La lluvia del desierto sonorense
Qué escribir si la vida se pasa así. Emputado con la máquina. Puto que perdió el partido y sale reclamando la injusticia de la falta. Culpa suya que se vino todo abajo. No hay desfile aquí. Él que al final escogen, el peor de todas. Nunca jamás dicen. Y la lengua la única patria, la que queda bajo el epidermis, en las entrañas polvorientas. La lengua evita la pelea. El futuro, cierto, imposible de olvidar. Salir de la casa, negar la influencia de la madre. Imaginar un lugar donde sí se puede viajar. Palabras, solamente, claro. Lengua, eres para mí. Me das menos lata. La lluvia me lo insistió al injuriarme. Vencido por. Esta lengua que no es mía esta tierra a la que no tengo ningún deber. Esa lengua en la cual me hago el niño tonto, perdido entre gigantes, salida no hay. Ni aquí donde reaparecen los fantasmas. Pienso demasiado en inglés. Piensa la máquina. El futuro queda en los nubes, miedo a tener un algo. Amar es algo. Coger otro. El futuro queda atrás, retrasado por las tergiversaciones cerebrales. Mi relación con las baldosas es pésima. La piel se suavizó los mocos se remojaron. Un vocabulario del quinto grado posibilita el futuro. Escritura automática con palabras inexistentes. Ya se ha dicho. La lengua mía intenta encontrarte y cae a la mitad del callejón. Sin palabras. Cállate. La sequía se quedo decadas atrás. La madre perdida en los escombros. No te cuento ya.
Aura Estrada, que en paz descanse
Sometimes a person glows for the life within them. Sometimes the life abounds so fully, so overwhelmingly charged that one can only wonder how. How is it possible for so much beauty to be in one body without exploding. One mind to overflow pour out with such exuberant intelligence. One smile so large as to include you, make you feel genuinely included in her lightness and joy. The privilege of meeting, an impression indelibly imprinted and not to be erased by any force. A friend, Aura Estrada, passed away on Wednesday in Mazunte, Oaxaca, México. This is but a tiny remembrance and a way to reach out to that soul which we have, catastrophically, lost.
A short biography of Aura on the Columbia Spanish page. Her writings at Letras Libres, at Letralia.com and at Words without Borders. As Aura wrote about Bolaño and Borges, she herself "struggled against vanity and all things pretentious, aspirational, ordinary, and obliging." Aunque no lo conozco, Juan Carlos ha escrito algo muy bello de Aura y de nuestra pérdida.
°°°
Update: There is now a Memorial Site for Aura Estrada with a beautiful short essay by her husband, Francisco Goldman.
Por favor
Que la persona que me lea desde El Burgo de Osma, Castilla y León, España me haga el favor de presentarse. Muero por saber quién eres.
This summer
Every time I think about writing I find. Una chica gritándome de su padre, de lo que le hace falta que la ventana del carro se le quebró y todo con una sonrisota de éstas que dan alegría. A nail to be torn out fallen bikes and Fourth Street a medic train of both careful and careless strangers. A softly healing wound whiteness of peeling flesh, red of scabs. An Arizona monsoon sun shower cloud stream to wander through on eye planes, a sandstorm to merge with dusted eyes and the joy of particulate scalded ankles and forehead. A website to emerge onto idiotically pandering to the basest of monoconsensual desires. Dos bandejas de enchiladas que me urgen hornear porque vienen al rato las chicas para comerlas y me da prisa. Que me da pereza esto de explorarme a mi mismo, más vale walk in the desert see saguaros and pink sunbath at endday, the language made by me, you coyote, you desert lonely for a reason to do handsprings. Javelinas ocotillo and chollas laughing. This landscape tells I'm too old for writing too old to care what you think. The cat needs food reshuffled, the orange trees wilt and dry out their leaves shreaking and shrinking the tiny black tubes shuttling water to inflate their shiftless roots. And somehow the physicality of my living satiates, hides me away. And when the words begin to flow, they.
