火の鳥

火の鳥; or Phoenix, the fire bird, is a manga series by Osamu Tezuka, who is also known in Japan as the God of Manga. I know this manga since I was 15 or 16, but only few years later I have gotten two volumes of the series which formed the very basis of my philosophy of life.

I found these two books in a second-hand store. The books were hidden under a pile of other mangas and I remember they were kind of chip. When I bought them, I was already 20. Few weeks after that, I went to Germany for my first time (meaning also that I left Spain for my first time). I read the two books in only one afternoon and they impressed me deeply... I couldn't say how... It's rater a book that you read and operates a change in your engines... I can't explain it even today.

I kept on revisiting the books which, as a fire bird, rebirth over and over again each time I read them. They impress me further and always in new ways as if they were infinite. I always regretted that the work were unfinished (it seems like it was hard for Osamu Tezuka to write this comic, and also to release it). Even though, that two volumes work quite fine as a complete piece.

Yesterday, my very best friend Luchi gave me an unexpected and overwhelming birthday present. She went to Japan few months ago and brought for me two volumes of 火の鳥 in Japanese. I can't understand Japanese, but I don't care... the books are such a jewel!! She also said that there were two more volumes waiting in the store, so I should go back to Japan some day and get them myself. This puzzled me, since in the Spanish issue of the manga there are only two books. We resolved that maybe the Japanese edition had the same story within more books... not big deal.

Later on, I entered internet to check which differences existed among the issues of 火の鳥 in different languages, and there I saw it: Phoenix, the fire birth, in a never ending rebirth... It happens to have 12 volumes covering stories from a remote time (around 250 AD) up to a far future (2000 to 3000 AD)!!! I shut off the wikipedia and searched again for the book... only to find the same information. Again. For years, the two books which impressed me that deeply have had 10 more volumes awaiting for me to discover them!!!!!!! As I can't explain how these books influenced me, I can't explain either what a delight it is for me to find such a new never ending, never ended world!!!

On the road!

A post from the road: Budapest, a great city :D! Next destinations: Zagreb and Plivitce!

Cantona's Revolution

Let's see what happens :D!!

Speak out loud!!

I am not a clever guy (I even misspelled clever in this sentence, but the corrector helped me out), so I'm sure I don't have any brilliant solution for the world. I am, however, in this process of awareness of how much of the things in which my life relies, are lies: money, politics... But the fact that I don't have any actual solution shouldn't prevent that I act to say what I don't see right. I hope a smarter person will find out some solutions, maybe they are my acts which help this able one to become aware of the problems.

This is why, in the next elections I will wander the streets of wherever I'm at and write over each and every poster with politicians in it: "everything is a lie". A small action for a great purpose.

The price of the money...

...is a lie!!

Canteen of a public university in Germany, supposed to have lower prices for students:
1/2 chicken + fried chips + 20 cl coke: more than 6€, plus the chicken is row, the chips are cold, the coke is warm and any of the things tastes disgracefully (even the coke).

Turkish guy in the corner:
1/2 chicken + fried chips + 50 cl coke: less than 5€, plus coke is cold, chips have been done right now, chicken is completely cooked; everything tastes wonderful.

Further examples:

- I've lost my wallet so I need to cancel my card at the bank. This has a fee of 15€... I wonder what do I pay for. The girl at the bank presses a button: old card blocked + 15€ gone from my account. If I find my old card, it can be unblocked again without having to issue a new card. This means: I didn't pay the 15€ fee for issuing a new card, I payed them for the girl to press the "block" button. Same operation with a Spanish card is free, which makes me wonder how harder it is to press the computer "block card" key in a German computer than in a Spanish one.

- I've lost my wallet so I need a new student card. This has a fee of 16€... I wonder what do I pay for. By the way, the university is a public one and it's supposed to have popular prices. 16€ is cheap compared to... a new laptop, e.g. But it's a huge difference compared to the actual cost of issuing a student card. I wonder if the aims of the public university is to provide services to the people or to make money as any other private university does... Public universities just target a population sector which can't be targeted by private university. But the university itself seems to be a lie.

