Författare: xikano_2

I don’t know if it has been done before but since I certainly haven’t seen it done in the English language am giving it a shot. Although I must confess that it worries me that it has been done before. I frankly don’t know and am doing it, if and only, for the sheer purpose of writing practice because I certainly don’t consider myself, by a long shot, anything but an apprentice of the craft. I am referring to a short sort-of experiment that I am developing and that has been shown here in this blog [Yonder lies it Thursday, April 03, 2003]. It is what I like to say, to borrow a well known concept within the painting arts, a triptych. The idea is to present a three character story and a scene whereby the three characters meet. The end or results or consequences would then have to be figured out by the reader. I got the idea from a film by mexican director Alejandro González Iñarritu called Amores Perros, translated loosely as ”Love’s a Bitch”. (quotation from preceding link) I believe it presents many possibilities for mental entertainment. Anyways, I hope it turns out well.

Have you ever had a glass of clean, fresh, pure mountain water run your throat all the way, cascading down your ribs? At times the Nordic winds give the same feeling except that these gusts are cool and cold in a caressing manner. The spring heat is enough for the body to feel grateful at this gesture of nature. I personally like it when it’s cloudy and the outside airs are brisk, strong enough to lift my jacket, embrace me and make me feel its chill. It seems as if it wants to push me to the ground and play, jostle, laugh together with my life. I smile and feel tickled as that is the most I am willing to give back.

I love to see last autumn leaves being raked by these winds, rushing past me, cleaning my yard of debri while tending my tulips. The branches in my trees are cleared from old and brittle ones that didn’t make it through the winter, such is nature. People indoors prefer a nice warm chimney but I stay outside trying to keep my scarf in place to no avail, it blows too playfully, though it doesn’t bother me one bit. I have often realized that once inside I am only reminded of its presence outside since my house creaks and sways at the rhythm of the currents. The sun plays too as it likes a hide and seek game which as the light grows stronger you vaguely hear through the swish a peek-a-boo.

There was only that one chance. The crowds were thick enough to create a diversion and grab it. The money bag lay idle in the counter, so it would be enough for a fire alarm to cause a small panic, stretch the arm, grab the dough and make a run for the door. The only obstacle would be the guard at the door, a buffy looking security agent who seemed in love with his job. He had the handcuffs in plain view, as well as a can of pepper spray and a mean looking baton, which he caressed with his left hand like a cat owner would his pet. Just then a scanty clad dame popped in distracting the buffy looking guy who was being a gentleman by pointing her to somewhere as they walked together a bit. Gary saw his chance and walked towards the book section and stopped near the emergency fire alarm, pulled it and started to walk fastly towards the counter so as not to raise suspicions. At the sound of the alarm everyone became disconcerted and moved quickly to get the heck out of there. Gary grabbed the dough just when the clerk was trying to figure out what was happening and made a dash for the door. He ran as fast as he could.

Ernest didn’t feel like opening that can of beer, he had enough, really enough of his drudge monotony. Nearly fed up with the daily drinking. So he picked up his keys, put his jacket on, checked that the radio was off and he left his flat. Down the elevator, he came across a neighbor he was pissed at so he just gave him looks that killed, and then proceeded to say hi to the first passerby he met. 9pm and he smelled the city, it smelled like popcorn does at the movies except that it was drizzling. So he kept walking, destination unknown thinking that maybe it was time to pay a visit to an old girlfriend of his. On the way there he found a wet quarter, picked it up and started to flip it up in the air. Should he walk there and see her or should he take a cab? Should he just drop by or should he announce his visit?

Olga was in the mood for some shopping. She donned a miniskirt, and a shirt that fit like a glove marking her voluptuous body at every curve. The stiletto high heel shoes put the extra touch in a very nice outfit. Looking outside the window she noticed some small rain drops in her pane. She grabbed an umbrella just in case her hairdo came into danger. Looking one last time in the mirror, she checked her deep red lipstick color in her lips.

