Haiku Natsugusa ya [Basho]

Ah! Summer grasses
All that remains

Of the warriors' dreams

ps: haiku taken from somewhere on the net

cajón de sastre (18)

Los bares son estupendos lugares para grandes pensamientos, pensamientos que generalmente van acompañados de cervezas o, con esta temperatura que nos gastamos por aquí, de tinto de verano. En un bar he escuchado la última contribución a este cajón de sastre:

¨El gran drama humano no es poseerlo todo, es, si acaso, disfrutarlo todo¨ Pantoja, un compañero de trabajo del circo, hablando de por qué no quiere que su hija de diez años sea rica y posea muchas cosas.

*****

Pubs and bars are great places for great thoughts, thoughts that usually appear with some beer or some wine. In a bar I've heard the last contribution to this section.

"The great human drama is not possessing everything but enjoying everything" Pantoja, a colleague, talking about why he doesn't want his ten year old daughter to be too wealthy.

simples preguntas

El fin de semana pasado estuve con un grupo de amigos a los que hacía mucho que no veía. Unos cuántos tienen blogs y así estamos más o menos al día pero, en general, a ninguno le había visto como mínimo en un par de años. Este tiempo y mis pequeñas peripecias por el mundo han provocado que los susodichos me hicieran fatídicas preguntas durante todo el fin de semana, del calibre de las siguientes:

1) ¿Qué tal tus viajes?

2) ¿A qué conclusiones has llegado?

3) ¿Cuáles son tus planes ahora?

Quizás a cualquier otro le parezcan preguntas sencillas y lógicas pero a mí me parecen auténticas bombas a los cimientos de mi alma. En primer lugar, no se pueden resumir tantos días, meses, vivencias... en una sola respuesta porque inevitablemente ésta será una respuesta simplista y reductora, vacía en sí misma de contenido e información, de hecho, la respuesta a la primera pregunta acabó siendo un absurdo "Muy bien", como el que responde al camarero que, atento, pregunta acerca de las viandas que uno acaba de ordenar y devorar.

En segundo lugar, conclusiones he llegado más bien a pocas, quizás la certeza de haber perdido todas las respuestas que alguna vez creí poseer a algunas de las grandes y simples cuestiones de la existencia. El Sólo sé que no sé nada.

En tercer lugar, nunca he tenido planes y, por el camino por el que voy, no creo que nunca los tenga, ni me vaya a poner a estas alturas a delimitar planes ni mapas de mi existencia. Son inútiles, siempre acabo rompiéndolos en pedazos en momentos de profunda agitación mental. Así que... ¿para qué tenerlos?

Me da la sensación de que no he hecho todos esos kilómetros que os conté, ni he conocido todas esas personas que os narré, la experiencia de repente se empeña en desaparecer y dejarme huérfana de la sabiduría necesaria para poder enfrentarme a otro día conmigo misma, aquí.

the weird things you ask for

I´m calling you to ask for a weird thing, a voice on the other side of the line said. It was a friend of mine whose name is Dani. Nothing surprises me coming from Dani. I do not know if last time we met I told you I was with a woman who has a child, he carried on. No, but it doesn't surprise me either. One is certain that everything is healed when someone whom you have loved very much says something like that and your guts do not churn over. I believe my heart is placed very near my stomach.

Go on, I replied. We were talking the other night and she asked me if I had a friend called Monica. Yes, I answered. Has she been travelling around? Yes, I answered again. Has she suffered from Dengue Fever? Yes. Does she have a blog with a really bizarre title? Yes. It's amazing!! I read that blog regularly, it's the only blog I really like, she confessed to him.

While Dani was relating all this number of unbelievable coincidences strung together by the magic of life, I couldn't see his point. First, I thought, due to my melodramatic nature, that his friend was a doctor and she had discovered that the type of Dengue virus that I was infected with had a strange mutation and I had to go under an immediate medical test. Then, I thought she might have been an editor willing to publish my writings about India because of the poetry my paragraphs ooze away. Later, I simply waited for a neon sign revealing the purpose of this phone call.

I´m calling you to know if you would like to meet her. There it was, the goal of the conversation. Eyes wide open. Laughs. I'm flattered. Words. Where are my words? Silence. Coooool! I managed to utter although I was thinking there's not too much to know about me. Thinking that reality needs to keep its secrets in order to leave a little bit of room for fantasy and reverie, that´s why I prefer words to images, they leave room enough for my imagination.