- I need to send a fax from Berlin to Spain. Doing some Google-Re-Search you can find the price for sending a fax can be as low as 10 cents a page. They charge me 1€/page in the place under my house, and an extra € because it's going to Spain. So random...

And so on and so forth...

Money is a lie. The price of money is a lie set almost by random. What more proofs are needed?? What's the supply and demand law justifying any of the prices above? It's just a stochastic game of a few obscene people.

My answer: boycott the money!!

Regret

It was and is quite trendy for many people to say that they don't regret anything. The mantra is that what happened to you is what made you what you are, and thus you should regret nothing.

Here my point: regret is a human feeling, like hunger or thirst, you can't control it. I'm quite proud to say that I regret things, a lot of things, indeed, because I'm human and it's human to regret as it's human to make mistakes that you'll later regret. Now, if you wish, you can lie and tell yourself the same old story, that you don't regret a single thing. But, tell the truth: that very lame moment of your childhood, teen-years, whatever. That moment when you though you'd better be at home sleeping... yeah, the feeling you get recalling this, this is regret. And you can't control this.

If you want, you can tell: OK, I regret I've say/done this pretty lame thing... but it made me who I am and I wouldn't change it now, for changing that little bit could be a great deal in the configuration of my personality. This is much more honest than the cool statement about not regretting anything: recognizing that some things which provoke regret in you are also a part of yourself.

I regret. And there are many things that I would change.

Luíño 2.0

I'm uploading my CV in the web: http://lf-seoane.wikidot.com/

This is gonna be fun :D

Trap for Mosquitos

Thanks to my friend Javi, currently researching somewhere in the middle of Finland.

I forgot to close the windows when I went out today, so when I came back my house was filled with mosquitos among other light-chasers. Ever happened to you? Now I can't sleep in the whole night because of them.. shit. So here's the trick. You put switch off the lights on your room, switch them on on the hall or whatever is next to your room and left the door open. You go back to the laptop and watch a movie for a while. Then close the door and switch the other light off. You've gotten a room free of mosquitos for a night...

Yeah, trivial... It took me 19 years before Javi told me... I didn't get to figure it out on my own...

To steal a book.

If everything works fine, in a few months I may be tackling some amazing projects which may also require some money. I mean, money enough to live for a while without any income. So it's clear that I have to spare some €€€. Straightforward actions: cheaper rum (though my beloved 'Admiral Vernon' is, if not the cheapest, quite close to it), cheaper activities... cheaper everything.

The other day I was to buy some books in this book trade fair of my home city (A Coruña). It's a problem for me every year if go to there because I want to buy a lot of stuff. And this year, the only 15 days that I've spent in my home city since January are exactly the days with this book trade fair... And there I was staring at that Complete Tales of Pushkin (here for a wikipedia link to Pushkin), or halting myself not to buy Neil Gaiman's Sandman (here for wiki)... The praises were way too large. In that moment I thought that the successive governments were not able to provide access to the culture for everyone, and I also though that if I wanted to spare I would have to choose between reading or eating... and even so, I ended up with two books from this great Bolaño guy whom I love so much: The Savage Detectives: A Novel [wiki] (which I commented the day before yesterday and which I'll comment again soon) and Putas Asesinas (Spanish Edition) (Killer whores, a small book with short stories and from which, it seems, there's no English translation yet... not even a wiki).

But then, now and again, the Providence!! It seems Providence likes me :) I began with the savage detectives. There, it's described (among a huge bunch of things) how a guy that we might think of as an alter ego from Bolaño steals books from libraries in Mexico DF. Great: there my way. I've decided it, and I'll do it. Now and on, first of all, I'll try to steal the book.

One hundred and thirty seven pages...

