Bad Texas: agosto 2008

Almost Island

Just stumbled upon Mumbai-based Almost Island with intimate, disastrous, luminous poetry, prose and essays. Especially striking translations of poetry from twentieth century Bolivia and modern day Saigon.
(Trying not to say interesting or compelling or awesome on the blog anymore. Hay que hacer ejercicio léxico pues.)

A an exerpt from The Night by Jaime Saenz en español and in English translation by Forrest Gander. Sample:

La experiencia más dolorosa, la más triste y aterradora que
imaginarse pueda,
es sin duda la experiencia del alcohol.

Y está al alcance de cualquier mortal.
Abre muchas puertas.

/

The most painful, the most morbid and terrifying
experience imaginable
comes by grace of alcohol.

And any walking stiff who wants it can get it.
It opens door after door.

°°°

Also on Almost Island: Five poems by the Saigon poet, Nguyen Quoc Chanh, translated by Linh Dinh. An excerpt from his poem Post, Post, but not Post... :

Past: I tattooed myself, fought the Chinese.
Now: my granddad hawks tofu.

Past: I flexed myself against the French.
Now: my dad mends shoes on the sidewalk.

A while ago: I risked my life against the Americans.
Now: my wife is anxious to marry an American.

Sometimes I want to forget: O the ones who cry alone!
Sometimes I want to believe: O the ones who cry alone!
Sometimes I want to go mad: O the ones who cry alone!

Banksy in New Orleans

More incredible work by Banksy and others at Wooster Collective - a site is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.

Thanks to B.S. Houston Art Blog for turning me on to this recentness.

No mames. Tengo miedo. Ok. Now I'm scared.

The polar bears are swimming to the ice 40 miles away. / Los osos polares nadan al hielo que les queda a casi 70 kilómetros.

Nueva Orleans se alista otra vez. / New Orleans girds for a repeat.

¿Calentamiento global, anyone?

Portrait of the Mal

Today starts a new series on bad texas of occasional translations of blog posts in Spanish - these are posts that make me pause, stop my incessant interscrolling and leave ripples and eddies in my brain for days after. There are contextual and translation notes after the translated post. To start things off, this post from Guatemala by Javier Payeras:

Portrait of the Mal°
Monday, August 18, 2008 on chulo chucho colocho

I feel guilty each time I write. I feel guilty each time I finish a page and someone else reads it. I feel guilty for thinking that I can make literature. People who make literature become the literati. I feel guilty for that, for saying that I'm a literary person. This is a long series of guilty feelings which finally end up being pure rhetoric.

I once read a phrase that I liked, something encapsulated in a book that motivated me to write. Someone gave me the recipe for baking a cake and I burned it. Someone clapped for me and I sang four more songs. Someone pushed me and I slipped. No one warned me that it would be easier if I didn't touch the pristine, blank sheet of paper I had in front of me with my impure hands.

No one should be taken to prison for the simple fact of writing, just as no one should be taken prisoner for stripping off their clothes. But if one writes and then publishes, it is the same as leaving the house naked and scaring the lady selling bread: it makes a mockery of the thin line between the semiliterate amateur and the genius. It is a crime.

So becoming a bad writer is the same as transforming into a criminal genius. I am a criminal: I have published a few not very important books, I have called myself a writer, they have called me a writer and up to this date I have not used surgical gloves to touch or to say what I love.

I greatly appreciate the people who make me see things and who through their criticism try to make me be reasonable. I have several people who discourage me for my own good and for the good of literature. They accuse me of being all sorts of things: opportunistic (that was the first thing they called me), pretentious, degenerate, disillusioned, consumerist, mediocre, phony, cynical, illiterate, insecure, naive, deceitful and a ton of other adjectives of that ilk. Unfortunately, writing is the best I can do (which does not mean that I do it well). Perhaps the most difficult of all has been to survive. When I show up to ask for a job, employers look at my resume and laugh. It seems stupid to them that I say I am a writer. Everyone thinks that a writer is a pompous person and not someone unemployed who—if they so desire—could throw away the trash or clean their toilets for them. They think that we writers live in cosmopolitan cities, we have money, literary agents, we dine with ambassadors, we give lectures in packed auditoriums and we sleep with lots of women. So then they answer

—you know we already hired someone—

and they give me no other option except turning around and taking off.