Stop.
But somehow encountering a way to push these pebbles out, these leaves mesquite and yearning, this speaking accompanying me and none of it tangible in contact, all of it not here any longer after I push these keys, make these letters appear on the screen. La necedad de la narrativa, dices. And then into another combination of these the same letters, a movement from one tongue, yours, to another, yours as well. The foolishness of narrative makes this not my tongue either. My tongue is the hard tiled floor at my feet. The same thing, words pour out now as they do rarely. Who knows why it matters for the wind to be granted a set of letters that correspond to it? To its feel on my neck, on my perineum, on the bottom of my feet, in my tangled dirty hair dangling bottle brush branches bouncing bracingly bounding around my head, scratching my back. And now to report back to you about these things not with these things but with these unnecessary, incompetent authorities, these words surrounding and compounding an inability. Because the experience of life is one and words another inseparable speakable reality. Nonetheless, the forgetting threatens even before the last drop falls from the shower and as I watch the flow turning around, swirling through the slight rocky ditch, I towel off, move forward, think, if I were to write this now, there would be only words not the softly drooping plant, not a trusting friend on a futon, not the puffy black cat dismounting from the roof of that shed, scuttling down the tree, no, surely not. Only these inadequate, easily criticized words and not the brick softly drying, the moon in blurred perfection not the sound of water falling on brick from showerhead, not crusty washtowels and starlight filling darkness. None of it, just keyboards and an urge to speak in spite of.
Stop.
But somehow encountering a way to push these pebbles out, these leaves mesquite and yearning, this speaking accompanying me and none of it tangible in contact, all of it not here any longer after I push these keys, make these letters appear on the screen. La necedad de la narrativa, dices. And then into another combination of these the same letters, a movement from one tongue, yours, to another, yours as well. The foolishness of narrative makes this not my tongue either. My tongue is the hard tiled floor at my feet. The same thing, words pour out now as they do rarely. Who knows why it matters for the wind to be granted a set of letters that correspond to it? To its feel on my neck, on my perineum, on the bottom of my feet, in my tangled dirty hair dangling bottle brush branches bouncing bracingly bounding around my head, scratching my back. And now to report back to you about these things not with these things but with these unnecessary, incompetent authorities, these words surrounding and compounding an inability. Because the experience of life is one and words another inseparable speakable reality. Nonetheless, the forgetting threatens even before the last drop falls from the shower and as I watch the flow turning around, swirling through the slight rocky ditch, I towel off, move forward, think, if I were to write this now, there would be only words not the softly drooping plant, not a trusting friend on a futon, not the puffy black cat dismounting from the roof of that shed, scuttling down the tree, no, surely not. Only these inadequate, easily criticized words and not the brick softly drying, the moon in blurred perfection not the sound of water falling on brick from showerhead, not crusty washtowels and starlight filling darkness. None of it, just keyboards and an urge to speak in spite of.
Como mi papá me dijó...
Cuidado con los gringos...
Porque con un "Sorry",
¡Ya te agringanastes!
- Me lo acabo de contar una nueva amiga mía. Sorry, si no te hizo reír. A mí, sí. Y mucho.
Porque con un "Sorry",
¡Ya te agringanastes!
- Me lo acabo de contar una nueva amiga mía. Sorry, si no te hizo reír. A mí, sí. Y mucho.
Estoy/estamos muriendo
No me interesa escribir bien, escribir mal, escribir mucho, escribir poco, lo único que me interesa es escribir sabiendo que estoy muriendo.
I post the quote so that hopefully I can learn/do the same. ¡Ya! Del blog de Yepez.
I post the quote so that hopefully I can learn/do the same. ¡Ya! Del blog de Yepez.
Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification
Una película corta sobre Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification en el vecindario de Echo Park en Los Angeles. Seguro que lo mismo está pasando por todos lados en los EU y a través del globo. ¿Están enfrentando lo mismo en su vecindad? Lo mismo está pasando en Houston--el racismo, la alegría que se sienten algunos al reconquistar el barrio. Podemos aprender.