She says she doesn't want to keep on reading your blog because now that she knows it´s you she feels she´s invading your privacy. NO! Tell her not to quit reading! I told him. Vanity is a mighty emotion. If it´s written here it´s not private, it might be intimate but definitely not private. Think it over, he hung up on me.

After my first reactions I ended up thinking What am I going to explain or say if I ever meet her? I do not write with a definite goal nor purpose. I write because I need it. I think too slow that´s why I express myself better writing than speaking. All that it is written here is me but I am more than this. All that is written here is my ancient I, my past, it´s gone. All that is written here is part of my story but it´s not the whole story. All that is written here is just a point of view.

el blog o la vida

Planeamos hace tiempo una juntanza en Asturias unos cuantos amigos, que son amigos desde hace tiempo pero que, la vida lo ha querido así, son amigos a distancia. Dice un proverbio masai que los amigos quieren distancia, yo, a veces, la detesto. La juntanza resultó ser casi, casi en un encuentro de bloggers lo cual le dio un cariz bastante gracioso al evento pues se mezclaron cosas del mundo en directo con cosas del mundo virtual, el mundo en diferido. ¿?

Estuvo el gran fritanga con su amicca, la caléndula y de estrella invitada, vimos al Sr. Huarte autor del erudito endoxablog. Tal que en una tertulia literaria, comentamos alrededor de una sidrina los posts que más nos habían gustado y el por qué de nuestra afición a leer-nos, afición que es una mezcla de admiración por el estilo narrativo y literario de los otros y curiosidad por la vida del amigo ausente, un estar al día, así, por ejemplo, gracias al blog de la caléndula yo he visitado su salón y he visto por adelantado las maravillosas margaritas que ha colgado sobre su sofá.

Los presentes no bloggeros tampoco se quedaban atrás. Nos visitó un autor publicado, nuestro nuevo amigo Javier Mije, publicado, para nuestra envidia. Un super héroe que en sueños rescata niños de columpios, desactiva bombas a media noche y saca de agujeros abisales a su querida caléndula. Y la fantástica Sara, que escribe cartas manuscritas, diseña planes A que nunca salen y planes B mucho mejores. Gran compañera y amiga.

Así que durante tres días nos alabamos mútuamente, comimos fabada y cachopo como locos y nos reímos como auténticos habitantes de psiquiátricos. Tener amigos es maravilloso, sean bloggers o no.

Para aquellos que me leais en español, mis peripecias en la India siguen creciendo día a día sólo tenéis que volver atrás en el tiempo...

el gran baudelaire

Esta vida es un hospital en que a cada enfermo lo posee un deseo de cambiar de cama. Uno preferiría sufrir junto a la estufa. Otro cree que se recuperaría si descansara junto a la ventana.

Yo pienso que sería feliz en aquel lugar donde casualmente no me encuentro y este asunto de cambiar de casa es el tema de un diálogo perpetuo que mantengo con mi alma.

rené is back

René is back at the circus. He´s still wearing his sunglasses but now I know why. He has photophobia. He is not as misterious now that his secret has been revealed.

busking in madrid

Madrid's underground is like any other underground: an under-world with its own shops, hawkers, its own life. Madrid's underground like any other underground of the world houses buskers. Loads of buskers coming from many different countries and playing all sorts of styles and instruments, although busking is an illegal activity in Madrid. It seems Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, Madrid's major, doesn't like music on the underground. I guess it's because he doesn't travel by tube.

I love most of the buskers I come across on every tube ride. Most of them are great musicians that liven up the otherwise boring rides. I often give them money because I think they are providing a service and I like it.

Having said this I must admit that there are some buskers that should pay us, the underground travellers, for making us listen to them. They're horrible. Madrid's Town Hall should allow busking and regulate it in a way that we do not have to listen to anybody who says or thinks they can play or sing. I have already spotted two horrible buskers in Madrid, one plays at Avenida de América station and the other one at Pacífico. Pacífico station is a propitious station for out of tune buskers. I dread having to commute in any of these two stations.

my lovely family

My younger sister shares a flat in Valencia with a Romanian couple and her dog. People ask her how living with Romanians is and she insists "they're just normal people".

My elder sister lives with her two children and my mother. One of my brothers had his second child with a vegetarian woman and he became one. Now they're trying to make the baby a natural born vegetarian.

My elder brother has lived on the street for a while. Things went wrong, very wrong with him for as long as I can remember. Now he's working some days a week in an office and trying to make ends meet. Restart.

