“You are strong willed, but easily fooled, I am weak willed, but no one can fool me.”

All she had for a self-expression was writing; but she seldom used it like it used and abused her. Her will was weak, it’s true, but her head was on straight….it was her heart she was worried about. She was never good at “picking” guys, as if they were in some sort of line for her; she always chose “the wrong ones”. The hot, horny, jerks, the losers, the hot, horny, jerk losers, and lastly, the smart attentive ones from out of state. Yup, she was absolutely great at pickin’ ‘em, very great. She recently fell in love with this Bossa Nova song written by Tom Jobim but sung by someone else, it’s called Retrato em Branco e Preto which means, Portrait in Black and White . At first when she listened to it, she just fell in love with the piano solo in the very beginning, and then she fell in love with the pain of his voice in the song. She couldn’t understand a word, she doesn’t speak Portuguese, but she played it over and over. One night it occurred to her to look up the lyrics and translate them, here is what the songs says: “I already know the steps that road, I know that it will go nowhere, I can recite its secrets, I already know the way the stones, And I know there alone, I’ll be much worse, And what can I counter the spell, This love that I deny both and that, however, Always comes back to bewitch, With their same sad, old facts, What a photo album I insisted on collecting, There I go again like a fool, Search the disappointment, Tired of knowing that, New sad days, clear nights, Poems, letters, my dear, Yet again I write you, To tell you it’s a sin, I bring the chest so marked, Memories of the past and you know the reason, I will collect more than a sonnet, Another portrait in black and white, The vex my heart.” It’s no wonder she fell in love with it. They say the heart feels the pain, even if it’s in a different language, or maybe she just made that up just now.