Yonder Lies It

the nihilist virus
wants
to renew itself
forever
it wants
a life and an imagination to last a lifetime
to reinvent itself
to
gut
till it tires
alloveragain
ceaselessly
a joy bug
who pukes
in delight
.

Mis huesos
Vivieron
En el Valle
Hasta el cansancio
Y La Voz del Pueblo
Esquiniaba
Contra Kawuila
De a buche
Habrí­a que pedirlos
Para poder saborear
Bien las 2am y wachar
El farol de luces
Recaer sobre las costras
De mugre
que soltaban olores
justos para wacarear
aquel
walk of shame
soltar cacharpas
a la Fuente de la suerte
y retornar a ese valle
on’Comala’ta

When I bought this book I was in serious depression mode. I felt I belonged so in glee I pressed ok, buy. I live in a so called ’foreign’ land and I ache for my ’motherland’. The attraction was mutual. Then. Time passed.

I was vulnerable. So I forked the bucks through my Kindle tablet. Do I regret it? Sort of kinda of, not really. I really liked it. It’s juicy in details which makes my mouth water for stuff such as this. I understand the longing, the constant battle of identities because of the languages, I get it. The exasperation of the Cold War stuff as well. In my younger years there was nothing to consume but intricacies of the Cold War and the ’Liberation’ of the nations from the yoke of the USSR. I wasn’t there with them but I saw in it on the tv and read it in the Californian papers like the very lightweight San Jose Mercury News which seemed a baby compared to the San Francisco Chronicle and a few others like the NYT or WSJ. I lived it through the lenses of the many white men who spoke on those behalfs back then, Foreign Affairs whatnot. Not to say its the same.

Although seeing live on the tv news of the fall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae CeauÈ™escu and the drama that ensued his downfall, as we in America felt a glorious feeling of liberation that we helped the world rid itself of the commie scums, well, one can’t help but not remember their ill fate as they faced the firing squad as we felt pitty for his wife, Elena Ceausescu. It isn’t until these last years that we get a slight glimpse of those last seconds of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Paratrooper Ionel Boeru, the couple’s executioner, has come out to tell us those last seconds of that republic.

Boeru says it was the 29 bullets from his AK-47 rifle that killed the evil president and his ruthless wife Elena when they were lined up against a courtyard wall and executed by firing squad. Then an army captain, Boeru remembers how the 71-year-old tyrant was smartly dressed and smelled heavily of aftershave.

“Ceausescu’s last words were, ‘Long Live the Socialist Republic of Romania, ­independent and free’,” says Boeru. In contrast Elena Ceausescu smelled badly of body odour. And her last words were far from statesmanlike. “She yelled at a soldier, ‘You motherf****er’,” he says. Boeru, now 56, rarely talks about what happened on Christmas Day 1989.

We were told by Cold War propaganda what occurred there but not through Jewish eyes. They seem to somehow be in the wrong side of history on this side of the planet, that is, Europe. No matter where or how, place of time, it ails the Jewish lot. So to hear their voices of those persecuted by communism and the Soviet aftermath tell it, well it offers a window into the many hows which otherwise remain locked up in the silence or the few circles which roam said stories.

Where does the mesh occur indeed. Where does memory begin and where does makeup land start worst yet where does the nostalgia begin which if not careful can turn into romanticism? I do not know. But I understand their plight. Their moves. America though in its infancy is yet to suffer the lot of Europe. Not that America as a continent hasn’t suffered persecution for ideas or thinking or mass deportation, ethnic cleansing whatnot. One ought to be thankful for it not becoming a preferable habit of sorts as in much of European history would indicate it. We Americans long for Europe because it was the hell of the many.

We long to bathe in its past yet the shore is long away. Still, when we wet our feet we question the father. I, for example, wonder why does the European lot need to compare their linguistic achievements to us? We are not the same there. We are a lot that abhors the language imposed upon us. There, the European Jew has lost touch or sensibility. It, does not know, our lot. We did not ask for English, nor Spanish, nor Portuguese. We had our own languages. We still have our own languages by the miracle of persistent and rebellious attitudes towards the imposer who punishes us by infringing our rights to think and develop in those languages. And if money is poured unto said languages it is only to ’rescue’ them from extinction though they be only left 5 old speakers whose fate and moribund souls must suffer the hell of reviving their languages through he insistence of the speech recorders. I was particularly peeved  by Ephemeridae.

