Mi poema favorito de Féderico García Lorca que además va muy bien con este cuadro del nascimiento de Venus:
Venus, así te vi
La joven muerta
en la concha de la cama,
desnuda de flor y de brisa
surgía en la luz perenneQuedaba el mundo,
lirio de algodón y sombra,
asomado a los cristales,
viendo el tránsito infinito.La joven muerta,
surcaba el amor por dentro.
Entre la espuma de las sábanas
se perdía su cabellera.
Filed under Digressions
In Elvis’ song “Viva Las Vegas“, he wishes there were more than 24 hours in a day. Like Elvis, I also wish there could be more than 24 hours in the day, but not for spending more time in Las Vegas. I don’t want more time for work or more time for pleasure either. Actually, with more than 24 hours a day, I would still work at the same pace and for the same amount of time. I just want a little more time. But with the extra hours, I could do everything other than work or leisure slower. I could meander. I don’t want to rush. I want to wake in the morning and take my time getting out of bed and eating breakfast. I want to get home from work and not feel in a hurry to fall asleep to be rested for the next day. I want to meander into sleep. I want to be exhausted but to postpone falling asleep. I want to simply take my time. I want to stare at nothing in particular. I want to meander. I want everything that is not essential to be cared for with delicacy as if essential. I want a little more time to meander between the commencement of the day and actually starting the day, and the fall of night and the night, between awakening and slumber. Those are the realms where life should be lived. I am even considering adding the title “Time to Meander” to my list of unwritten novels.
Filed under Digressions
I have had enough of silly clichés that everyone takes for granted. For example, the other day I saw someone on MSN Messenger with the subtitle “It is what you DO that is important”. Frankly, I do not think that is accurate at all, neither in reality nor in the evolution of the psyche.
Just as there has been physical evolution of the species, there has also been psychological evolution that can be reflected linguistically, socially, and even in religion. In terms of psychological evolution, as I understand it, there was a time in history, probably about 500 years before the birth of Christ and around the advent of Guatama Buddha, when humans began to understand themselves as being responsible for more than just their actions. Prior to this point, humans were generally only accountable to God or to themselves for their actions alone. Thereafter, as especially prevalent in Christianity, man is directly accountable for the sins of desire or the sins of the mind. Permit me to continue:
Filed under Digressions, Essays
As I mentioned in a previous post, I was a major reggae fan as an early teenager. My father introduced me to Bob Marley’s music, and he became one of my heros (along with Bruce Lee). As a kid, I would have done anything to get my hands on Bob Marley videos and interviews, and were I a kid today, I would have loved all of the Internet resources available. Yesterday, for example, I did a search in YouTube and discovered a bunch of Marley interviews. Unfortunately, after watching an interview or two, I was incredibly disappointed in my childhood hero. I found Marley to be completely mislead by promoting the fraility of the human mind and almost comical.
In response to two questions, in particular, Marley was wrong by underestimating the strength of the human mind and its ability to control its surroundings without the use of external catalysts, be them natural or synthetic. His solution is for the weak. The questions dealt with (i) how he justified his Rastafarian worship for Haile Selassie who was the totalitarian dictator of an empoverished African nation, and (ii) why the use of marijuana was fundamental to his religion and daily life. Neither of his answers were satisfactory to me, and here is why:
Filed under Digressions, Essays
A few weeks back, I was thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Budhhist monk whose writings my mother introduced me to some time in the early 90s. I had wanted to mention something about him here but had not had the chance. Nevertheless, I have just finished Amos Oz’s fascinating novel Black Box (which for reasons I have yet to explore reminds me of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace), recommended to me by my friend Joaquín. I read the following lines in the story:
A man minds his own private business as long as he has business and as long as he has privacy. In their absence, for fear of the emptiness of his life, he turns feverishly to other people’s business. To straighten them out. To chastise them. To enlighten every fool and crush every deviant. To bestow favors on others or to persecute them savagely. Between the altruistic zealot and the murderous zealot there is of course a difference of moral degree, but there is no difference in kind. Murderousness and self-sacrifice are simply two sides of the same coin. Domination and benevolence, agression and devotion, repression and self-repression, saving the souls of those who are different from you and annihilating them: these are not pairs of opposites but merely different expressions of man’s emptiness and worthlessness. “His insufficiency to himself,” in the phrase of Pascal (who was infected himself).
and was immediately reminded of what I had wanted to write in reference to Thich Nhat Hahn. Here is what I was thinking:
Filed under Digressions, Essays, Literature
A few nights ago, I read “Toni Takitani” from Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I enjoyed the story, but was a bit disturbed by its first sentence: “Toni Takitani’s name was indeed that: Toni Takitani.” It is incredbily similar to the first lines of a story that I myself have been working on recently. My story (as it presently stands) begins, “Jimmy Castro was often as absurd as his name was ridiculous,” and continues,
“Jimmy’s real and official name was just Jimmy. Worst of all, no one in his family could pronounce an English ‘j’, so he would ever be referred to by others and by himself as ‘Yimmy’.
Other than that similarity, though, the stories are completely different. In any event, I have also just discovered that “Toni Takitani” was made into a film and released in the States last year. Here is the trailer:
Filed under Digressions
I love how music can transport you to different times and places in an instant. You just need to be careful not to listen too much to songs or you will lose their association with the past and they will become cluttered in the present (unless that is precisely what you want). About a year ago, I wrote a short story entitled “Time after Time” which I may one day either try to publish or post here. In any event, “Time after Time” in part deals with the way music affects how we handle situations and conditions our lives. In the story, I reference these videos by Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Ritchie, and Phil Collins (as well as mention Chet Baker’s version of the jazz standard “Time after Time“).
Cyndi Lauper: Time After Time
Filed under Digressions
I am just about to go to bed and finish off the long day by reading Haruki Murakami’s short story, “The Year of Spaghetti” from his new book of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. As you may know from two previous posts (Noruwei no Mori and Haruki Murakami), I am very much a fan of the Japanese novelist. In any event, this story is about a guy who spends an entire year cooking pasta for himself everyday, seven days a week, and always eats the pasta by himself. As a matter of fact, he believes that pasta should be eaten by oneself in solitude. When I read the following lines, a huge smile formed stretched across my face (emphasis added in bold):
“Every time I sat down to a plate of spaghetti –especially on a rainy afternoon — I had the distant feeling that somebody was about to knock on my door. The person I imagined about to visit me was each time different. Sometimes stranger, sometimes someone I knew. Once it was a girl with slim legs whom I had dated at school, and once it was myself from a few years back, come to pay a visit. And one time it was none other than William Holden, with Jennifer Jones on his arm . . . Not one of these people, though, actually ventured into my apartment. They hovered just outside the door, without knocking, like fragments of memory, and then slipped away.”
Filed under Digressions, Literature
I fully recognize that it is much too early to be discussing Christmas caroles, but it IS autumn and I have been thinking about Christmas Caroles. The thing is, I love autumn. It is my favorite season, at least at home in DC/MD. At home, the trees change color to burnt reds, browns, and oranges. The night air also carries a smokey, burnt scent. In Madrid, I don’t get the same romantic and nostalgic feel that is so comforting in the fall. There is no Holloween. There is no Thanksgiving. And finally, although they do play some American Christmas caroles, it just isn’t the same. Actually, it never really is ever the same. I am sure that if I were in the States, Thanksgiving and Christmas wouldn’t be the same either, just as Holloween ceased being special for me when I was probably 12 or 13. Nevertheless, when nothing else is left, I still rejoice in listening to my favorite Christmas caroles. Why? Beware, this is long and boring, and this is why:
Filed under Digressions
Grave Error 