The weather was grey and the city noises was a mishmash of screams, crying and yelling with that of cars passing by and a police car with its siren still on. The ambulances had the siren lights on, resembling a death disco of sorts. To the left of the sidewalk bundles of money and shiny coins were scattered across it, were curious onlookers stared, waiting, like vultures, for a distraction from the only police car to have arrived at the scene of the accident. Some handcuffs lay strewn on the street, and a security guard sat by the sidewalk with a bruised head and what seemed to be blood running from his nose, dripping down to the wet asphalt. Two bodies were being attended by medics and one was already being carried inside the ambulance in what seemed to be an unconscious state. The other body, a female, had some red lipstick smeared in her face and a miniskirt displaying fine long looking legs and some broken high heel shoes. She was being pumped air and an inyection glared all the lights that the city could reflect on its metal needle that moment.

I think that sometimes I overwork my poetry. I think I need to let it stop there it ends, in that brief moment I get when I’m overwhelmed with its inspiration, lulling me, whispering me its heartbeat. And if I ever manage to capture its essence, I need to allow my dream catcher to snatch it and take what it is in as is.

For sometimes I know for a fact that these moments of one with life melt like a snowflake in the palm of my hand.

Airs of change blow by the meadows of the threshold

Alluring me into its fold

I leap forward to rest on its pasture

Laying back, I feel them run over me

Contemplation slowly takes of me

The future, is it worth?

Caressing the possibilities of a past long gone

Embracing dreams of yore

I hold fast to the roots of my past.

Passively scouring the media
Sifting through human remains
Am bombarded my eyes shot red

Left riddled with half-cooked notions
I trod on in ether all teared
Through the barbwired wide world web

Seeking not knowing what
Respite perhaps from the pain
Of seeing all those deadly aims

I stand idle in oceans of hate
Watching the waves of utter despair
I am but the sum of the day

Western Zilch

When the trees started to swoosh with the force of the winds my hair began to be caressed by the gusts of the fresh morning breeze. My neck felt the coolness of the early hours light and I kept walking against the gales and ended up loving the chilly air touching my face, I fell in love with my life, that moment anyways, for the very first time in many months.

As I passed my surroundings, keeping straight along the asphalt of the walkway, I noticed, as I went along, the early grass sprouts shooting up as August Strindberg would say, amongst last autumns fallen leaves, looking rather curious as their pointy ends barely made it through the brownish brittle leaves and other tree debris that covered the ground. It had been a hard winter and the landscape offered no consolation for months on end, but now all that was changing. The sun paid us more visits and the weather gave us chances to take off our jackets and wear light clothing. It brought also lighter moods as more laughter could be heard as people walked by each other, people seemed cheerful and willing to meet each other.

I had decided to pay a visit to an old friend of mine that day, who I hadn’t seen in many weeks and as I heard he was about to embark on a long trip, I wanted to give him my best wishes for the duration of his sojourn.

On way there, looking up towards the partially clouded sky, I was amazed at the majesticity of the shapes and colors of the clouds. It was nice and the few patches of clear sky allowed for the rays of the sun to shoot off straight lines of light through the bluepurplelish hues that the soft cottoned looking clouds had. In that scene, there was that God element in it that made one see how insignificant one is at times in the presence of such marvellous nature.

When I write I like it when it gives rise to phonological linkage. This happens very much in both my native tongues, Spanish and English, as Swedish is still hatching from the shell it is incubating in.

When a line comes to mind and I write it down, type it, remember it by heart etc, etc … I make a conscious decision or an effort, exercise to tag along the sounds said sentence gives rise to.

Sometimes I get so bogged down by this that the image comes second to melody.

I’ve noticed that more and more I like to say ’more and more’, it seems to be my favorite intensifier now a days …

Anyways, more and more I try to keep, with much success, if I may so humbly opine that of myself, my language consistent in as much as it remains in the same semantic field.

