Författare: xikano_2

Some of the Spanish blogs I read and which I keep in my Spanish/spanglish weblog seem kinda strange for this blokehead called J. It is so weird (yes it’s a neologism) that I feel am intruding in a circle where anyone else but the voices in it are part of it. It’s been six months since I entered the TJ sphere and for the most part were looking at a circle of artists, news writers and apparently some are writers which like to hang around with themselves and thus form a certain type of closed circle. There aren’t that many joe average blokes out there. I know my city and it is highly much like the rest of the country, un pais de contrastes, so most of the blogs in that clique are middle class people with their own values, and of very good families, there are about 30 to 40 such blogs and happily, they do not represent the mil or so inhabitants of Tijuana. Like I said, I just feel intrusive, at first I was delighted to find so many blogs that had to do with my city but no sooner I started to read them in earnest that I discovered that they are very conscious of the vocabulary they use, I can just imagine the pressure to adjust to a certain type of code of conduct between themselves and therefore careful of what they write about. At one one I even had to defend spanglish because they so rabidly were dead set against it.

There are very few blogs out there that do speak as if they were out there, in the streets, that is the vocabulary I seek, and every now and then I find a word here and there that confirms my own vocabulary. My social background growing up in my city was of very humble origins, my grandmother had a very modest curious shop in a jungle full of capitalist savages, her being single and raising two children and lived most of the times near the border so money wasn’t really an issue when it came to food but other pleasantries in life were of course a more luxurious event, it sort of reminds me of Edmund Gosse’s child rearing but without the religion involved. Anyways, the point being is that I for one do not feel like I can relate to their values at all and in fact produces anxiety in me whenever I read them, I just can’t seem to swallow their experiences without criticizing them. It’s a clash of values am sure.

I am glad that Tijuana has so many talented youth to represent her and am sure that they are doing a fine job out there in doing their expose’s and I hope the very best for them since they are doing exactly what I would have done so as well had I had the same opportunities as they have. It goes to show that my city is growing in wealth and not just materially but in people who are proud of her as well …

Go Tijuana!

It wasn’t anymore the suns rays which shone goo like light on cracked up faces that became the center of attention of his obsessed eyes that’s for sure; no, the purplish neon lights in his apartment did the daily life chores that amusement provided and consequently bothered him for their obvious necessity in life to move on. His list of intrinsic complaints aobut life read like a monk’s desire to seclusion in Nirvana.

He begrudged meal times, hunger pangs being a distraction from the rest of his pursuits; whenever his penis would turn hard the agony was to much to bear at times and he loathed all the ensuing activity required to get back on track; sleep, baggy eyes, and a weak body yearning to lay down sent futile signals to his brain for a pause in activities, and he fought effortlessly to keep awake to no avail, nuisance he thought of it.

His superhuman soul search considered such carnal demands obstacles in his life long quest to continue on and on, awake, on an intellectual pursuit of the mind.

Industrial deco design goods cluttered the four spartan walls on his 5th ave apartment in the 800 populated village of his. A swash shadow that liken Gotham darkness covered the tranquil going small town of his whenever he peeked through the blinds of his drawn curtains.

Martin Estrada Canberry was born on an August evening in the star spangled skies of the Florida everglades.

Recently I have made some observations regarding my own writing:

1.- Interpretation is everything: How I interpret is what counts and my contribution to the text. I nearly kicked myself on the butt when I realized that one, duh! like I have been making interpretations since day one, I mean, am a trilingual now!

2.- Writing is a descriptive chore, I am in the business of description and that for others, it is a blatant lie that I am writing for my self, it is an utterly and hedious misconception to myself to accept that as a truth, I write not for me. What I do do is control and have a say in the manner I conduct such description.

Of lately, oh, let us say since Bush’s war with Irak, this blog has been ranting about war issues and what are my interpretation of world affairs. I have come to realize that it is time to make a leaf turn or said more appropriately, to turn a leaf. I wanna concentrate more on my poems and fiction writing, I hope I stay the course …

Ok, back from France …and yes pissed off too!

Do I ever have a bone or two to pick with them. So there am I, and do they even care to speak English? No! They refuse adamantly to even utter a single word from that language which has so much vocabulary that those bastards left when they invaded Normandy. I mean they are so fuc… ugh! I left bitter, I mean don’t even try and buy a piece of bread in English cause you’ll meet the very wall we so jokingly say in jest that one meets with hard headed heads. And get a load of this, even when you address them in English they insistently continue to speak to you in that wretched language of theirs they call French, no offense out there to those of French origins but French folk have a lesson or two to learn when dealing with joe average, I mean if they have a fight to pick with Anglo speakers, hey! take it to them!

So yeah, I retorted to my good faithful Spanish to subjugate them, literally, I swear!

-Here, dame uno de esos!
-Pardon mua monsieur?
-Pardon my ass, dame uno de esos pendejo …!

After hearing my not so docile Spanish many just grimaced and acquised to my desires…

At times I just spoke money, an international language it seems, but I fear I could have been ripped off more than a few times, but I hope no more than 5 euros or so …

What is the blogsphere?