Few days ago I read that the first 100 pages of The savage detectives are part of the greatest of the literature in Castilian (Spanish) language... I didn't believe it. I was right. At least with the edition of the book that I have got. They are one hundred and thirty seven pages.

The Savage Detectives: A Novel

The value of a work

A piece of work is an abstract concept which we handle with more or less expertise. It's kind of driven by the supply and demand law, as any other object (concrete or abstract), and speculation might have a turn in its value as well. So, how do you appraise it??

Well before I graduated as a physicist, I had a casual chat with a friend and colleague at the University of Santiago de Compostela. The talk was on mathematical models for locust scourges and I digressed up to raise and fall apart of languages. This chat became, one and a half years latter, my thesis degree on the coexistence and competition among languages in a same region. Great!!

The price of a work is mainly crap and must be strongly renormalized before someone loses its head. Like a stone in go game, its value depends on the coordinates in which the stone is played, both spatial and temporal.

I was pretty proud of my thesis. It was not only the scientific job, but I'd also learnt a lot together with my mentor about how many random circumstances could devaluate a work well done (not necessarily talking about mine). Together with my thesis they followed: a participation in an international conference, prizes... a lot of stuff. I was never sure that I deserved what it was told about me, nor about my work. None of the recognitions. I went to Berlin with the idea of further researching, trying out my fitness to science and I found emptiness. Though (still do) about withdrawing from research.

Now, back in Galicia for vacation, I visited my former mentor and felt again what I enjoyed that much: the scientific chat about new problems, the maths puzzling me on the train joining the cities of Compostela and Coruña. The origins!! And when I came back home and checked on my single paper up to date, I discovered the greatest reward I could ever dream of!! I felt for first time in a while fulfilled (scientifically). Someone, without any further references to us, just by a daily reading of papers from arXiv, decided that ours was one of the bests new ideas and decided to post it in a blog. It also happens that the blog is held by people from MIT, how unexpected!!!

So I don't know yet what value a research might be worth. I worked into this project so many years ago and as a graduate student and I still get benefits from it. On the other hand, I rot in Berlin solving pointless arithmetical exercises and well far away from any real research project. Although I would devote my time to it, I don't have the feeling that this has any worth at all... Just as in Go game: each and every minute or stone so alike; played at a single space-time coordinate each of them becomes, one by one, the whole or the void.

Back home...

It's nice to be back home from time to time; although since I came back to Galicia last week the allergy doesn't let me sleep, my eyes itchy and I'm sneezing the whole time. And it's like this each time I come back.

I also rediscover the essence of my very folk. I watch local TV--or even any national broadcaster--and become quickly ashamed of the shit on. Can't believe that so much emptiness can be enclosed in such a flat screen.

And from time to time I run into some ethical debate with myself. In large ads at the sides of the main entrances of the city we can see two children drinking or sharing a bottle of water. One of them looks healthy, the other doesn't. The one is fully dressed, the other isn't. The one doesn't, the other looks thirsty. And in between them, in huge letters: "If I drink, (s)he drinks", and a brief explanation that part of the benefits of the company would be shared with some african, thirsty children.

The ad belongs to fontecelta (a Galician brand of bottled water), and I first wondered what the increase of this company's benefits would be thanks to this propaganda. It followed, of course, the straightforward doubt about the ethical of winning a few thousand € with the thirst of any random kid. I though, if the true aim were to help those children, they could do it without telling anyone. Silent hero. Unsung hero. But heroes must be sung to exist. Latter on, I remembered many other such actions (yeah, they're everywhere, indeed). It was amazing when some musicians decided to donate 1€ of each CD's price to hungry--or such--children so to avoid 'piracy'. And they even dared say it.

Charity, as everything else, indeed; has become a show. I'm thinking of dropping a line to the fontecelta friends to know their point about this issue... I'd be nice if they would answer!!

Urge for Sex!! (Pulsión de Sexo!!)

And this is it!! Spain is, at once!!, Champion of the World!!!

