Tenía que escribir esto porque creí que hablaba de mi y si no, de mi hermano.
De Phillip Lopate en Contra la alegría de vivir.
De Phillip Lopate en Contra la alegría de vivir.
—
The mourning process came in dreams.
And I guess It couldn´t have been any other way since in my day hours or what some wrongly call conciousness (all this time I´ve been everything but concious) I could assure I had accepted it even before it happened — coming from the fact that I could see it coming or that it was coldly a statistic. And hell, these things are like that, either you stand up straight with strength in you thighs to hold your guts up or you´re washed away. I wish I´d allowed myself to get taken by the waves.
But i didn´t and hence, I mourned only at nighttime, alone and in my subconcious. One night at a time, I went through the whole process. I don´t know if I went by textbook definition. It does seem quite logic and tidy the way it happened.
There was always my dad and in each dream I always knew he was dead or about to die and yet he was always my dad before the crisis, the model father, the reasonable one, the support and the healthiest person I knew. Then he started appearing ill in the dreams and that´s when the logic began because there was a coherent connection between him being ill and him dying. But then he was dead again and he would come back from the dead being ill. Until one day I saw him in his coffin. Even if he was standing around in the way I like to remember him looking at his coffin, he was to me dead-dead. I basically relived the whole experience in my dreams but always knowing that he was dead.
The night I saw him in his coffin was the last time he was in my dreams as a dead person.
That was around the time I forgave him for leaving.
So maybe two or three years went by. I went on to keep falling madly in and out of love with Andres and started loving others just a bit. Truth be told, they were easier to love than Andres.
Anwar M., on his part, went on to god knows what. I heard some rumors about marriage with some Marcela G.
This one day, my friend had a fight with her former-boyfriend-now-husband-father-of-her-two-kids and asked me to go get some drinks with her to complain her mind off. I said yes, naturally. She ended up drinking her mind off and so did I.
At about the middle of the lovely evening we were having, Anwar M. comes in the restaurant with a girl whom I took to be Marcela G. We quickly searched for any signs of a ring with no apparent success, we never got a good look at her hand. He didn´t say hello or even acknowledge us, or me for that matter.
Drinks came, nachos went, complaints turned into laughter. He never so much as looked at us but he took care of our bill. I´d say we´re even.
Un viejo que ha vivido cien años es tan sabio como un jóven que ha visitado 100 ciudades.
Pasa que soy joven y he visitado mas de 100 ciudades y mi sabiduría aciende a quizá 1.5 conecciones neuronales brillantes (o semi-brillantes dependiendo que haga con ellas) basadas en experiencia mezclado con una buena relación de conceptos cada 40 días en promedio y eso, en invierno.
Lo que resulta en algo que, seguramente quien dijo el proverbio, no previó. No previó los viajes que organiza el gobierno de China, ni las ciudades en dónde se encuentran situados los Disneylandias o el barquito que te lleva por el canal de Brujas con el guía ininteligible. Tampoco presagió la maravillosa caja de foquitos que te lleva a lugares tan insospechados como Talpiot, Jerusalén desde la comodidad de tu casa en dónde nunca sabrás el grado de humedad ni tendrás el sentimiento de claustro y de antigüedad que quizá se genera ahí dentro o no.
Un viaje (entiéndase un translado de una ciudad a otra) no garantiza descubrimiento, ni focos encendidos, ni despertares iniciáticos. Talvez no hay que ir a ningun lado, o ¿es que Voltaire viajó a todos los lugares a los que viajó Cándido? O quizá hay que ir a todos, (si no tenemos el wit de Voltaire) hasta los más remotos, desde el ejido vecino hasta Kapooka en Australia para encontrar que en Singapur hay casi la misma vegetación que en Tampico para después darte cuenta que si hubieras puesto atención en la clase de geografía sabrías que eso es perfectamente predecible.
Pero seguimos viajando, seguimos viendo, llenando la cajita de datos e imagenes, cada vez a mayor velocidad, expandiendo nuestra memoria para meter más y más. En mi caso, en espera de que un día me haga clic algo en la cabeza.
Starring: Juls as the Warma | Albert as the Canibal
In comes the Caníbal
Caníbal: It’s like warm dharma
Warma
Warma: I´m a Warma
Caníbal: I like Warma
Warma: they call me Warma
Caníbal: Oh yea?
Who does?
Warma: Warma is what they call me, but it´s not my name
Caníbal: Oh, so now a warma is a weird species and not a name
Warma: They call me Warma because of my species
they are ignorant and don´t realize I have a name of my own
I am the first Warma ever seen by the human eye
Caníbal: What is thy name?
Warma: Warma-0458
I come from the far planets off the western skies and I am here to eat you
Caníbal: Not to eat me!
For that… is not possible
!
Warma: My mouth is as big as a warma´s mouth can get
Caníbal: NOT!… possible
Warma: I can eat you whole
Caníbal: Eat whole human, it’s good for your digestion
“Yeah, I used to eat refined human, only, but my digestion was terrible. I went into the whole-human plan for two weeks and now I’m feeling better than ever”
Warma: You are right earthling, whole-human is the way to go
Caníbal: Eat healthy
All the fiber is in the skin
Don’t peel your human before eating it
But do wash it well for they are covered in all sorts of chemicals they put on everyday
specially their scalps and faces
. Be particularly careful in the washing of the female genre which, by the way, normally has a slightly tart taste.
Warma: Tart?
Caníbal: Ya
Warma: What do you mean?
