sábado, 25 de febrero de 2012

CUBA - La Habana

   De regreso.


Regreso después de una semana como pocas, paradójica e inmortal.
Cuba,  La Habana.
La razón concreta: ver a uno de mis hermanos por su cumpleaños. Las razones que orbitando alrededor  sirvieron de empuje para que fuera esa nuestra final elección: conocer en primer plano al tan discutido, amparado (por unos) y odiado (por otros) sistema comunista de corte Fideleano.
Una inyección urgente de actualidad y perspectiva.
Esta semana aplastó (sin pedir permiso) la herida,  aquello que pudiera reconocerse como el sentimiento profundo de una identidad latinoamericana que en mi caso yacía quieta, tímida, un tanto olvidada.   
Cercana ahora siento a Cuba. 
Fue, sin duda alguna, un viaje a través del tiempo.
Un viaje de notas discordantes, que inicialmente desentonan por su antiquísima naturaleza, pero pronto aquello se convierte en un sistema reconocible, evidentemente vinculado  con el actual mosaíco político venezolano. Una visión que puede ser tan nítida como borrosa, y que depende indiscutiblemente del lente de la década con que se mire.
La Habana parece haberse estacionado en  el tiempo, con esporádicos espasmos del presente.
Es un pasado con recuerdos del ahora, en plena juventud. 

Una isla estacionada en el irremediable azul turquesa del caribe y la 
putrefacción de un puerto abandonado.
Usando las palabras de una mujer cubana con quien tuve la oportunidad de hablar largas horas: 
"Estamos estacionados, aquí no pasa el tiempo, como tampoco pasa en las cárceles. Cuba es la cárcel sin rejas".



Después de vivir durante más de 50 años bajo la sombra del mismo árbol, montados en la flota de un único capitán, yo imaginaba que la política no sería tema prioritario, pensaba que tal vez el cansancio le había ganado la batalla a la esperanza, y que tantas décadas a pelo habían hecho de la cabalgata una experiencia adaptable, que como por ósmosis penetraba adueñándose así de una parte de la identidad nacional. 


Creo que me equivoqué. Creo necesaria la re-evaluación para todos 
quienes pensábamos que la cadencia de la misma melodía puede llegar a recrear, con significante éxito, una versión de felicidad anestesiada.


Por otro lado traigo conmigo el recuerdo de una Cuba suave de carácter y agradecida, combinada con mucha prudencia y temor. Me pregunto, ¿cuánto golpe se debe recibir para vivir con tanto miedo disuelto en la sangre? ¿Cuánto miedo hay que tener, para que después de más de cinco décadas de lo mismo sientas la necesidad de susurrar cuando de hablar del país se trata, mirando vigilante algún oído ejecutor?


Vigilando al vigilante. "La gente se vigila entre ellos"- así lo dijo el doctor Francisco mientras nos embaucaba con la supuesta invitación al cafe, que al final ni fue café, ni fue invitación. 
Pero esa es otra historia.


Un lugar en donde a pesar de que son legalmente reprimidos por hablar en contra del gobierno, todos lo hacen. Como si fuera un malestar de estómago revuelto que inevitablemente se alivia solo con el vómito. Como cuando alargamos y nos esforzamos por evitar el ineludible momento de abrir la boca y vaciar de golpe el veneno fermentado en las entrañas. Así hablan la mayoría de los cubanos que conocí, aunque no quieran, aunque no deban.  Hablan, vomitan la ponzoña esperando que sea a su vez, mas adelante vomitada por algún turista fuera de la isla, así como lo hago yo en este momento.
La exhalación de un grito ajeno. 
Portadora y ahora por consecuencia partícipe de la expulsión.


Un lugar en donde la equidad se refleja en la carencia común, en el desplome de un cuerpo saturado de llagas, parapléjico.
Un lugar en donde el sueldo mínimo se confiesa con vergüenza y enojo, pero en susurro.
Un lugar en donde el cuestionamiento se castiga al mismo tiempo en el que el silencio se considera obligación cívica.


Un lugar en donde los que tienen prioridad son sus mismos violadores, aquellos quienes provocaron la necesidad de un cambio drástico, la revolución: 
La liberación de la identidad nacional como destino urgente.
Tanto poder, durante tanto tiempo engendra  extrema mezquindad. 
La nitidez de aquella imagen liberadora y necesaria perdió el foco 
hasta llegar a ser una mancha oscura y sin forma. 
Este engendro de maltrato, miedo y hastío.


