pink Mai one

    You can even harvest it from the floor at dawn. That harsh Asphalt Flower. When the streets are not so dead and the people not so gone, there's that little plastic breath that someone has forgotten or let drop out of weariness. You can get it anywhere else before, of course. Don't need to hide that much. Guess a pocket or a hand, bet a price. Lick, dip, drink. The noon gets fueled up as you become field and crowd. And at some point you get back to your flat, with your jaw knocked out, a sense of boredom perhaps, your arms weight and your feet weight as well, you let yourself fall into the bed and gesticulate the air with your tired arm until you reach for your worn-out blanket that some hustle last week has burned with a cigarette. He didn't intent to, he just didn't mind the ashes and that's how... And do you ever think about delivering children to this world or to that city or that bitch? Did you know there are snipers on the roofs outside with their only eye wide open spilling out fire? Have you read about the girl, they kicked her head like a rugby ball with their heavy boots, heavy like a heartless cyborg they are planning to build in the near future or past? You will read about that tomorrow anyway, when you wake up with your tongue so dried as sandpaper, your arms still tired, your heart just pumping enough for you to reach to the internet device. You will learn that she had tattooed pink Mai one in her tongue and that she was showing them her tongue with smile and happy, with a rose still attached to its long stem between her boobs and down her trousers, with each hype on the street quietly exciting her clitoris. And what about back home? When you go there to your sadness and you learn about the thefts and the prostitution around you, the prostitution where it is not wanted and where it was never necessary but indolence made it necessary. You remember those family trees you used to draw on the streets with a white chalk, and you learn the fathers and the uncles and the big cousins are also drawing their long white lines up the trunk down to the leaves playing so free in the nearby square. Every night some walk back home. You can guess a dark shadow on that dark dark night. A night made of hands you know. If you are not stepping on the floor it looks like you can beat your shadow. That's why I jump up the stairs to my house back home, and then I shut the heavy door and not in my house but usually a jesus christ sign or something blesses you so there isn't any more night anymore.

Write and Link

Two advises that I myself don't take as serious as I should. This is definitely what we must do if we really want to taylor the new global consciousness we wish. If this new consciousness is really to be born it will be an emergent one, far from individualities and in fight, at least in its first terms, against most of the structures we know nowadays.

Therefore:

Write a lot!

'Good an evil', 'artistic value' or the ’importance’ of an idea are not objective; but they aren't subjective either, in the way 'subjectiveness' is known nowadays. Rather, not completely. Evaluation of these concepts lays on a emergent, social level; exactly where this new form of consciousness is to arise; and this and no any other means is to approve or deny these subjective values. One's intelligence could serve to be ready, to have a hint and play with some vantage; but it'll be the great emergent goddess which will speak the last words.

Therefore: write a lot! Expose yourself to a public avid of failure. The matter is not anymore if you find an idea great or not; but that the actual, uppermost value of a text will only materialize in the interactions it prompts. But also be aware that this is not only the value of your work which is being squeezed out of these interactions: also the value of the You which lies in the intersection of your being with the being of the social goddess will be.


Link a lot!

And this comes as a hint that the nature has laid down for us when the brain appeared. We aren't anymore condemned to the rigid margins of a book. Chapters and sections seem to fight their last battle in the author's mind, but readers come along and break them down as they jump from one hyperlink to the next one.

I shall even think that blogs are a last chance before we assume non-linearity of the written world to come. And so I tell myself: link a lot! Let's embrace the new tools we have, for the first one mastering them has already walked quite a stretch towards winning the ephemeral eternity that awaits us.

Democracy 2.0

There is a #SpanishRevolution going on!!! Of course, it is directly inspired in the icelandic movement, but I'd say that the closest inspiration are the arab ones. Key feature --which I didn't find so important in the icelandic case-- are web 2.0: facebook and twitter. They brought together a bunch of very different people just because they we are upset with our corrupted politicians and the system they support.

A main claim against this movement is that the politicians say we don't know what we want. We organized independently of any political party or syndicate. We discovered that we don't need any underlying structure to express our claims. The politician power fears this enlightenment. The easiest thing is to say we don't know what we want.

I do know exactly what I want: I want a public social network over which I can interact with another people discussing initiatives which will democratically rise or fall. A public social network over which I can configure my vote about the many different issues of importance to my country, in real time, without the corrupt sense of delegating my will each 4 years in a party working for international enterprises. A public social network which would allow me to link my vote to a determined party or think tank or person if I desired to do so because I consider that I am not an expert on a topic, or because I considered that the topic is not so important to me, or because I just don't want to review the color of my opinion each and every minute and I trust enough a certain party or think tank or person. But also, if the people on which I delegate plans some dirty move, I want a public social network to remove my endorsement at the moment I desired, on real time and not just each 4 years.

This I call it a real (or at least more real) democracy.

A foreseeable claim against this is that we are not prepared for such a thing, or that the thing couldn't be kept under control... Just wait until you hear that. Doesn't this remind you of a fellow Mubarak talking to the Egyptian folks? O a gay --yeah, this one is on purpose-- called Franco preparing Spain for over 40 years for the simulacrum of a democracy? Don't let them play any tricks on us when they are scared and try to spread their fear. We have the technology to implement it, now we only need the will.

So up to here my point. I do know exactly what I want: not only regarding the 'how', but also have some thoughs on the 'what later'. And better on: each girl and boy, and elder and middle aged and whoever you can find tonight camping on the Spanish's squares does know what they want. Maybe they don't want the same as me, but they do know what. And we shall speak out loud and frighten the night.

Meeting on Tuesday the 19, at 15:30 in front of the Spanish embassy. Further meetings for Friday and Saturday! Keep looking at the hashtags:

#SpanishRevolution
#acampadasol
#acampadaberlin
#nolesvotes
#notenemosmiedo
#yeswecamp

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!!!

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

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. 

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!

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!

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!

Goodbye letter to HC

Nice try... but I have bad news for you: we all are rye in the rye. Also you are.

By the way, I'd never read a book that boring before. I don't care at all about your depressions and complexes: everybody have such. I don't care 'bout your intellectual doubts which seem kinda simple and antiquate. I also do hate from time to time... you know what the most? Those sonuvabitches which judge another people 'cause they don't have anything better to do. I have an idea for you: commit suicide!

I wonder if you did it at the end of the book... I'm stuck at the page one hundred and something... won't go further, by the way.

Today I'll sleep comfortably, no worries all about. Just some weed in my lungs and the certainty that we're all rye in the rye...