That seems to be the reigning question out there, everyone tries to contend with it or answer it.

What is life?

There is also this thing about definition, what is a blog?

Blah, blah, blah … amazingly enough there is someone doing research on this very topic, academia talk … gotta love it, anyways, why am typing all of this, hum, it all seemed so clear in my head as I sat in the loo, as the Brits are wont to say, thinking about world affairs, the state of world peace and my handy dandy solutions for an everlasting safe and sound environment answer to planet pollution, way before I sat fingers to keyboard, hum, I know I had something utterly vital to say about my self therapeutic rehab attempts …

Oddly enough it seemed to do with the curios phenomena of time. I know I haven’t posted anything to my English blog and it seems like eons ago I posted anything, yet the last time I did was Thursday. Curios, off course time in the internet is another whole ball field. You think you got 24 hours to post anything again anywhere in the vicinity of decency yet the weird aspect is that what this blog reads as one hour I experience another one. Different time zones allow for breathing room and yet, and yet, still give me ample space to keep up with the discipline character that I’ve imposed on myself.

Still, that’s just half of what I wanted to write about …dang!

I got the English bug in me.

Would you believe that an English man came to my door to day? and that he had visited my hometown, loveable Tijuana and been to Rosarito? Believe it. A ordered some stuff over the net (on/over the net? hum …) and it got delivered today. I didn’t figure him out for a foreigner although he wasn’t blond nor white (tanned perhaps?), I just listened to the Swedish and it didn’t ring or raised any flags that he was alien, as I. ( Americans say alien, so that micas, some sort of ID card that states your residence in the US, carry the legend Legal Resident Alien)

However, he certainly picked up I spoke English by the Swedish I spoke. That always manages to surprise me, that people can pick up that am an English speaking person by the accent in my Swedish, I mean, considering that my real first mother tongue is Spanish, although I claim to have two mother tongues, Spanish came first) you’d think that people would hear Spanish substrates in my Swedish instead. It makes me blush with pride, I love it when people hear that in me. Anyways, suddenly two foreigners where speaking English in my kitchen front door, him and I. I didn’t ask him where he was from in the UK, but his coming tomorrow to deliver the package he meant to deliver today, the thing is that he wanted money we didn’t have in the house, so he’s coming tomorrow, I’ll ask him then where in heavens tarnation is he from.

It turns out he has visited my town, dang, I mean, what are the chances that that would happen today? In the village I live in, speaking English and about my town, I was impressed, I know, it’s the little things that count, but hey! you’d be surprised too if you lived right smack in the middle of nowhere and be an alien in it …sheesss …

He used to smoke pot like a motherfucker, all the time and loved metal, that boy had cassette after cassette of metal from all kinds of bands from all over the world. He was a head banger if that term still exist. Somehow he used to maintain his cool which used to bring bouts of jealousy from my part, I wanted to be like him, off course, I wasn’t. He had everything: money, no work, just fun and play. He was good at math and came from Bolivia, he was a Chinese of sorts and spoke Spanish, if you took a good look you couldn’t figure him out for Bolivian, gringos from Redwood City wouldn’t make him out for a Latin American, no way in hell they figured that out, fucking gringos they can’t see the world in more than black and white, for all their color naming they are actually color blind when it comes to Latin Americans, for that matter I’m too, but once you see’em hanging out with the Hispanic crowd then you know he’s gotta speak Spanish, besides, there’s this vibe all Hispanics feel when one of theirs is around, so it didn’t fail to turn up in my radar once I spotted him. So I used to go his house ‘cause of this Spaniard from Basque country that bought himself American citizenship with false papers once an amnesty for illegal immigrants kicked in 1988. He claimed to have worked in the fields, picking tomatoes or what not, stuff gringos don’t usually do. The now defunct INS bought it, it only costed him 500 bucks, he had bought the letters from a crooked farming business that made tons selling letters ascertaining that said person worked there then and then, motherfucking Spaniard, never seen a field in his life, that’s all, two years later he was a full blooded American Citizen, anyways, I knew him that way, he was a roommate of the Spaniard. There are only two things I remember about him, he used to brag that he didn’t know where or how his parents earned their money and perhaps the most revealing part he left me, he said once to me: how can you explain the color orange to a blind person, describe it then!

I was impressed …

– No. final, that’s it, I won’t accept any other outcome.
– Am afraid things have changed.
– You were told exactly how the outcome was to be accomplished.
– Certain unexpected events arose during the execution of the command.
– Were there any non-friendlies around?
– Those that were were properly dealt with.
– Good.

The office of the 78th floor on 4th street was ample, the carpets white and as Victor rose from his leather chair behind his mahogany desk, he lit a Cuban cigar. His face became bright with the flames of the cigarette lighter and casted whirling shadows as he lifted his eyes to meet those of his worker. His workers were used to this ceremonious walk and remained still as Victor proceeded to walk around his employee. From behind his employee’s back, he let out cigar smoke, puffing very loud and clear, much like a tiger would growl encirculating his prey before the kill.