Off course the good staff at the Department of English in Stockholm have much to do in this awareness awakening since it has been by their guidance that I’ve come upon this self-discovery.

Digress, digress …

I try, in conjunction with sounds to, themselves?, evoke, suggest, imagery.

In the future I would like to create image clashing, but that is another topic for another blog …

Lastly: I pursue the image through vocal sounds that the very words I use produce when they are pronounced. I like how sounds, by their very pronunciation can give rise, hint, suggest other imagery that it is not necessarily implied by the very text one reads, but rather by the sound in it ….

Vera Brittan recounts her fight for her independent self as an uphill battle. We get this, as it seems that she is engaged in a Sisyphus task in order for her to accomplish her education.

Our hero is put to test her belief; the devil is society, her milieu.

I find it amazing how Beauty for these Victorian writers seems to be the highest ideal of all. Edmund Gosse, for example, became offended because zealots in the Christian community destroyed pieces of art in museums. Vera Brittan, p.48, says that ‘…my sexual curiosity was always a bad second to my literary ambition.’ And war is ‘…an infuriating personal interruption …’ to her studies.

The appreciation of a literary education is on a higher pedestal, and a higher social class. There is no higher aspiration than to acquire a profound knowledge of the arts, letters and conversation. Social life is at best a nuisance, an obstacle to that end. Although fine coterie is desired.

Spanish philosopher and novelist writer Miguel de Unamuno comes to mind at times when one is reading this autobiography. He comes to mind so much because this autobiography has what he terms ‘intrahistoria’ that is, the story of the common people, away from the shakers and movers of power.

World events were just in the way for her, hindering progress, her way for an upper education. There is much time spent brooding over how these significant events like war, Edward the seventh’s postponed coronation or the death of the Queen played little importance in the life of Brittan in the early chapters of the novel. (p.98,110)

Our pity is for her, the invocation of pity according to Aristolean principles that leads to catharsis?

This histrionics idea bothers me more and more. I suppose she is bound to histrionics (hysteria?) but only, I believe, in her life, the hurdles she encounters on way to meet her goals. I would prefer to name those acts as acts of indignity. She is indignant at how others react to her femininity, gender. How she developed this acute sense of independence is not told I believe, but her impulse, metered by her patience and temperament, is in the end met. One thing disturbs me here though, inasmuch as men are granted the belief that they are ‘predestined’ for X why isn’t this same belief granted to females? Robert Graves after all did the same, although he expressed it in the name of valour, is this a minimizing of the female voice once again?

Wherein lies the feminine here? In the way her indignant voice comes out? In the display of shock at the behaviour of her surrounding ‘barbarian’ society which fails to include women? I believe this is so since she is battling a society bent in turning down her best desires. She asserts herself as a woman through many emotional perils.

The space keyboard brings insecurity to my typing. It is wobbly, in a fit of misdirected force I became irate and hit it thus making the spacebar wobbly. It’s nearly reflecting my approach to writing. As I always fear the power words have, and ultimately the power the reader has; unto them, I stand needlessly out in the open.

The one because I don’t know how to control them. Ornamentation is hardly my forte, I, like botanist Carl von Linne, care only to classify them, words are pretty in themselves, but it takes a real flowerist to make arrangements with them and draw awe; to offer a sense of beauty and spiritual oneness with nature.

The other because it is he or she that will ultimately cast judgment, draw conclusions and offer words that will reflect its reaction to that which as been read. The reader, I fear, is an unwelcome gardener that pulls weeds and prune trees. It plants seeds where none perhaps are needed. It comes and disturbs the peace of the bed where I toil the soil. Although more and more I come to see this stranger as a welcome part of the ecosystem. Like bee’s and other insects who bring pollen to my lot, I am amused at how flowers I thought I never sowed suddenly sprout adding color and delight to my otherwise green collection.

I have come to realize that it is good to be cultivated.