A short movie about Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification in Echo Park in L.A. Of course, the same thing happens now all around the U.S. and the world. Is your neighborhood facing the same? Much the same is happening around Houston--the racism, the glee around retaking neighborhoods. We can learn.
A short movie about Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification in Echo Park in L.A. Of course, the same thing happens now all around the U.S. and the world. Is your neighborhood facing the same? Much the same is happening around Houston--the racism, the glee around retaking neighborhoods. We can learn.
Help Iraqi Refugees
Iraqi translators who have worked with U.S. Forces have been killed and are being killed in huge numbers. Here is a link to an article written by an American ally about one Iraqi translator's case for asylum. It's a disgrace that the U.S. would use these individuals and then watch them die. Go to the website for the List Project as well to get more info about the problem or donate to help these individuals find refuge in the U.S. You can also get more info and find ways to help at Refugees International. An article on Common Dreams from May had this figure: It is an absolute scandal that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refuge in America.
Important to note that if our U.S. government was at all humane or just, we would have hundreds of thousands of refugees from Iraq arriving to the U.S., not just a few individuals. And Little Baghdads sprouting up next to the Little Saigons througout America. But something tells me that won't happen anytime soon. And definitely will not happen unless we raise our voices.
Repersonal Transubications
Jamais real, toujours vrai. - Antonin Artaud (Citado por Eileen Myles, Cool for You)
Never. Siempre.
Nunca existió, pero es verdadera. - Tomás Eloy Martínez, Santa Evita
Somewhere in this long walking, journey, promenade. At some point decided was. To invite that story on to paper, to print out, but hardly the goal any longer. Hard to leave.
Somehow the story tells itself in sidewalks, barstools, curtains, creaking doors and comals. The struggle for. Lucha? Continually this return this word that moment. A space, a certain location in a chronology. Those souls yearning for a change to live. Through this keyboard, blood. No one notices these strokes, these scrawls. All for better, just eyes hold back really. Write til knaked knuckles bleed. Translate then.
Un alma que no ha sido escrito es como si jamás hubiera existido. Contra la fugacidad, la letra. Contra la muerte, el relato. - TEM
Put oneself simply in flight. Birds don't ask. Stuck in a million patterns, no. The desert and cowboys drown in Gulf Coast backwash. Modern cockroaches take long baths in the waste and overflow. Been years since pronouns could. Imagine a future without your self. Fracaso. Necesitaba ayuda en ese entonces. Alguien que me dijera: los hechos fueron así tal como los contaste.
La realidad no se puede contar ni repetir. Lo único que se puede hacer con la realidad es inventarla de nuevo. - TEM
Invent the stories then of for our ancestors. In the end, whatever I write have written is will be wrong. The style, the truth, the growth delayed. A mistake engraved on paper computer screens, to last as long as this network of the future reverberates. As if inventing could be salve on this wound. Doubtful. Yet, let them search me out, say, those were not ages of disaster calamity. We are to recreate what we never knew. A responsibility to reimagine what is fleeting lost. To make our own selves responsible for recovering afterward.
Never. Siempre.
Nunca existió, pero es verdadera. - Tomás Eloy Martínez, Santa Evita
Somewhere in this long walking, journey, promenade. At some point decided was. To invite that story on to paper, to print out, but hardly the goal any longer. Hard to leave.
Somehow the story tells itself in sidewalks, barstools, curtains, creaking doors and comals. The struggle for. Lucha? Continually this return this word that moment. A space, a certain location in a chronology. Those souls yearning for a change to live. Through this keyboard, blood. No one notices these strokes, these scrawls. All for better, just eyes hold back really. Write til knaked knuckles bleed. Translate then.