The bright light that I saw
when you were born, as I felt overwhelmed with love and tears rolled down my cheeks,
I realized one thing …life.

Through the legends and the words of my land, I felt their hate, I became aware of them, of those other lands, of the injustice inflected upon us.

Through their love of beauty I aspired to reach their goals.

One fate-full day I left running, leaving all that behind, and a family sick worried about me.

I went to those foreign lands that our narrators of yore tell about in our mother tongue.
I saw those places, now long traversed; now being traversed …

Little by little, as I saw and lived amongst those people my folk and kindred so ill spoke of, I began to see their dreams along the dreams of the land of my birth.

In the along I questioned my origins and the very voices that gave me an identity. I wondered out loud whether I was who my people said I was. (Was my mind freed?)

For every sojourn I undertook: left behind was the time I spent there; in return my luggage was heavy with memories of theirs, remembering how for a while I was one of them.

People too, wondered: whence cometh I ?, so many times, that I lost myself and began seeing me as much as they did.

(To the contrary) In an effort to recuperate a sense of being I became more like my ancestors: I lived like I thought they lived just to exercise how they were; how I used to be; how I am.

( Nowadays, it seems at times) All I have left is my one and only remaning value anyone can associate itself with me: life.

In English I am a rabid atheist. I frankly don’t believe in the paranormal when it is told in the English language even though my mexican culture is filled with it, however, told in Spanish, I am more prone to believe it.

The belief systems are of another kind in these languages. The belief system in Spanish has an aura like attitude towards it. Usually what happens is that when you hear a story about a paranormal event in Spanish it happens through a medium that has been used through centuries in our culture: oral narration. This puts you face to face with the narrator and hence, I believe the belief trigger is more apt to accept said events ’as probable’. ( notice that even as a write this in English my attitude is one of resistance) In English, it usually doesn’t happen that people tell each other those kind of stories, face to face, unless you are at campfire and even there it occurs collectively. It so happens that when one does come across those paranormal stories they tend to occur in the third person and distant from one, prepackaged in nice little news bits and therefore more liable to be questionable.

For those of you who are monolinguals this would seem quite odd indeed, because it raises several questions no doubt but most importantly, what does this fragment say about language, belief, and how the brain works?

First of all, how is it possible to believe in paranormal activity in one language but no the other? Alas! The human constitution is not as stable as one might possibly think, just as the planet with its seemingly stable and daily routine gives us the impression that everything remains the like forever so does the body. The truth is that the planet can go haywire any minute of our lives, the poles can change, and earthquakes can hit us and change the course of our lives in just a second. The body with its many liquids and chemicals are like the ocean under the influence of the moon, except that in our case every other human being we meet are each one of those like a moon rotating around us and under the pull of our gravity.

This can most easily be proven if you are abroad, regardless of the country that you are from the minute you leave it one amazing thing begins to happen: you begin to see and recognize your own kind. It is a feat that it is nearly dormant and occurs only every now and then in your place of birth, you can tell when someone is a foreigner. Abroad this sort of recognition radar has a mystical aura to it. I believe that establishes how the body is not as consistent as it might seem although language might give the illusion that things are firm, monolinguals seem more prone to stick to one sort of belief in practice, they might read about others but not incorporate it.

The curios thing about languages is that there are image carriers and therefore agents of change. When a bilingual is raised its not only passively taking in words and an accent free language, it is also taking in adaptation methods to deal with the many contrast that exist between cultures, for example, I carry the Mexican and American culture within and they are deeply rooted in my soul. This has produced a middle ground in me that it is referred to by many as Chicanismo. The thing is that the human soul cannot exist too long in caos and a sense of normalcy must abide every now and then therefore the culture clash that every Chicano/Chicana experiences is felt to be safer blending these two cultures to form one. Chicanos are most readily able to accept change and adaptation because that is their life training, finding the middle ground. Experience dictates as well how one is to react with the other, mores are like etiquette books for us, that is why we can change culture norms in the snap of a finger, or as linguists prefer to call it: code-switch. It is hence, possible for me to believe that in Spanish, which has a long history of telling paranormal stories to its children ( la llorana for example) to believe that this sort of thing happens since one is inculcated into it. On the other hand fairy tales and santa claus are disseminated and dissected for their belief as early as 7 years of age, we are trained in English to start questioning those stories and argue vehemently that they are not “real”. A factor I believe has more to do with evangelists fervent impulse and influence on American society to root out all evil in all aspects of society.

What it says about the brain is that the brain is elastic and gooey-like and thus able to function within several or more ways of dealing with life and its myriad manifestations so-called cultures. The brain then is independent from culture and thus more universal than one can imagine, the brain is not the property of any one society; how we incultate the brain manifests itself in the way we react and respond to each other. The brain is religions worst enemy, one would safely conclude since it can betray faith in all manners, perhaps that is why many revolt at the very idea of changing religions, it sickens them not because they abandoned their faith but because they too can fall prey to the brains brainy ideas of independence from the yoke of unilateralism.