°°°

Contextual and Translation Notes:

I found the blog of Javier Payeras a few days ago by way of another Guatemalan author, Alan Mills. (Yes, I know, his name is Alan Mills and he is Guatemalan.) I was reading one of Mills' poems in Plan B, an independent poetry project out of Ciudad Juárez that is publishing amazing poets from all over North and Central America, a kind of bridge between worlds and languages if you will. So I read a poem in Spanish by Mills and I was shocked to find a gringo who wrote such amazing work in Spanish. So I went to his blog Revólver and discovered that his name was simply some kind of fluke of colonial experiments (I invented an explanation in my head) and that he was certainly no gringo. But while on his blog, I read a post that linked me to one by Javier Payeras, Retrato del mal. This post grabbed me and left me musing. So last night at 2am when I couldn't sleep I translated it. This morning, Payeras gave permission to post it.

° The title I translated as "Portrait of the Mal." Mal is actually a word in English, used more in medical terminology as I found in The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary. The definition is "a disease or disorder." I liked the idea of leaving the word mal there, because the noun mal in Spanish has multiple definitions (translation of the definitions from here) - 1) the opposite of good, evil; 2) material or moral harm; 3) misfortune or calamity; 4) illness or ailment. I wanted to capture the complexity of the word mal in Spanish and since I could think of no word in English that had these multiple meanings, I decided to leave the word mal which turns out then to be a decision not only to leave the word in Spanish, but also to translate the word into English, i.e. a medical term for a disorder. At the same time, I left the word untranslated and translated it. I'm a happy translator today.

A congeries

Thus the city I wanted as my object had to be one that I knew in its intimate details. New York was too big, too much a congeries of the world's facets. I wanted something nearer, something knowable. I deliberately selected Paterson as my reality. My own suburb was not distinguished or varied enough for my purpose.

- William Carlos Williams, from his Statement preceding his long poem Paterson

* To save you a trip to dictionary.com, a congeries is an assemblage, aggregation or heap.

Houston Rocked by Sexy Attacks

Y'all need permission to be doing this!

I know that's right.

Love it. Houston is rocked by sexyATTACKS.

Part of a University of Houston class - the Performance Art Lab taught by Elia Arce. Rad class.

De la gente del Foro Alicia.

I'm / a criminal / I'm 20 years old, I'm young / I have no right / to education, to work / to housing, to health / and to a lot of other things too.

A Short Olympic Survey

Each day do you sit down to watch the Olympics? Do you sit on a fake leather recliner or on the floor or on an old sweaty couch? Where were you when you watched the Olympics four years ago? Where you in a similar place or one completely different? How do you watch the Olympics? Are you inspired to achieve? Are you driven to succeed? Do you believe that the nation that wins the most medals is the best? Or the most authoritarian? Do you care that people want to protest outside the Olympics and they can't? Did you watch the 2004 Olympics from another country and if so how did that affect your viewing? Is it odd to be forced to watch the Olympics through the lens of another country which is not your own and therefore should not have the same emotional effect on your psyche? In 2008 are you in another country again or are you back watching the Games through the appropriate national lens? Do you not watch because you don't watch sports and you don't buy into nationalist discourse? Do you envy their bodies? Are you in awe of their bodies? Does watching their bodies give you an increasingly weighty sense of your own body's feebleness? Are you motivated to improve? Are you motivated to sit motionless for hours eating their movement with your eyes? Do you feel more connected to the Chinese people now? Does your country's Olympic programming have heartfelt stories about the families of the athletes? Does your country's Olympic programming make you sick with its repetitive dragons and golden colors and "traditional" Chinese music? Are you a happier person with the Olympics? Do you wake up at 3am with Olympic withdrawal? Do you wonder what Olympians competitions you miss at night when you are sleeping? Do you wish your could memorize the names of the Fuwa and buy loads of Fuwa gear like keychains and Halloween costumes? Do you believe the Olympics make you a better person? Do you watch the Olympics with pangs of regret and yearning? Do the Olympics leave you feeling drained and empty or recharged and full? Will there be world peace when the Olympics are gone? What do the Olympics mean to you? To us?