I think it doesn't make any sense to describe the feelings or anything... each one has to experiment this and for each one it will be something different...

But something I'd like to describe was the Urge for Sex after the game. Everything began soon after the match against Germany, last Wednesday (it's incredible that only one week has gone by and that so many things happened!!). After that match, I said, there was party everywhere, even though I'm living in Berlin right now. German people were very proud of their team, but very polite and respectful, as far as it concerns me. Many of them joined the party held on the streets mainly by Spanish people. And then everything began, so suddenly: everyone was nasty, we wanted to get closer, touch each other. Women with women, men with men, women and men... any combination in any amount. The whole street was a sole heart and the wet pulsation would expand without limit if the fences of the dawn wouldn't reveal the madness... Before that, small crowds left the holy mass to become holy themselves through orgiastic performances in any corner of the nature.

...and the party went on, cause Spain became World Champion this Sunday and the streets and the throngs were unleashed again to the mouth of the Night, which would swallow each and all of them, one by one or all at a time, into its beat, horny guts with neon lights. And so on and so forth...

Then a waking up somewhere. Somewhere you know, somewhere you might not know so much... somewhere anyway. And a way back home, if necessary. The feeling that Holland people weren't so polite as the German ones, as far as it concerns me. I'd say, they weren't polite at all. But it doesn't matter: we are the Champions of the World.

A match to dream!!!!!!

Today is the day!

Since the Football/Soccer World Cup is played with the actual setup, Spain has never before entered a final phase. Today we're in, among the 4 best teams of the world. This is the most important match ever for the Spanish national selection.

We are playing against Germany and I'm watching the match in the capital of German, maybe 500 Km far away from the Berlin Wall.

I'm so excited I can't work today...

Understanding religions...

...and so I decided it's not good to be sad and I though a good idea to remove almost any kind of sadness would be to think up a ritual. From now on, I perform this ritual and almost any kind of worries will be swept away :D

The ritual includes posting something in my blog (see yesterday's entry); leaving the place where I am, so that the place can be freshened from any bad vibration it could remain; and listening to some meaningful song... and once the song is over (though I might need to listen it twice...) I am happy again for a long long time!! I believed this would work... and it did!!

And so, this is how I came to understand ancient religions a little bit better. When, I guess, any belief or ritual had a reason to be and a reason to be shared. Autosuggestion of an individual extrapolated to a whole community. And latter the ritual itself would have an own entity, different from the former purpose. And latter on the ritual master would inherit the power of the original ritual and the religion would become a mean to gain more power... and so on... but this is only a guess...

Meanwhile, I'm happy again :D

Fake and Queer

To lie under the sun while you wonder who you are, while you abandon yourself to the just-being. To act as a response to the tip of your cock. Just play around with yourself, never with any other... yet. Watch World Cup matches. Get happy for an identity you don't know yet if you have... Get happy, indeed, for two identities you are not sure that you have. Remain politely not-so-happy as you wanted. Be about to cry, don't to cry, to cry. To get drunk by the remains of Berlin's Wall...

To wake up sad. Without any identity yet, but with labels you always feared. To feel misread and alone. Looking back, not so much changed... but everything's changed...

Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamina)

I've read this book almost as bad books are read: in one day and a few hours.

First thing: it's an amazing reading. Second thing: it reconciled me on Spanish civil war readings. Third thing: it's been a great wake up call.

I condensate the two first points in a quick plot of the book: it tells the story of a Spanish writer and fascist "probably the man who has spent more work and intelligence onto sinking Spain into an orgy of blood"(1)--and indeed the first fascist of Spain, as he called himself-- who escapes a massive shooting in the last days of the Spanish civil war. I don't know if the anecdote is worth telling, but the actual story told is worth reading. The book contains digressions where many other stories of beaten glory come up to tie you up to your past (if you are Spanish or European, or maybe whatever you are).