My father lives with his second wife whom he met on the internet some time ago now, before I even knew what internet or e-mail were.

There was a time when it was really difficult to admit what a strange family I had, now it's kind of funny. Of course there are times when you wish you had a normal standard family but then... that's less interesting.

dreams & adventures

Aventura: 1. f. Acaecimiento, suceso o lance extraño.2. f. Casualidad, contingencia.3. f. Empresa de resultado incierto o que presenta riesgos.4. f. Relación amorosa ocasional.

Necesitaba un respiro de la ciudad, de nuevo, y escapé (escapar: 1. intr. Salir de un encierro o un peligro. 2. intr. Salir, huir. ) en busca de aventuras y desventuras y, sobre todo, en busca de un poco de mi.
Aventuras hallé pocas aunque ir sola a cualquier lado ya es en sí mismo una gran empresa de resultado incierto y que sin duda presenta ciertos riesgos. Los riesgos esta vez eran y fueron mínimos y controlables. Quedarse sin dinero en tu propio país, sin tarjeta de crédito y sin vehículo en un pueblo sin tiendas, ni cajeros ni transporte público en fin de semana, es más que ariesgado, gracioso y estúpido , en mi modesta opinión.
Mientras me llegan tiempos más propicios a los lances extraños (1. adj. De nación, familia o profesión distinta de la que se nombra o sobrentiende, en contraposición a propio.) que supone el viajar a lugares desconocidos, me regocijo en mis pequeñas huidas.

*****

Adventure: a : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks. b : the encountering of risks.

I needed a break from the city, again, and therefore I escaped (to escape: : to get free of : break away from) in search of adventures and misfortunes but among all in search of a little bit of myself.
I found not too many adventures although going on your own anywhere is already an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks. The risks were minimal and controllable. Running out of cash without credit cards nor a vehicle with you in a little village with no shops and no public transport at the weekends, is more than risky, stupid and funny, in my opinion.
So while waiting for better times for me to the encountering of risks that travelling to remote places involves, I enjoy my little get aways.

life

Just when I was thinking about taking a break and stop blogging for a while (because I thought I didn't have anything to write about) just then I got an e-mail that has waken me up, it has made me rush to the computer.

The main purpose of this blog has always been me. I started blogging while travelling to avoid forgetting because I knew my memories would eventually fade and I would start forgetting places, people, food... And I did not want that to happen, so I started writing and eventually you started reading but the main goal has never been being read.

From time to time I myself go back and read things that I wrote long time ago (or so it seems) and it feels it wasn't me who wrote them. It feels weird. But I like it because I go through my experiences as if they were someone else's.

I got that e-mail an hour ago, an e-mail from a friend whose near future plans have failed. I don't think I can really know how he feels although I have been through similar experiences when you feel that all the work you've done is worth nothing. All plans have vanished. Now more than ever I want to wish him the best.

estoy al borde de un abismo pero la vista aquí es excepcional

En algún punto entre el circo y la última exposición de Sebastiâo Salgado tuve una crisis. Me atacó por la espalda, de improviso. El abismo, el vacío, el sinsentido.

En algún punto entre el supermercado y la siesta en el parque recuperé la calma, pero la calma ya no es la misma. Todo deja su poso. Al removerse un cuerpo, el espacio alrededor se turbia, se arremolina. Nada es transparente. Se necesita tiempo y reposo para que la fiera se duerma, se tranquilice de nuevo. Cada vez los torbellinos son más frecuentes e imprevistos aunque menos arrolladores para la que está en el ojo de los mismos.

A cubierto! oigo gritar al que está a los mandos de mi nave. Y a veces funciona. Freno. Me recoloco y mientras me miro en el espejo sin reconocerme, me tranquilizo.

everybody is leaving

"Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult?"

Life of Pi, Yann Martel.

Sara, a friend whom I haven't talked about on this blog is starting up a new job, a new life. That's what the subject of her last e-mail said. She's leaving her parents home and the safety of her job for the unknown, for a vast inmesity of endless possibilities elsewhere. She's going to Latin America, again.

She's not the only one. Chris, a friend I met in India, is moving to Japan next month. He does not know when he'll come back. Maybe he never does.

Pablo is in Ethiopia shooting a documentary. His first time in Africa. I have the feeling it won't be the last.

I admire people who have the guts to leave everything behind and take the chance to explore new countries, new places, new fields of themselves...

I wish them all good luck.