La Habana se quedó presa en mis retinas. 
Cuando ahora, desde aquí recuerdo lugares específicos de la ciudad,  le encuentro con facilidad parecidos a muchas otras partes; sin embargo al unificar el conjunto de aquel TODO no se parece a nada  antes visto. Es la mezcla de un discurso político vencido y contradictorio, en medio del colorido regodeo de su gente, la música que baila en la mirada, enredado en medio del cansancio profundo que produce un diagnóstico aparentemente incurable.
Dentro de este descosido saco de hojas marchitas, hay flores. Me llamó mucho la atención el sentido humano que se siente como el ronroneo de una leona somnolienta, amenazando con despertar muy pronto.
La gente se procura. La hostilidad del individualismo occidental aún no parece lograr enterrar sus filosas garras en los cubanos. Los ojos son mirados y las sonrisas respondidas. Ahí, curiosamente me sentí más humana.






La Habana 2012


miércoles, 8 de febrero de 2012

Clocks & Folks

We live surrounded by crap, brands, fake shit, fake body parts,  preconceived beauty...
a concept of beauty jailed in its own meaning, jailed in "the colors of this season", jailed in straight-as haircuts, jewelry, manicure, high heals, clothes, smells... "You smell like summer"
I find it hard to imagine a crazy mixture of chemicals inside a lab smelling anywhere near the smell summer time sweats off the ground, off the flowers when it´s actually hapenning.
Stuff, simple matter has acquired such human qualities that now we do not get surprised when someone says "my bb is my bf"*
Life and lifeless has become so alike, that at times they sound the same. They look the same.
A heart beat ... a cellphone charger.
A personality  that grows through social networks.
A prefabricated version of me, whose value increases or it doesn´t do so depending on my followers.
How many people follow me? My value lays on whether others like or dislike the prefabricated idea of myself through an non tangible life like. The life of words and numbers.... the life where silence doesn´t exit. Instead there is a version of it ... yes that one right there was a pause... here there is another one ... ... ... (that one there was a three-times-longer pause).
It´s a double edge knife, sharp and dangerous. 
LETHAL but SEXY.
You can finely slice a tuna steak beautifully accurate with it, as well as you can slice your own brittle wrist wide open with a move. The people i´ve loved the most,  have left the sound of their laughter stuck in my eardrums and the photo of their opened mouth and shrunk eyes (that expression that only shows up with joy) glued in my memory. Curiously, non of those 2 memories are left after a chat...(yes that was a pause) or a twit, of a BB pin...a whatsapp messege.  Now, i´m clearly looking at it all from the "slice your own brittle wrist wide open with a move" point of view. Evidently the "you can finely cut a tuna steak beautifully accurate with it" is also there. Pretty present. Very obvious. Life meets the lifeless.


And lifeless is easy, convenient, practical, quick, efficient. 
It´s wonderful to be reunited "virtually" with people you stopped hearing about. Some of which were essential back in the days. Some of which taught you more than you ever realized it back then. People, whose closeness to you blurred that ability to see their beauty. Now their voices can only be heard miles and miles away from you, and even though all you only get is their seldom typing on your wall, somehow you feel them not as far.
"The distance is shrinking"... they say. Is it? Or is that a marketing concept to make us feel more significant? We are now able to accommodate distance according to our needs. The spiral of madness.
The needs that we need to need in order to make sense of this all. The more we meet the needs the faster they reproduce. Needy is good, needless is old fashion. 
The more streessed we are, the busier and the better.... noise noise noise is good in order for us to feel worthy of those few holidays we get. 
This is just a thought i had the other day while searching for the elefantesolar.
Have a great day!


*bb: blackberry
  bf: best friend

lunes, 16 de enero de 2012

Starting at the end...

This is my first 2012 entry.

I had been dragging and dragging the time when i sit down and spit it all here, in a sort of systematic and organized manner or least an attempt of it.
Although over the past weeks i´ve written on my diary a list of topics i wish to blog about, at some point, sooner than later, I foundit unattainable to drive myself away from the year change subject. 
Maybe cliché, in fact: A CLICHÈ... but perhaps also quite exciting...
At the end it is what it is: another blog entry.

The ELEVEN goes and the "controversial-apoalyptic and so spoken about" TWELVE arrives.
It does it humbly, unlike most people imagined it to be.
Sometimes i feel the earth is much more peaceful in the long run than us: human race.
Which takes me back to year 2000, when crowds gathered and drowned themselves in a frantic celebration "ready" for a world wide ending.
But as it did now, january arrived and GAIA is still spinning, life somehow continues surprisingly uneventful.

As in for now, i confess to find it impossible to stay completely and utterly unaffected/detached from it all. This year carries a huge luggage, which i feel it to be somehow engraved in our skin cells, it´s known by default that 2012 is just NOT like 1998 was. It´s an overweighted year. Too many expectations. Too many predictions. Prophecies, interpretations, theories have been exposed about the events that we shall face these months to come. It`s like a market place: a stall to fulfill everyone´s taste.
Come and have a pick! Come in! You will surely find the prediction that suits you and your family best! and if not, there is always Melancholia for you to watch.