I first read Borrowed Time, with that jacket, yes, in the late summer of 1996. My first and only term at SDSU which is to this day, I feel, my true Alma mater. Such was the impact of it that one April the 8th of a 2015 I decided to buy it again in digital form far fetched notion indeed from the days I curled up to the book in paper format in the corridors of SDSU that 96. The memories it brings, yes, they last. So I bought it again. Only to finish it again in February 2016. The math says 22 months to read. So I took my time. Loads more than what it took in 1996. Why? What happened? There is a pain so deep which transpires time as the very breath I take now, it feels here and now. Though I fail to recollect my exact emotions when I first read the book I can recollect being taken by it in a way palpable today as then. Suffice to say, Mr. Monette weaved a tale that drew on the past as well as the now and the future which entangles one to this day. So am repetitive, only because I went against the grain towards my own myself, I do not reread for the most part. Yet I did for this volume. It is not easy to describe the aforementioned. What is it that makes a person reread a book? Take good old Virgina Woolf. She suggested to read a book ’several’ times. But for the sake of memory? To relive? So I did it. I feel like when I got off the metro Piazza del Popolo in Rome, confronted with a past only I know because I knew where I was since I had been there before and I could imagine its world anew. A past I built on bits and pieces; facts and sheer fantasy. So I walked it alone. Admiring its beauty. Although I was more critical of Monette this time. The emotional fluctuations of the passage of time as he went through the pangs of pain and love for his dear Roger.

A reading of Monette is a delight because this is a good wordsmith. Not to mention that he weaves a series of interrelated events with the emotional load which tends to obligue one to side with the narrator on the injustices suffered by those who ended up guinea pigs for the conservative agenda of the Reagen years which linger on to this very day like a bad fart. Again, the second reading made me see a different Monette though, perhaps because so much time has passed by and am more cynical than when I was younger and more prone to the references to Greek and Roman history alluded in the text, stretched out like a thin silk line to the present, ah, yes, what imagination doesn’t fall for that? Yet the emotional decrying seems so exaggerated at times, viewed from what we now know with what we knew then, it is easy to lay blame on Paul.

Over and out.

I ought to add a category for books read on my Kindle Amazon owns though I pay for it almost everyday. So I read Church of Spies – The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler. By a dude named Mark Riebling. A lad with a many credentials. He is not your neighborhood comadre so his research seems to be legit. Regardless, the e-book read on a Kindle Amazon, was done over a period of time. Purchased the 2nd of Oct. 2015 and done with it January 2017 suffice to say, no ordinary read. 15 months. It took its time which presented a sort of reading contrary and against the flow of the day or thinking which encourages to read much and fast. I loved this method. Not that I never wanted to rip off the tonsils of my nagging little voice making me feel all guilty about letting the read sink in as the days turned into weeks and week into months. That thing has a life of its own and it ain’t little for wielding such power might I add.

Suffice to say it was a good read because I had the time to think about it as I perused the digital text at leisure. There is something about getting back to an unfinished book that allows for deeper reflection and this certainly did it. AS the reviews say it better than I do it tends to offer quite an intriguing recount of how Germans wanted to rid themselves of Hitler with the sanction and approval of the Holy See. Catholic Germans off course. Am sure a lot of the stuff that is retold in told in the book with the utmost enthralling details are fairly well researched but I imagine the sources had to be carefully authenticated. I mean, The Holy See in the WWII is not free of sin. No matter how well intentioned the characters portrayed in the book are explained with their actions and deeds to do away with Hitler. Although it is interesting to read somebody tried to do something to stop the Nazi crimes despite the hinders that that society presented at the time of the horrible episode of Germany. Just as interesting was to read how average people communicated with the Holy See as well as to get a glimpse of the mechanics of power during Nazi occupation of Rome.