Border-Crossing Olympians Unite!

Americans (Recognized as Mexicans by Mexican law!) competing for Mexico in the Olympics.

Click for LA Times article.

Immigrant Mexicans (American citizens only need apply!) competing for the U.S. in the Olympics.

Click for Austin Statesman article.

Borders matter less and less. But on both sides of the border, these border crossers provoke concern, anger, inspiration and passion. Mainly, they face the wrath of the nationalists on both sides who think their border crossing is either taking opportunities from citizens or a treason to their "real country." These arguments are made both in Mexico about the "Americans" and in the US about the "Mexicans". These national definitions and tags for people seem outdated and retrograde, especially in Post-Nafta North America. Most of us are in motion all the time. Monterrey is Texas. Houston is Mexico. Michoacan is California. California is Baja. Arizona is Sonora.

A good list of writerly residencies.

°

Make a note of that one. Or use this note as a link to return to.

°

Now have Facebook. In addition to the preexisting Blogspot, Skype, Messenger and Gchat. Not sure why all these things exist. Oh yeah, to keep in touch.

°

Not sure what being in such touch provides. Besides making our heads heavy and weighted. Makes us not want to unplug. Makes non-electronic communication strange.

°

Know the people will now begin to demand the acquisition of a MySpace, a Twitter, and who the hell knows what other cyber appendage to add to my brain. I wonder what our cyber appendages would look like visually.

°

That's why we all need residencies. To turn off the cyber appendages while in natural spaces and lively mechanical spaces. Make a note of that.

Bush, Georgia, Russia, Sharpie Maps of the US and Aleksandra Mir

So first, I think everyone should look at the articles that poet and provocateur Linh Dinh is posting at his blog Detainees about the conflict between Russia, Georgia, the US, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, NATO and more more.

°

This article by Lisa Karpova from English Pravda illuminates the problems with post-Iraq US foreign policy, i.e. we have no high horse to stand on. Or even a small miniature horse.

°

Thanks to Linh Dinh I also now know about Aleksandra Mir whose

works often take the form of social processes that are open for anyone who wishes giving the work meaning. The work of art is an exercise that operates in everyday life; a humanistic and playful organism with a large social appetite.

Here is a rad project she did drawing communal Sharpie maps of the US with her friends:

I believe in these kinds of communal projects which mix text and people and communal life and visual art. Yes I do. And here are more photos from the Church of Sharpie. Awesome.

I also recommend you read this interview with Aleksandra Mir on a blog called myartspace. In it she provides tips for emerging artists:

"Don't even think of getting involved with drugs. Limit your drinking. Only social smoke. Eat basic nutritious foods. Dress warm. Be honest. Be on time. Be generous. And with all this, stay angry."

In Monterrey. El Cerro de la Silla. Saddle Mountain.