So the reading has always been pleasing and the writing is great; but it hasn't been until the last part, when it's told the story of an ancient fighter of the Spanish republic, later a soldier in equatorial and north Africa and eventually a conqueror of the liberty of Paris--all of them are the same person--; that I got enlightened. This old beaten man telling his story, the story of his dead comrades who have died for us, surrounded by a world that doesn't even remember him anymore while bunches of neonazis parade in streets with names of old fascists... this has been my wake up call for me to remember my past, to be thanked to the people who made my present possible and to help make a future in which they are again remembered.

I know there's a film based on the book. I haven't seen it. I recommend the book. I recommend anyone steaming from an european family to read the book, to know a great approximation to the very beginning of the whole horror on which our accommodated lives rely--though, as for everything, that horror had many beginnings; any of them as valid as a beginning as any other--. I recommend anyone to read the book, regardless of the family from which she or he steams. It's a great book. And the last god of the literature, Roberto Bolaño, plays a crucial role on it!!

Some links: 
Original book in Spanish: Soldados de Salamina (Spanish Edition)
Book in English: Soldiers of Salamis: A Novel
DVD film: Soldiers of Salamina (Soldados de Salamina) (NTSC/REGION 1 & 4)




(1)From the book, though this translation is mine and you might find a different one if you read the English version of the book. 

Until when? (II)

Now with english subs:

Hasta cuando? (Until when?)

Sorry, it's only in Spanish... I guess in a few days we'll have a version with English subtitles.

Guests

My mother is coming to visit me in Berlin during two weeks :D :D

Eventually I was able to bring her out of Galiza :P!

Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again

... maybe too high hopes... maybe I should cool down a little bit and stop pretending to be something I'm not. But each and every night, my head not me my head brights as a bunch of electromagnetic nerves tied up together and I can't sleep. ...and my head, not me, my head wants to write down this idea which drains off the filtering screen of the night...

And then I wake up in this mood of utter clairvoyance about a future of mine... ...and I call for the division bell to ring and I come to speak to the void above me and claim for an answer that never comes. Ahá! These people! They've so inside the idea of themselves being gods, they decided not to answer anymore... as gods do...

Free link.

And why not?

Today I opened my blogger account and I found this link. Yeah, about monetizing my blog and all this shite... capitalism and so on... But then I though: alright, I sometimes write reports about books I've read and maybe someone is buying this book because of my recommendation --though I don't believe anyone actually follows this blog...--. And if this happens, and the seller things that me providing the recommendation is worth some cents... what the hell: why wouldn't I take the reward? Even more, if I don't, then the seller is profiting from my comments for free...

And so, since I like a lot Amazon because they bring you the books up to the door of your home quite quickly and at very cheap prices; I decided, I'm monetizing the blog a little bit.

To be fair with my self, my future self, and my self before; I promise I'll try to find also links to freely download the 'products' --it's kind of hard for me to say that some books are just products...-- I recommend :)

Kensington Gardens II

Just a quick correction to the post before! I told a scene was described in 2666, which I though might happen also in Jardines de Kensington. OK, now I've already read the book and this last is not true. This scene doesn't happen in Jardines de Kensington. Coming back to 2666, we can suppose the scene described in there involves the author of Jardines de Kensington himself!!

Also a comment on the book: it's great, I recommend it to have a great time reading. Of course, it's not 2666 :D!

On Dreams and Movies

Today I had a very featured Dream. I'm not pretty sure about the argument, but I remember that it included a mother taken away from her children because she suffered demonic -or angelic, which is the same- possessions, run-away adventures in a train, time travels... and a very mysterious final scene in which a 'half lizard'-'half white widow' ("lizwidow" now and on) came out the frame of a window while I was messing around with a fork on the spiderweb. I killed IT with the fork but couldn't avoid a quick short, sharp, shock -dig it?- in my finger. Then I awoke.