Un alma que no ha sido escrito es como si jamás hubiera existido. Contra la fugacidad, la letra. Contra la muerte, el relato. - TEM
Put oneself simply in flight. Birds don't ask. Stuck in a million patterns, no. The desert and cowboys drown in Gulf Coast backwash. Modern cockroaches take long baths in the waste and overflow. Been years since pronouns could. Imagine a future without your self. Fracaso. Necesitaba ayuda en ese entonces. Alguien que me dijera: los hechos fueron así tal como los contaste.
La realidad no se puede contar ni repetir. Lo único que se puede hacer con la realidad es inventarla de nuevo. - TEM
Invent the stories then of for our ancestors. In the end, whatever I write have written is will be wrong. The style, the truth, the growth delayed. A mistake engraved on paper computer screens, to last as long as this network of the future reverberates. As if inventing could be salve on this wound. Doubtful. Yet, let them search me out, say, those were not ages of disaster calamity. We are to recreate what we never knew. A responsibility to reimagine what is fleeting lost. To make our own selves responsible for recovering afterward.
Chingado yo
Era un día para acabar con el concepto de días. Uno de éstos. Ya ves. Las llaves se me cayeron mil veces. La puerta chilla como bebé (Le tengo que poner una bujía nueva). La capacidad de embarazarse no es universal. Una injusticia que no se cambia por peticiones mandados por el Internet. Tengo que escribir más. El señor de al lado casi casi se cae al suelo, agarra la cerca nuestra, se estabiliza, se va caminando en medio de la calle iluminado por la streetlight, diría farol, pero se me hace muy cursi, muy peninsular. El yo que escribe. Chingado yo. El día se acaba. Y el yo con ganas de escribir a diario.
A survivor, not a victim
Sometimes the deep, gnawing, overpowering doubts and fears and shame of a hate crime are what really does the greatest damage. In this case.
The Houston Chronicle says his death may yet provoke the passage of the hate crimes bill in the Senate (though Bush says he will veto). Hopefully, some good will come yet.
* Just sent off this email to the Chronicle. Hopefully they will print it.
It is important that we realize that David Ritcheson was not a "victim of a pipe attack," as the Chronicle has decided to refer to him in all of its articles on his untimely death. Rather, Ritcheson was a survivor of a hate crime. Like many survivors of trauma, some of the worst pain comes in the ensuing years as one struggles to process the experience and its attendant humiliation, guilt and shame. The Chronicle, and the city as a whole, owe it to Ritcheson to remember him not as a victim of a pipe attack, but rather as a strong, compassionate survivor of an awful, hate-fueled attack.
** Update: A phone caller from the Chronicle informed me my letter would be published on Thursday.
*** Update II: The letter is published on the Chronicle site here. Not sure how long that link will work. Even though Ritcheson didn't make it in the end, language is critical in how we remember what happened to him and how we think of him as a human being.
The Houston Chronicle says his death may yet provoke the passage of the hate crimes bill in the Senate (though Bush says he will veto). Hopefully, some good will come yet.
* Just sent off this email to the Chronicle. Hopefully they will print it.
It is important that we realize that David Ritcheson was not a "victim of a pipe attack," as the Chronicle has decided to refer to him in all of its articles on his untimely death. Rather, Ritcheson was a survivor of a hate crime. Like many survivors of trauma, some of the worst pain comes in the ensuing years as one struggles to process the experience and its attendant humiliation, guilt and shame. The Chronicle, and the city as a whole, owe it to Ritcheson to remember him not as a victim of a pipe attack, but rather as a strong, compassionate survivor of an awful, hate-fueled attack.
** Update: A phone caller from the Chronicle informed me my letter would be published on Thursday.
*** Update II: The letter is published on the Chronicle site here. Not sure how long that link will work. Even though Ritcheson didn't make it in the end, language is critical in how we remember what happened to him and how we think of him as a human being.
Throw a Kit!
This is Hollywood Holt out of ChiTown. This rocks. Moped's always broke but you can fix it.
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