No coyote

    ++Dude, what you looking at?

    I was holding a lantern, pointing it towards the scarce canopy through the little hill and the college dorms yonder.

    --You see that window over there? It was my room. I was about to get lost in there.

    ++So what?

    --There was a night dark and with many odors sweat and beer and bare feet, and it was bright the moon had never been that close to the earth in 9 years! I was so about to lose myself that night. I reckon drinking Mezcal is like chewing a handful of this brown earth down here, it dries and itches all over your mouth just the same.

    ++That's you looking at?

    --Yeah, also. I saw a shadow. At that time I was driven back and forth from Tesuque sitting in the back. The car headlights would run fast reflecting here and there. They trick me. Made me think there were coyotes. I would be quiet most of the time just peering into the shadow, into the lights.

    **Do you fear the moment we stop talking to you? If we get lost in a forest what is there in the darkness?

    I smiled at that one, but no one could see my face.

    --Then I drove all the way to El Paso. I keep repeating to myself I saw a dead coyote by the road. It was worn out. The road I mean. By the sun. Like one of those horse skulls in the cowboy movies, just like that. A white bone under the sun half buried in the desert connecting Santa Fe and El Paso. Some unfortunate busted wheels at its sides, ripped open like rubber skins.

    **Do you think I'm gonna read that?

    ++You ever wanted to be a woman, squeeze a lemon between your legs? Ain't helping you aiming at the sky. Not even if there were snow up there. If the universe is expanding there is a limits equivalent to a black holes, you learned that this summer. Now, bend over, easy, drop that lamp, open up, easy. Chew some earth, that help me a lot.

    --Now it ain't no sun, no more of that psychedelic warmth. I get to drive my own car, back and forth to Tesuque. It rains now, so the deceptive reflections on the road run faster as I sweep my lights over some dirty puddle. They run as scared animals or as scared coyotes. But they aren't, and thus I decided there are no coyote. They don't exist. Coyote is the pitiful light we shed on the road.

    ++That's right chew more sand. Thank the rain, dude, it's wetter this way.

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. 

Oblivion

It was to happen... Just a week before I take the TOEFL test I got hung up on a XBox game...

Its name is The elder scrolls IV: Oblivion, and it's a role game where you play the role of a prisoner who run away because... ...and after all that, you are supossed to find emperor's son. But just after I knew about my mission, the leader of the emperor's guard took the blade I'd been fighting with and told it was from a dead mate. The game gives you total freedom of movement, thus I decided to stick emperor's son up and become an assassin strong enough to defeat the leader of the guard and bring my weapon back!!!!

To achieve that, I'm studying alchemy and archery (instead of English for my TOEFL test) and searching the guild of the assassins. I've not notice about this last. About the alchemy, I found a strange root on the fields and I'm asking priests in many cities about it. The last one I talked to sent me south...