No placid air. All kinds of plastic hair. The storm is swelling on the sidewalk brushing everything inside and sweeping us along. We don't think consciously about death but sure we all feel it coming. No lights to dazzle no dancing as if we could breathe. Suffocated by a heavy cloud of yearning and anger and madness tears and slapping. Weighed down into a long trough of once white tiles this sweat and stink is pressed out of our insides and streams down the walls and into the sewer system. All of us ends up in the sewer system after a brief pitstop on dancefloors. Despite the name this is no garden and there is no white cross. We saw our first phenotypic foreigner tonight and paid him no mind as we all are foreigners honestly. None of us is native. How would we begin to count the foreigners. Piss and blonde hair and jutting bands of fat and groping tight T-shirts and delicate gestures and chancing upon a vagabond in a corner and eyes blazing with attitude and eyes stunted by their own lucid visioning and eyes startled by the brown skin and foundation and powder and jackknifing mohawks and spikes. Somehow this jackhammered floor and rivulets of soily sweat and meandering streams of urine and alcohol and neon fabrics glistening and torn. All of this seems closer to justice than any policy paper or legal decision or manifesto or political poem. Let's not write a political poem about Mexican transvestites. Let's not write political poems about steel-shouldered migrants just off the bus from Honduras. Let's not write political poems about those others because honestly the lines are not tenable. The battle lines are not defendable and the trenches were not dug deep enough. With no lines all this risks being a mess and I can accept that just like we accept grinning long-legged teenagers in short skirts with ancient balding four-eyed trolls and the air coolers stuck in the walls recirculating our evaporated drool and grimy liquidity mixing in the exterior evaporated drool and grimy liquidity. These walls are cliff faces sheer vertical barriers and the police stalk the perimeter. Tattered T-shirts and gum wrappers with first names and phone numbers scribbled in eyeliner. The guy was ready to sleep with whomever most likely he needed the cash. Honestly all these juicy details make a good adventure story. But let's not write a political story about Zapotec mariachi drag queen divas in rainbow-colored sarapes. Let's not write a political story about the women in short shorts and wifebeaters dragged up into the back of police pickups. Let's not write a political story about our friends with STD's who we sleep with anyway. Later after the limelight and the calls for another round and another song and after haranguing each other take care and then above the steaming streets above the towering pillars of transportation above the squat concrete facades of this blighted district the reddening rays of first dawn illuminate us as we meander on sidwalks stumbling and murmuring our goodbyes. Justice you told me is not larger than our joy no more important and much less foreseeable.

(Foto by Abraham Palafox.)

(This is a reprint from the Catalogue of Feeling.)

Mahmoud Darwish (15 March 1941, al Birwa, Palestine – 9 August 2008, Houston, Exile)

Text from a poem from the book Fewer Roses (1986) by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. (Light installation by Jenny Holzer. Photo by Phil Gyford.)

He Embraced His Murderer

He embraces his murderer.
May he win his heart: Do you feel angrier if I survive?
Brother...My brother! What did I do to make you destroy me?
Two birds fly overhead. Why don't you shoot upwards? What do you say?
You grew tired of my embrace and my smell. Aren't you just as tired of the fear within me?
Then throw your gun in the river! What do you say?
The enemy on the riverbank aim his machine gun at an embrace? Shoot the enemy!
Thus we avoid the enemy's bullets and keep from falling into sin.
What do you say? You'll kill me so the enemy can go to our home
and descend again into the law of the jungle?
What did you do with my mother's coffee, with your mother's coffee?
What crime did I commit to make your destroy me?
I will never cease embracing you.
And I will never release you.

*** Updates *** See this Eulogy to Darwish by one of his translators into English, Fady Joudah. The New York Times obituary (Thanks, Echo!). And also a very thoughtful discussion of translations of Darwish and his place in the Arabic and world literary stage by Hosam Aboul-Ela on the Words without Borders site. También, información en español en La Jornada.

Lo que le viene al robapatrias

En el Álamo no habremos de dejar ni un sobreviviente, tal como se hizo hace más de cien años, cuando nuestros antepasados acabaron con todos, incluso con el más cobarde de ellos, un pobre diablo que se escondió tembloroso bajo su cama, y que al ser sorprendido imploró perdón de rodillas. Pero ninguna piedad habría para un robapatrias, y el metal le entró por la carne y el gringuito gritó y lloró y se sumió en contorsiones.

