internal patio and wonder: should I be outside, enjoying the summer? Getting your feet wet in the ocean feels like a proper summer activity and, as I lived most of my life not more than 500 meters from the shore, I got to do that very…
My plan to write here often has, not unexpectedly, failed. I can believably blame for this my two week trip to Uruguay and so I will. To get back into it, here's a list of what I've read last month: Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuściński, a Polish correspondent in Angola during the civil war in 1975. This was an enjoyable if demanding book and I'm glad I have a bunch more book to read by him.…
After a long trip, I'm finally home in Uruguay. The main purpose of the visit, aside form celebrating my birthday and seeing family and friends, etc, is bringing back with me to Berlin some of my old stuff, namely books. I came with a practically empty suitcase (which I will have to replace, because some time during the trip it got broken) and left a few days empty of activity so I can devote the…
Last year I discovered Proust. It's really one of those things: everyone tells you you have to read Proust, but you don't, until one day you do and when you do you ask "why did no one ever tell me ?". This month I finished In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower , translated into English by James Grieve. It reminded me of my own early teen summers, which were obviously nothing like that but that's…
I've been thinking a lot recently about my friends' parents. When you're in school and you go to your friend's house their parents are there. You see them all the time, they ask about you and about your family, they occasionally feed you and take you places. Some times you even spend several days together with them. And then maybe your school friendship ends, as school friendships do, or your…
Yesterday I came across this post: The creative journey is not an inconvenience . In it, Moody Warlock says: The journey to create art IS part of the art. It's not dispensable. It's not an inconvenience. It's the way we create meaning for ourselves. It's the method by which we grow and understand both ourselves and the world. I of course wholeheartedly agree with this. I would go even further: the…
I liked school. I was not the most diligent of students for the same reason I liked it: I just liked learning stuff. Not necessarily the stuff I was expected to learn, although I learned that too. I didn't care about the academics of it, the grades. I loved reading about things, I loved understanding things and more than anything I loved not understanding things. I loved talking to my teachers,…