Caníbal: Lemony, tasting sour like a lemon
sharp tasting
Warma: Ah, I shall take that into consideration, I´ve never eaten women
Caníbal: I also recommend the human testicles if you have a taste for the bitter flavors
They are best at around age 15, and taste better deep fried, in my opinion
Warma: Yikes
I´ve never tasted no 15 year old
,
they tell us to eat human when they´re in their 20´s
that´s when they get stressed and taste better
Caníbal: Stress makes them taste better, eh? Does that not make the flesh hard and chewy?
Por cierto, Warma-0458, disculpa que no me haya presentado
Soy el canibal de la Guerrero
Warma: What the?
It´s you the canibal? I have come to earth in search of you
Caníbal: Aha!
Now you have found me Warma-0458
Warma: Say, what age are you?
Caníbal: I am, uhmm…
I must find out, for I don’t know,
mid thirties?
Warma: Ahh
Worry not, I´ve never tasted a mid thirties human, i shall not taste for now
Caníbal: Good
I must say…
I am getting tired of eating human
I must try something more… exotic
the ultimate foreign dish, you know, warma-0458? What could that be?
I have tasted everything living on the land and in the sea and in the sky. Everything on this planet.
What could thrill my taste buds now?
What could it be?
Nothing from this planet, I don’t think.
Nothing from this planet.
Warma: Yea, well, nice to meet you canibal, I, uh, have to go, you know, some blokes waiting for me… and… (humito)
Caníbal: Right… where.. what the..
Mientras me cortaba el cabello el malhumorado y sobrevaluado hombre encontré esto que disipó mi molestia y que sirve muy bien a un proposito que traigo en mente:
En un letras libres de octubre decìa F. Savater acerca de Vargas Llosa:
Porque tal es el mejor beneficio que puede hacerse a nuestros conciudadanos: mostrarles que hay opciones, alternativas y oportunidades estrictamente razonables màs allà de lo que la rutina polìtica establecida sabe ofrecer.
…
Una hermosa expresiòn del Cantar del Mio Cid dice, si no recuerdo mal: “lengua sin manos, no es de fiar”. La lengua, la hermosa y rica y jocunda lengua de Mario Vargas Llosa ha sabido demostrar en cada momento oportuno que siempre pone manos a la obra y por tanto puede– pudo, podrà…-confiarse en ella.
En responsabilidades he estado pensando ùltimamente. Aquí lo que hicieron mis amigos de Tabasco:
Convirtieron, ante las atrocidades que se cometieron involucrando el agua de las presas, la página web de su negocio en una lista conteniendo entre cuentas bancarias para depositar donaciones, listados de centros de acopio, de albergues y una largo etc. Pero eso fue lo de menos.
En la radio como en la televisión escuchaban un sinfin de nombres de desaparecidos, algunos para nunca escucharlos otra vez, algunos que se emitian una y otra y otra vez. Los albergues comenzaban a registrar a sus albergados, me parece que por intervención del ejercito. Aun así, para las familias eso quería decir, en ocasiones, ir de albergue en albergue o esperar a escuchar un nombre en un medio de comunicación para reunirse con algunos de sus familiares, si es que los encontraban a todos.
Mis amigos hicieron una base de datos de los albergados. Algo, que al escribirlo justo ahora, me hizo sentir una especie de traición al acto puesto que el enunciado no hace honor a lo que eso significa. Significa atender a una necesidad que primeramente, no fue impulsada por una crisis personal, segundo, no es una necesidad inmediata o superficial, como lo sería el alimento y no era algo que estuviera a su alcance próximo. Encontraron una necesidad que se les pudo escapar a muchos, e hicieron por cubrirla. Ahora había acceso a listas con todos los nombres en un solo lugar y con un motor de busqueda.
“Les moments de crise produisent un redoublement de vie chez les hommes” escribió Chateaubriand. Y ¿cuando no hay o YA no hay crisis aparente? Yo solo puedo imaginar un momento de crisis como aquel mas nunca lo he vivido. Y el día que yo volé a Tabasco, quizá un mes despues, me parecío increible verle en buenos animos y esto me dejó pensando que ya todo estaba bien, pero la realidad es que el nivel del agua seguía marcado en sus paredes.
Siempre hay algo por hacer.
At it´s respective and most likely, obvious, extreme is the one which produces the most anxiety: the feeling that i have been cheated out of my divine right to be essential and irreplaceable, just as i´ve been told since the day i was born by mom and dad and on through it all and even now that I read and embrace all this oriental deal. Wouldn´t we all want to be well-valued but hell, we don´t even know our own face-value. And then, on the other side, and for a couple of minutes of the day of my wage-earning life, i feel free. Seems I could do anything or even nothing, if that were my wish.
And in their simplest forms, it appears to me as though the former, just as the latter could be true, if only they could co-exist in a friendly manner. That we are, in the great scheme of things, essential, is true, taking what Blaise Pascal stated to be true: “Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.” So believing that we are essential could lead to both: being anxious about being essential but not coming through as such (in a lesser scheme which might be just as real) or feeling free since, no matter what we do, essentiality is part of our make-up.
The problem resides then, as everything else, in the way this condition of being essential or being disposable is viewed. Being both at the same time could and, more often times than not, happen. We are essential by nature so we could also be disposable at a given point without losing our essential quality. So my answer could lie in extending those two minutes of the day in which I feel free and understand that being essential is inherent to me no matter how disposable my employers decide to make me. Sounds as simple as it actually is and yet, anxiety´s still there.
not so evident suddenly.
then it struck me enlightening when she said — tu sais, les enfants de la guerre sont tout a fait differents.
we tend to forget we don´t all come from the same place.