All in all, the book was a juicy one for its intricate details of the cat and mouse entrapment that espionage is all about though this is no ordinary espionage since it was wartime. Good work.

I am surprised by the passing of time.

Not that it has changed. Just my perception of it. That has changed. I wonder if that is how water feels as it traverses rivers and seas or stagnating in puddles. Though it befuddles me to no end. Here I am, end of February, and it feels as if new year’s eve was yesterday. You mean the Chinese year? jested a friend of mine at work. How did we get here?

Then I saw the office calender. It’s one of those that are red, with namesakes and long which lends itself to quick jots as one plans whatever. January 2017. A whole bundle there in a table in one of coworkers office which serves as a nerve center for employees like me who drop in occasionally for diverse info. I was left astounded by it. Usually I pick up those before they are current in the year, 2 months managed to pass before that. What the?

Am sure time is no faster than 30 years ago or 50 or a 100. But my perception of it surely has changed. You’d think I don’t care for its passing anymore and that its yoke is no more, yet as it slaps me in the face as it does today it presents a crisis of existence of sorts. One tends to question its rapid passing in term of positive and negatives.

In my bathroom mirror there are a couple of white hairs clinging to its surface. They bring my existence to a head as I am reminded of my autumn frost as the Chinese are wont to say. I find them peculiarly interesting in a way they make me pause my life to realize the fact that am getting old. Some things are halting. I stare at the hairs from the throne as I do my business. Two white hairs, not apart from each other, reflecting each other on the surface of the mirror. They are reminders of my hair plucking. As my family taught me to do. The very purpose is about vanity, not appearing old, yet here this too, whose very presence alter the habit or act, are there to show me the inevitable, I am getting older. The flakes of the autumn frost are coming.

Streets of N. This autumn 2016.
The weather is fine, here in N.
As I was about to walk & cross the cobblestone street to step unto the sidewalk
in the narrow stretch of public terrain & a public road
in the heart of the Swedish highlands
I scanned my surroundings
ready to saunter as if
I was in Beijing
when
a young couple caught my eye
they had right of way
I laid eyes on them
swiftly
pretending I hadn’t seen them
until the opportunity
to
fix my sight at them in leisure as they strolled by me
presented itself
so as not to interrupt the flow of the everyday so to say
it was a matter of seconds in which life bestows a lifetime far away the reach of fabric of time
the young lass looking straight ahead and the lad pushing a baby carriage, with a baby in it
I assume
that missed my observation since I can’t recall it
I did get to look at what seemed to be a couple though
dead intent to where they where headed on wards
as the weather doesn’t permit cheery attitudes
their faces were stern
who knows what was going on to be honest but it did ring a dire bell in me
as I delved into their passing by
I remembered my onus as a young person
still reeling from youth
stepping unto adulthood of responsibility
how bitter it was to suddenly not be part of what I was
I reflected upon my current status
hoped to heavens the young couple faired better
and went about as usual

I asked God
if he could take a a second to pardon
Satan
Evil
that Love
conquer
over Hate
So that Evil’s restlessness
come to a rest
so that we may live in peace
then I feared
Evil
Satan itself
fear for daring to pray for its soul
i imagined its wrath
I imagined a million specters
haunting me to stop
asking for its sins
feeling God’s reassurance
I desisted a microsecond
(you know how it is when one gets into those qualms)
God is absolute
I doubted inwards
shaking my head
at the binary
that accosts us
Oh Captain my Captain
shall rise
one day
I saw Star Trek
that Roddenberry utopia
soothe my ens
as I stepped onto some autumn leaves on my way
as the hours ticked
after hauling demons criss crossed my existence as I walked on the pavement fearing sudden death
I
went back
to the daily cocoon
the unforgiving routine

⨧
espanta
ver
su tamaño
⨢
tan tranquila
aguardando
tiempo
⨐
quisiere
usar
la aspiradora
⨒
el instinto
desechar
fealdad
⪃
ganas
dan
ese momento
⩼
al mismo
tiempo que
le asalta
⩻
preocupación
a uno
⩺
¿qué comerá?
⩹
y
albricias
como un cruel Haiku
⫱