Views from all over the place draw darkness and change to our present canvas. I will just list a few, a very very few of these so spoken events: (I hope you find some of them as amusing as i did).
Osiris` Resurrection, The Bee Death Theory (which has to do with Chaos Theory), the Galactic Superwave, The end of the Mayan Calendar (which apparently has no mentioned relationship with the END of humanity), Nostradamus (not sure if he was a visionary or a clever wacko), The super Volcano Yellowstone Theory, tha pole reversal theory and my farorite one (the stall i would buy from): Mother Shipton´s Theory.

Ursula Southeil (better know as Mother Shipton), who was born in Northern England (York- 1488) predicted many things being London´s great fire one of them.
She`s by far my favorite so i´ll dig into this one the most.

Reputed to be a hideously ugly lady who lived inside a cave, she was the only prophetess of her time, whose most claimed edition of Mother Shipton's prophecies contains several rhymed couplets in notably non-sixteenth-century language.
This one is hers:

The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

Although she got it WRONG there, i love the way she uses rhyme to fantasize and embody her thoughts on the near and far future.

I've just published, right underneath this entry a great deal of Mother Shipton's poem which i think is stunning!
What a beautiful way to tell us what to come. I'm going to call it: Stylized catastrophe mixed in verse.

It is truly impressive the way she "foresees" the changes. However, that isn`t the reason why it is my favorite. I love it cause its originality: a woman born in the XV century, who wrote down in rhyme the events that would take place in the next 500 years according to some sort of visions they say she had. On top of that, she used a language which depicted a clarity not that common back in those days. Fascinating!


At the end of the day, we just don`t know and should be happy to live not knowing certain things: 
"When will the world end?" being one of them. 
This is how i feel :  It takes too much time now, studying what´s  the real truth about later.
"Later" will come "later", and when it comes it will be "now" and then we`ll know it.


Enjoy the poem!






Mother Shipton's views

And now a word, in uncouth rhyme
Of what shall be in future time
Then upside down the world shall be
And gold found at the root of tree
All England's sons that plough the land
Shall oft be seen with Book in hand
The poor shall now great wisdom know
Great houses stand in farflung vale
All covered o'er with snow and hail
A carriage without horse will go
Disaster fill the world with woe.
Through towering hills proud men shall ride
No horse or ass move by his side.
A great man then, shall come and go
For prophecy declares it so.
In water, iron, then shall float
As easy as a wooden boat
Gold shall be seen in stream and stone
In land that is yet unknown.
And England shall admit a Jew
You think this strange, but it is true
The Jew that once was held in scorn
Shall of a Christian then be born.
Men walk beneath and over streams
Fulfilled shall be their wondrkus dreams.
For in those wojdrous far off days
The women shall adopt a craze
To dress like men, and trousers wear
And to cut off their locks of hair
They'll ride astride with brazen brow
As witches do on broomstick now.
And roaring monsters with man atop
Does seem to eat the verdant crop
And men shall fly as birds do now
And give away the horse and plough.
There'll be a sign for all to see
Be sure that it will certain be.
Then love shall die and marriage cease
And nations wane as babes decrease
And wives shall fondle cats and dogs
And men live much the same as hogs.
In nineteen hundred and twenty six
Build houses light of straw and sticks.
For then shall mighty wars be planned
And fire and sword shall sweep the land.
When picturas seem alive with movements free
When boats like fishes swim beneath the sea,
When men like birds shall scour the sky
Then half the world, deep drenched in blood shall die.
For storms will rage and oceans roar
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore
And as he blows his wondrous horn
Old worlds die and new be born.
The mountains will begin to roar
And earthquakes split the plain to shore.
And flooding waters, rushing in
Will flood the lands with such a din
And spilling blood by mankinds' hands
Will stain and bitter many lands
And when the dragon's tail is gone,
Man forgets, and smiles, and carries on
To apply himself - too late, too late
For mankind has earned deserved fate.
His masked smile - his false grandeur,
Will serve the Gods their anger stir.
And they will send the Dragon back
To light the sky - his tail will crack
Upon the earth and rend the earth
And man shall flee, King, Lord, and serf.
But not on land already there
But on ocean beds, stark, dry and bare
Not every soul on Earth will die
As the Dragons tail goes sweeping by.
Not every land on earth will sink
But these will wallow in stench and stink
Of rotting bodies of beast and man
Of vegetation crisped on land.
But the land that rises from the sea
Will be dry and clean and soft and free
Of mankinds' dirt and therefore be
The source of man's new dynasty.
And those that live will ever fear
The dragons tail for many year
But time erases memory
You think it strange. But it will be.
And before the race is built anew
A silver serpent comes to view
And spew out men of like unknown
To mingle with the earth now grown
The children with the second sight.
A natural thing so that they might
Grow graceful, humble and when they do
The Golden Age will start anew.
The dragon's tail is but a sign
For mankind's fall and man's decline.
And before this prophecy is done
I shall be burned at the stake, at one
My body singed and my soul set free
You think I utter blasphemy
You're wrong. These things have come to me
This prophecy will come to be.