- David Toscana, El Ejercito Iluminado (2006), 111

El Premio Aura Estrada / The Aura Estrada Prize

I've written here before about my friend Aura Estrada and about her life and her tragic passing last year. Now everything is in motion for a new prize for a young woman writing in Spanish, the Aura Estrada Prize, which will be inaugurated this November at the Feria Internacional de Libro en Guadalajara:

The Aura Estrada Prize will be awarded biannually to a female writer, 35 or under, living in Mexico or the United States, who writes creative prose (fiction or nonfiction) in Spanish. The prize will include a stipend (how much depends on how much we are able to raise for the endowment, but we hope it will be approximately $15,000.) It also, so far, includes residencies at three writers‘ colonies, Ucross in Wyoming, Ledig House in New York, and Santa Maddalena in Tuscany, Italy. Residencies can last up to two months each. Granta en Español will also publish an excerpt of the winner‘s writing.

If you are interested in supporting the scholarship, there is a way to donate at the website. Also, in addition to all of her work already published on the Internet and in print, you can read her writings next year in an anthology to be published by Almadía.

We miss you Aura.

°°°

He escrito aquí antes de mi amiga, Aura Estrada, de su vida y de su muerte trágico el año pasado. Ahora, en noviembre en la FIL Guadalajara, van a inaugurar un nuevo premio dedicado a su memoria y a ayudar a escritoras de la lengua castellana a sobresalir a nivel mundial, el Premio Aura Estrada:

El Premio Aura Estrada se entregará a una escritora de 35 años o menor, que viva en México o en Estados Unidos, que escriba en español narrativa de cualquier género. Tendrá una periodicidad bianual. La ganadora recibirá un estipendio de un monto aproximado a los $15,000 US dls. dependiendo de la cantidad que se recabe, y por lo menos tres residencias en las siguientes colonias de escritores: Ucross, en Wyoming, Ledig House en Nueva York, y Santa Maddalena en la Toscana, en Italia. Cada una de estas tres residencias tendrá una duración de hasta dos meses. Granta en español publicará una colaboración de la ganadora.

Si te interesa apoyar economicamente a la beca, pueden donarle fondos aquí. También, además de todo lo que tiene publicado en el Internet y en revistas ahora, podrán leer sus escritos el año que viene en una antología de Almadía.

Te extrañamos Aura.

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It's the one the only once in a lifetime palindrome birthday.

El único palindromático cumpleaños que voy a tener.

At one time at one moment you felt love for one person and it surrounded you multiplied you exponentially making air light and light air robbing you of bitterness and anger and pain and when the moment passed you still said you loved that person out of respect for that feeling and maybe since then that emotion that overwhelming tenderness that sense of expansiveness and joy has arrived again or maybe it hasn’t for quite some time but despite its momentary fragmented appearance you called that feeling love and then subsequently you loved that person. So now there is love the feeling a noun something which is of an instant and beautiful and fills you with light and air and then there is love the verb the state of being and the action that you do more or less it is supposed constantly. Between the two the noun and the verb there is a semantic distance. It’s not just a question of semantics or maybe it is and that’s what makes it so important. Semantics. Love is a moment then an explosion of air and light and to love is a daily decision to hold tight to that feeling and shelter it and to await its twinkling reappearance. But the verb love is comprised of many small moments and is not a constant state at all but a kind of arc on an XY graph with points on it but love is never a line. That moment you felt reappears at intervals sometimes often and sometimes less so always out of the ether and unexpected never willed or called into being and in the meantime the verb of love ties these moments together but could never be constantly felt in that way and so the semantic distance between love and to love is clear. If only how to love in the wide expanses between the appearances of the noun of love were so obvious.

(Foto by Abraham Palafox. See Abraham´s fotoblog here.)

(This is a reprint from the Catalogue of Feeling.)