Författare: xikano_2

Being trilingual has caused interesting activities in my brain.

Although I’ve never had any problems with Spanish and English sharing the same mass of grey matter, it seems that English and Swedish are just being too concomitant with each other, like lost cousins they intermingle. They’ve cozied up too much producing a dissonance in my phonological sphere. Words just sound too familiar with one another and what I think is right and makes perfectly good grammatical sense turns to be later a hybrid of sorts, specially in the preposition (a closed area) areas. I am glad that I have a high metalinguistic awareness, because I hate to go through life speaking Spanwednglish.

For example, yesterday I confused until with unto, (the Swedish negation word inte, could it also be somehow involved here?). The discrepancy in sound is very limited although I would assume that monolinguals would have no problems in identifying this word no pro. However, and not to digress but to expound, there is also a possible phonetic sway. The dark l, I’m gringo American, easily can be confused by what phoneticians call a minimal pair with the sound of the vowel o. Until – unto [inte ?]. Just a small difference, nonetheless, It troubles me to make this discovery in my head.

Further commenting on this issue shall be duly noted. It must happen when am the most taxed, hence, the reason mornings are best for me.

Dear diary, not!

I reached a point of observation, on top of the lighthouse I saw with the aid of the ramp light a common scene, the sea. I saw millions of sparkles in its water, all very amazing in varying degrees, yet I saw a struggle there too, namely, the need for uniqueness.

Half of what of I written has been modified by the WP, am I being too complacent in allowing the WP to dictate to me what’s right or what’s wrong?

As a writer, if any cuneiform of writing makes me a writer, then I shall be one, in accord to the fact that I am writing, there isn’t much left to indulge our heads. The writing system is exhausted, a well dried out. Nothing is new under the sun sayeth the book of Ecclesiastes yet we tinker along. I fear though we seek in vain. No new forms of writing within our present writing system is allowed, we have stretched it out to its limit. The letter is dead!

It’s ridiculous. Watching the war on the news in so many possible channels with so many perspectives. All the same, in English. Tone varies though if you suddenly choose other languages, but the truth is that the only ones having a ball here are the capitalists. Markets are soaring. They seem happier, yet we lesser beings, left with qualms, are made to partake in this carnage through propaganda filters and newspeak. We fear.

I heard some US lawmakers are finally questioning the patriotism that led to this assault. A little too late; I suppose they didn’t want to be seen less democratic than the Brits. The question is then, what am I doing to lessen this war, this life pilfering? I can refuse to purchase American objects in as much as I refused to buy French wine because they conducted nuclear testing in spite of world protest. This war also means the death of the belief that by boycott we damage through economic means others. Globalisation is so deeply rooted that if I were to boycott American products I’d only be hurting or threatening jobs here in this country.

What to do?

Refuse to believe. I will no longer believe in the idea that America is the beacon of light and freedom it purported to be. The foundations upon which this so called democratic country has been laid stand now to rot. Power, raw power, has taken over the ideal of a true free world. What good does it do to live in a free country when patriots take over and start to persecute those with different ideas? We have all heard how in the name of National Interest people are persecuted for having a difference of opinion, this in the USA. The American Dream is in its last phase. People there, my kin, have become agnostics. It isn’t a regime change we are witnessing, it is a dream change. Who will carry the dream of equality in the next thousand years? Who will dare live in a world of peace whereby humanity can live in real peace, real development? Capitalism is thriving, just about the only ones. The USA has allied itself with the very same forces it purports to abhor.

If the US has set on a course to free the Iraqi people who is to free us from the black and white patriotism of the US?

It’s just a question…

Then that same night he told her he couldn’t lie, they drank beer, lying right there on the spot to each other. He had that flash, that flash that’s like a chain and ball, heard the chin-cling loud and clear and wanted freedom. He felt high as ever, didn’t really want part of her, he wanted to run, he didn’t like her, liked her; he wanted no part, wanted all her parts.

Then it took him 24 hours just to get her out of his system, to stop feeling any good about her and the time they spent together talking about the theater and how she was the way she was, while he just sat there listening, listening to her voice, melodious, almost like Ulysses being strapped to the mast, listening to the sirens, calling him, only he wasn’t strapped, he was there, willing, he wanted her, I was intoxicated. Me and my little voice struggling there, here in this piece of paper, trying to sort this out, and I can’t, I can to a certain extent. Me and my little voice, counseling me, do it; don’t it. Lie, don’t lie; tell her, how much you want her, tell her the truth, maybe she’ll buy it. Stop thinking about her, I can’t stop, I want to say so much, then reality sets in, I can’t, I must abide me, it be wrong to hurt someone else this way, lying …. All’s fair in love and war?

When it comes to languages it seems to me rather curious the stance some people take. I remember as a child how embarrassed I was to speak Spanish. I recall how one day we came to my grandmother’s in TJ and how, in spite of being raised by her, and just only two years before all I spoke was Spanish I claimed not to. English was my de facto lingua. Later, as I grew I did everything in my power to disguise my Spanish accent to the point of only thinking, eating, walking and peeing in English.

However, we are products of our environment and the oppressive years in California, oppressive for me because I lived in such an environment, Spanish was worst than the black plague, it gave you away as a foreigner, in your own country. Unknowingly we youth, as we grew older resorted to a much vile new form of language that everyone from México to Spain disliked, much as Estuary English in London. Spanglish was only spoken then by pochos. Later it became a badge of sorts of pride, to distinguish our unique culture, because we had two cultures, we had things that couldn’t be expressed in neither language except by code-switching.

