unglaubliche unbekannte

there are all kinds of special people. the ones you know really well (i’ve talked about a few of them), the ones you don’t know at all, at least personally (some of them have been mentioned here, too) – and there are the ones you know almost nothing about, but you’d be curious to get to know them.

the reasons here vary. the most obvious reason would be if it is someone from the opposite sex that, for some reason, catches your attention – and you get hungry to know that person better. but many other situations can make you feel that you would really get to know this or that person better, to be friends with that person.

i still remember it very clearly. summer 1994. on a ferry going to england. i looked up, and there she was; it's incredible how the image is still clear in my head. this girl. dark hair, not too long, not too short, very "wusch". white skin, black and white pullover, striped. the canal behind her, the hair in her wind. i know this sounds a little on the over-romantic side, and it isn't supposed to be. but i remember the strong feeling of wanting to know that person - know who she is, how she thinks, how she views the world. this desire to know someone you've just seen for the first time. i repeat, i wasn't in love with her (love at first sight... hmmmm, i don't know about that, generally speaking), but if we had met and i had fallen in love with her later on, i could've said that i knew from the first moment. she wasn't that beautiful or anything, she just seemed to be so breathtakingley interesting. but, what are you gonna do? i didn't want to flirt, i wanted to get to know. there is a difference, a big one. and it makes it kind of tough to do anything about it, as probably an approaching would be interpreted as exactly what it isn't supposed to be....

sometimes it’s a tough position to be in. you want to know the person, but does the person want anything to do with you? often enough, they do. you should try it.

i guess i’ve done this a few times in my life, and the results were different. i remember wanting to get to know alessandra moreira in 1994. my second semester in boarding school, she was known to all my friends, because she had been at the school two years earlier, and now was returning to graduate with the friends she made that year. i met her for the first time in one of the first friday evenings (always special at IASP, the school) of the year – and i immediately wanted to get to know her. in this case, there was no romantic interest, i just thought her to be specially positive, nice charisma. i sought to get to know her, and we actually became pretty good years for quite a few years. i guess we still like each other today, but i haven’t heard from her for years.

edson nunes was a person like that to me, too. i got to know him a little when we played in a brass quartet (3 saxophones and 1 tuba) for a few months, and he really was a person i admired and looked up to. a person i really wanted to know more, chat off ideas with, sometimes just hang. that year, 1999, ended up being a special one, that i will always remember as a quartet of people hanging out quite a lot: edson, didio, leo and me. i’m glad to say that we are still good friends and that my appreciation of him has only grown.

two years earlier, i met a girl in a bus. actually, she attended that boarding school i had left in 1995, and the bus was full of tom de vida (vocal group) people i knew – but i didn’t know her. we talked nonstop for a good 90 minutes. and from then on, i wanted to know her more and more. it’s really not that i fell in love with her, but she fascinated me, and talking to her made me feel alive. a few months after that first talk, i toured with tom de vida for a few weeks, with the bus to the north east of brazil. this girl… she was something; complicated, i might say! we would talk every day (my initiative, but she didn’t seem to mind…), but the next day it was like we’d never met. but things did get better and progress over those weeks, and at the end i was asking myself if this minor obsession with this girl might be more than just a friendship. audrey ended up being my first official girlfriend, and there will be articles about her posted in here; because more than that, she is, until today, one of my greatest friends and most special people i know.

the person that best  fits the discription, though, is a very special and small lady. i had devolped a curiosity towards getting to know her for over a year, and i was kind of giving up on the idea, until an opportunity presented itself. i took advantage of the opportunity, and marla and me became very familiar to each other in very little time. i must say that this might have been the most intense relationship i've had with a person (not romantic, people, just relationship) in my whole life. and it was all the more special because i had wanted to know her for such a long time, and she turned out to be much more than i had imagined. although later on, the boy-girl stuff  did get in the middle of it, i wouldn't trade those months for anything.

right now, there is a person that i’m very curious about. i would love to get to know her better, you know, just know her better? admiring from a distance has been my specialty since i was a little kid, but since i came to brazil, i have learned to admire from near. who knows, maybe i’ll admire this new person from nearer, soon.

that british girl from the ferry (somehow i felt she was british), i called her "unglaubliche unbekannte" in my head, that day. the name stuck. but nowadays i wouldn't mind getting rid of the "unbekannte" part.