I won't waist any second thinking about possible interpretations (I did). This could be very self revealing, but it's a busy day and I've got things on my mind: so I'll focus on the technical details!! My Dream was of a high quality! It involved several complicated technical resources such as panoramic views, zoom into the spider -or elsewhere, just amazing zooms-, 'camera' changing to the point of view of the characters -thus we could say, I was not the main person... or I was all those persons at a time 'cause I was into them and knew their limitations and feelings-, ... At the same time, some fantastic elements were quite realistic (e.g. the lizwidow) and I would swear, in the moment this beast was about to show up from the wooden shadows of the window frame, there was some music straining the audience.

Here my question: were Dreams all the same during the history? I guess NO :) So: how were the Dreams of the people living in the DDR different from those living in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland? How were the Dreams of the Spanish people when they only had radios or could only watch TV in front of the store windows? How are the Dreams of the people living in latin america, where at any moment the worm -a lizwidow- can come and sweep all sanity away? How were the Dreams of the greeks? How would be our Dreams in the future, as we incorporate more and better special effects? I'm amazed about the possibilities a 3-D Dream could offer!!! Do rich people have more quality Dreams than me? I'd like to be rich for a night just to have a complete 4-D Dream with dolby surround audio!! Could a man be soo rich, that a nightmare would kill him?

Jardines de Kensington

Jardines de Kensington (Kensington Gardens) is a book from Rodrigo Fresán, a guy from Argentina who writes amazingly good. Woow I'm not quite sure how this post is going to look like because I feel like having a lot of lost pieces to bring together... and I just began the reading so I guess there are also some pieces missing.

First, on the writer: I just surprisingly realized that this guy has a very poor entry on wikipedia, which I don't understand. In there it's said Jardines de Kensington has only recently been translated into english: that might be a good reason for the short entry. So, this writer is from Argentina and seems to be a friend of Roberto Bolaño's, which is a cornerstone in this story. I now see Bolaño has a larger text on wikipedia.

Second, on Jardines de Kensington: This is the book I'm reading right now. The story happens in London and has tons of references to Peter Pan and to the literary world build upon it --I mean Peter Pan's creator and all the not-growing story--. I find this book so terrificly good and metaphor-blown-up (?) that I think there won't be anything left to be written after it... so: good riddance to the never-concluded dream of mine of me becoming a writer :D for there's nothing left to be written.

I was describing the book to a friend few minutes ago and came up with a fine metaphor --which I surely made up by linearly combining the ones I've read on Jardines de Kensington so far--. This book is the closest thing to minimal techno music I've ever heard. Like being always excited, alway about to get to somewhere, but you don't get to it. I don't know exactly how much I do like this feeling. By now I love it :D!

Third, on how I got to this book: and here we have to go back to the ever-present 2666, in which, I think; it's been written everything else which was not in Jardines de Kensington; included my whole life. Thus if one book took away from me the idea of being a writer, the other one stole my free-will and sentenced me to have a fate from which I can't scape... fine, this is another story I might tell at another time.

Back to the topic, it seems to exist a strange passage in 2666 where some characters happen to be in Kensington gardens at the same time as some other characters from Jardines de Kensington do. At least those from 2666 see the others, and I'd be amazed if the same thing happened in the opposite way!! A friend of mine who I love found the relationship and just showed up with Jardines de Kensington for me.

I couldn't wait to be sinked into the reading and I hope I can write a little bit more another day... It's enough for today!

Kurihara Takuya

Maybe it was my mood, gray as the day and thus prone to little nirvanas of sadness. Anyway, today I found this painter, Kurihara Takuya, resident in Tacheles House, Berlin. His work, I've found it so amazing I almost cried in front of him. I'd like I'd talked to him, but at the moment I felt deeply shy and withdrew myself from there after staring his paintings for half an hour while he was working.

2666

I'm quite shocked at the moment, though I finished the book kind of 5 hours ago, and can't put into words all this storm of feelings... This is one of the best books I've ever read!!!!! Just wanted to share with everyone my joy!! I'll try to write more on this other day!