Spanglish is now more popular than ever to the point of having a translated piece of art like Don Quixote, curious how the world changes.

What is it about two people that just want each other? There are two things I loathe, hunger and sex, they distract me from my studies, they do, they really do.

– Wanna drink coffee?
– No thanks, am bored, I don’t know where am going, what I want nor a purpose; I am already high, thank you.
– I least you have politeness, come again sometime?

‘The sun shone, the last I saw her’ He said, ‘the curtains in my flat were drawn, and I had Blue Six on. Some silky song about some naked pair, somewhere in Paris. I didn’t feel for the news so I kept the TV in the dark, or was it the other way around, I just don’t know anymore who is it that keeps who in the dark.’
And then, like a hit soul by Cupid he thought on: he kept fantasying.

– I didn’t really wanted to say I love you, but I did, in my head; I did wanted to tell you, but I didn’t, didn’t I? Then he answered himself
– No, I couldn’t read your mind that day. He thought of speaking to her: there is a secret, a secret that will destroy this, which we have now, this time, this hour, the present.
– Come again?
– I already have, once or twice, and am still feeling ill, the good kind.

Then he kept quiet. Only to mull once more.
Three days and four moral scolds have gone since I saw her, and through two days I sent her a million sms’eses in my head while battling my emotions, compulsions. I didn’t fuck her, and I feel fucked all the way, my brains juiced out of power; I been way too long alone with someone else, I needed a woman, and that woman just had me for hors d’oeuvre.

What is it about women and their fragrance? Just leave me alone! They drive me nuts, I don’t want any of it, let me smell it! I say, quietly, to myself, and I run back as fast as I can to her presence in my head. I want her intoxicating voice, just let me have a vowel or two, let me have you again, and again over some beer at some pub, music sounds better with you. I want to pretend that which I am not, you give me life, woman, I love you and desperately need you out of my life, you disturb everything I have. My fantasies of you are just plain weekends, so I can return back to my double life. But I want to send you so bad, an SMS, only one; please get yourself back together. Compose yourself, so I did.
By midnight I composed a letter, far from being an SMS and short from turning into an e-mail, it was about recalling that fateful day of her appearance, her powerful stamina, and my weak sentimental constitution as I waited hoping for her not to come, to come to me. I was no match for her; she was a sturdy femme fatale….

Since last monday Jean Paul Marat has been in my head. In particular the painting Jaque Louis David did of him titled Marat Assasiné . I first came across him through a book by Peter Weiss that I must of surely found in a second hand bookshop back in the states. I must of liked the cover, it had the painting mentioned above, and then became enthralled by it because I do remember that I read it right away. The title of the book? The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade– more commonly known as Marat/Sade. ( More pictures ) I loved it and ever since there there are two quotes which have lasted within ever since:

Act one, Conversation Concerning Life and Death:

Marat: The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes.

and

Act one, Continuation of the Conversation between Marat and Sade:

Marat: I never believed the pen alone
could destroy institutions.

Well, that’s what has been haunting me since monday the 13th.

Act one: Drama out of proportions

Anton: It will go fast, the remorse and qualms ails us, I promise it will go quickly.

Cleops: We can not stand idle and do nothing. In history we will go down as the most cowards of all generations. Having power, we did not use it. Instead, we remain, frightened. So the the military will just have to put us out of our misery. This wretched dogging must die.

Anton: By the time we are back in our dancing studios, our favorite drinking holes, our luscious desires for money quenched and aspirations of a better life, You won one million dollars! dreams are put to place again, we will have forgotten.

Cleops: Suffering children will not accost us anymore, the thought of bombing people because the fear of our western brothers made us compelled to protest in silence shall be no more. We will go down, the showdown is about to begin! CNN awaits your active participation. Take out the popcorn, cokes and all. Stocks soar. Soon those brown faces will disappear from our consciousness our moralizing about how others are to be shall continue after the pause, Gad, how I miss the crusades ….

I find it interesting to find interesting people. But these dark glasses season has got to stop, a little sunlight and suddenly non-vampires turn vampires, the sun turns into an anathema and the curses begin. Maybe it’s all in the squinting. Sweden is funny in that way. They curse the winter and they curse the sun. Of course not that I have glasses 24/7-365 on me made any difference of opinion. Or maybe it did? Gosh, the difficulties am made to face, couldn’t God, in all its might, figured out a better plan for this bloke? I mean, Jesus Christ! Give me something to chew on here …

I noticed much to my chagrin that my English is being corrupted by all sources from the UK. And it doesn’t help that WP’s correct errors because these WP’s usually tend to prefer English from England, It’s a struggle I tell ya ….May the best idiom win.

Well, being a writer is far more difficult than expected, and this at the Creative Writing level. It occurred to me the reason, the possible raison d’íªtre, that many writers lead a life that is tumultuous is because to many this is the only source of inspiration, they love so much what they do, that they engage in all kinds of acts. Writing feeds off ones life experience. It is in trying to formulate our feelings so as to make them real for others outside our entities that makes writing what it is. The imagination might be in itself a good way of putting things into perspective, but by far, I believe that ones inner experience forms a huge part of writing. I mean what does one do when there isn’t a plot? When ones well is dry? These and more question arise more and more as I try to exact what is it that I want from my writing …