Yonder Lies It

La verdad sea dicha estoy feliz de no estar en Aztlán, la verdad, sufrí­ mucho bajo el regimen de Pete Wilson, las persecusiones psicologicas no se hicieron esperar en aquel entonces. Me imagino vivir allí­ hoy insoportable, bajo la tensión en que se encuentra el mundo de los gabacho en este momento. La comunidad Chicana de San Diego sé se opone a la guerra, pues son los nuestros los que son carne de cañon, Dios los Libre! de todo mal.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

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 ….

Bueno, la guerra esta puesta a empezar. No hay nada en el mundo que lo impida. Historicamente los mandos militares tienen su propia manera de pensar. Nunca le hacen caso al pueblo, aun como un paí­s que se jacta de democrata como los EEUU. ¿Y quién puede con un ejercito de risas? dice Chomsky, casi nadie, nadie diria más bien. Bush a sido uno de esas accidentes que tarde que temprano llegan a nuestros tranquilos entornos. Es como andar en el planeta. Dí­a tras dí­a anda uno como si el planeta es muy estabil, nada más alejado de la realidad. En cualquier momento se desquicia y suelta todo su poder natural, platos tectónicos se mueven y continentes se sumergen para que nuevos salgan. Es la naturaleza haciendo cambios. En los destinos del hombre y la mujer los casos son similares. El destino, el destino machista, falico de este pobre dizque avanzado mundo es igual.

Así­ como la naturaleza no depara en desastres, el hombre militar tampoco se tienta el corazón. Me imagino el terror, terror por terror, ojo por ojo. Hora de dar la lección, con los EEUU no se juega. Niños y niñas sufriendo con las bombas que destruiran miles de almas de las cuales nada más vinieron a morir por el terror de los EEUU. Sacrificios. No se puede echar para atrás, no serí­a posible en este estadium pero tambien, se lo pediamos, hace 15 años se callo la matanza con VX gas a los kurdos y ni quién dijiese algo aparte de unos cuantos ’radicales’.

Dios nos proteja a todos en esta hora zero …

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

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.

La verdad sea dicha, y conste que no digo que la diga, me gusta ver a las mujeres. No, me encanta. Son hermosas, me gusta, y siempre veo algo hermoso en ellas. Aquí­ en Escandinavia me llaman la atención por la frialdad esa que muestran, parece que no, pero, se arreglan. Yo no sé como describirlas, pero hay veces que sólo su peinado les da toda la hermosura del mundo, en otras, la mirada. Caminan muy rectas, nunca se fijan más allá del interes de la curiosidad. N’ombre, por más coqueteos que les haga con la brillantez de las niñas de mis ojos ni me pelan. Así­ que a mi no me queda otra más que mironear. Y miro.

Ya me di cuenta que no cargan su feminidad en si. El tipo de expresar su lado femenino no es desmostrativo como en culturas hispanicas, ni tan sexys como en los EEUU, n’ombre, una caminadita por las playas de California y hacen que los ojos salgan de los huecos del craneo. Aquí­ no. Si a lo mucho haya por el verano, cuando celebran el Solsticio, el sol de medianoche. Entonces si, se ponen unos pantalones casi transparentes que hasta el color de los chones se ven. En otras ocasiones algunas estudiantes donde estudio se ponen pantalones tan flojos que cualquier estiradita deja ver el que tipo de calzón traen. No más. Y es que aquí­ las morras traen la idea de la igualdad sexual muy dentro de sus corazónes. El hombre y la mujer es igual. Es curioso ver esta demostración de no-sexualidad. Simplemente no les queda ser coquetos, n’ombre ni quien les quito eso, pero de seguro no nos ganan tampoco con eso de lo coqueto, para eso si somos muy buenos nosotros los hispanos. Aunque yo ya estoy muy enmojecido para andar en esos trasteos, de seguro hasta frio les he de causar a las mujeres hispanas ya, y es que estoy fuera de practica ….

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

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 …

Went out for a stroll and decided to take a book with me, so I took David Lodge along. I started reading Consciousness and the Novel (2002) in the beginning of the term. I found it in the New Books section of Stockholms Library. Of eleven essays, two I totally skipped, of which the remaining 9 others were succulent pieces. He definitely treats the subject well, that is, how conciousness exists in novel characters.

He has an eye for criticism, for example, I was very much amused and amazed at a critique he made regarding an essay on E M Forsters novel Howards End, titled Forster’s Flawed Masterpiece. He says: ”Some of the purple passages towards the end of the novel sound like George Meredith on a bad day …” I mean, to make that kind of critique you really must be well versed in literature. And he sure sounds like he is. He is one of those novelists that also sidejob as scholars, like Richard Holmes. He has good, delicious essays on Evelyn Waugh, Kierkegaard, a nice discourse on Philip Roth’s geriatric sexual habits. A topic I only seen touched on by a swedish writer, Theodor Kallifatides in Seven Hours in Paradaise ( De sju timmarna i paradiset ). Dickens came along as well, and this essay covered mostly things of a nearly biographical nature. Although very informative stuff about his sexual life and the near lack of conciousness in of some Dickens characters.