Listen while you read: This is me – The greatest showman – KealaSettle
Pictures: self-us.
Archivo de la categoría: Amigos
Letters from Mars 2 aka Violeta nunca fue el nombre de un crayon.
Listen while you read:
Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois – Sufjan Stevens
Une versión améliorée de la tristesse – Peter Peter.
I. Tiza y barro.
Era fácil prever una noche escabrosa. Un capítulo más del búclido krampak estival que resumía los días de contenido salvajismo, campo murciano y desviadas aguas manchegas: el veraneo Totanero.
Una noche menos, un arranque más. Uno de aquellos a lo grande.
Alejandro, un bicho pequeño, con más ojos que yo y más entendederas que Julián, incapaz de si mismo, pieza fundamental para nuestro disfuncional trío de de copas (vaya sopa), gruñe desde el asiento de atrás:
– ¿Lo quieres así o te lo cargo más?
Yo, en el asiento del copiloto intento evaluar la situación, y las posibles opciones. Ingeniero como siempre, dubitativo como nunca, considero que es el momento de llevar la locura un poco más acá…
A – Pónmelo doble.
Contamos con un coche infinito en horas de vuelo y maniobras complicadas; rey y duque de supermercados y casas de apero; amo y señor de la cotidaneidad;pequeño en dimensiones y pretensiones; nave espacial para sobrevolar por un día el universo de la verbena popular.
Ju – No lo pongáis todo perdido.
II. El catalizador.
La cosa no empieza mal. Nos hemos confundido de ruta y hemos dado en parar en un extraño lugar. La tarde no cae, el sol en este lugar parece ensañarse con ira sobre las paredes de cal blanca y las macetas de soportal. El silencio es estruendoso y, sin embargo, extrañamente, y nuestra existencia no parece desequilibrar la paz de este lugar. No es que nos hayamos cruzado a ningún humano al que incomodar, pero es más que evidente que están ahí, detrás de la contraventana de algún portal.
Nos movemos con la cadencia y el rictus de quien se sabe ante una realidad que no va a olvidar. Tenemos la conciencia de estar en uno de esos lugares misteriosos que nunca en la vida vamos a volver a encontrar.
El tic-tac aprieta y no paramos hasta encontrar una señal:
– Siguid por esta calle y, por después de la última casa, a la derecha, no tiene pérdida, es la única carretera, Mojácar es el único lugar…
III. Ea, ea. Arriba, arriba.
Yo estoy bastante borracho, hace horas que el asiento del copiloto se quedó pequeño para los manotazos argumentativos que suelto mientras Alejandro y Julián dan réplica y/o buscan nuevas áreas de desconocimiento (aka dolor), acicates para mantenernos en vigilia consciente, artificial aguijones del subconsciente. Espera activa, conociendo, como siempre, que la próxima tentativa de la vida para voltear nuestra ilusión está por llegar.
Pero hoy no, hoy lo tiene complicado, nuestros protones se han alineado y difícilmente nada nos va a parar.
Dos copas más en el parking del bar. Cuatro chistes aquí, seis debates más allá. Nos acompañan abstractas aliadas: un poco de moda sincronizada es decir, una pizca justa de contemporaneidad; y una reflex con alma propia pertrechada de funda de piel añeja digna de un Costa-Gavras venido a más.
IV. La insoportable levedad.
Andamos indecisos por la vora de aquel centro comercial.
Mierda, no compramos nada de lo que venden, tenemos que disimular, nos van a pillar. 1, 2, 3 aquí. No tiene sentido dar más vueltas a nuestra profunda enajenación de la realidad.
Atacamos la puerta con disimulo, no llevamos ninguna chica guapa que nos vaya a librar de ser interrogados al entrar.
Un pasito pa lante, el escrutinio comienza; otro para el lado el puerta amenaza con hablar; una mirada al infinito y un reflejo recolocar a Costa-Gavras en posición de entrar a matar; Alex remata con mirada de ser capaz de comprar o quemar el local.
Hemos hablado. Hemos hablado. Hemos hablado.
Kundera habla, el vértigo nunca forma parte del pasado.
Hemos bailado, hemos bebido, hemos soñado.
V. Cabroneras.
Son las 8 y nada nos puede parar. Ni siquiera el pateo y el baño matutino consiguen devolvernos a nuestra etérea realidad habitual. La tierra hoy nos habla de diversión, de aceptación, de libertad, de espíritu, de carne.
Por un día creemos escuchar una música que no sabíamos existía, creemos vibrar según un son misteriosamente acompasado con una nueva dimensión de la realidad.
Y nos sentamos, ahí, al fondo, en esa mesa al borde del acantilado, rodeados por la caída de todas las ramas que ese viejo olmo puede dar. Las mesas son de conglomerado de piedra, de esas que te piden a gritos dominar, pero las saciamos a base de más rones y unas cuantas risas de esas de sin parar, junto a un grupo de madrileños chulos que parece también acaban de nacer a una nueva realidad.
VI. Epílogo.
Una voz me persigue en la ruta de regreso. Lo habitual en la calma agónica de quien se sabe perdido pero con un motivo para volver a buscar.
¿Es una voz o una risa?, ¿tal vez un pliegue del vestido?¿una tara que no he sabido identificar? Una sonrisa invade mis labios. Inquieta, irredenta, rebelde, una infección cerebral. Maldita sea la felicidad.
Y lloro; ploro en silencio sobre el espejo de mirar hacia atrás. Por alegría y por tristeza, con miedo y con ansiedad; lágrimas de certeza de quien encuentra un camino pero sufre la inquietud de no saber a dónde le va a llevar.
To V., not personally, of course.
Letters from Mars 1 aka Sounds from the moon
Himnos patrios reloaded,
#IberiaEmergida #HastaIndiaConAmor
#ElPlanetaImaginario aka #DesertIsAliveWhenInOsterrich aka #SedentarismIsAlsoNoManLand
Letters from the moon. Chapter 8.
Listen while you read: Adrían Martín Vega y Pablo López. Te Espero Aquí. Operación Triunfo Collection.
Dear nephew,
as you know, when you travel away earth for the first time you will be for sure expecting physical disturbances when riding off your trip.
More unknowingly, commonly ignored, in the old times, in my times, in the previous times, when «saltando el charco», flying from a continent to the very other (I mean in the atlantic-axis) if you were a bit aware of yourself you could feel how atmosphere had a different density: the thickness of the air, the wave length of light, the mechanical transmission of the sound waves… If you weren’t you would anyways feel it, in the form of a headache, an unusual diarrhea or episodes of one or other kind of desorientation.
It was difficult. To all of us. When the internet kicked in the universe was turned upside-down.
I had this period, you know, my period. I ended up collaborating in some kind of modern-art-music-cultural-festival. Netart. I met that there. One of those things you can let go ‘cause is so far of your understanding and knowledge it’s imposible to ignore whithout feeling your a missing a fundamental piece in this puzzle reality is.
Fortunately I was on the right place to take a look, the festival I was talking about. I won’t bother you with stuff you probably studied in your text books in primary school. I was hit by those artists showing the «trash» of the net, «la conquista de la ubicuidad» y «el generador del postmodernismo» (probably I found this one in a different time but is part of the same memory slot). Crowed by italians, crazy, you never picture an italian on a computer, do you?.
Sorry. Back to task. La conquista de la ubicuidad was an exposition you could visit online but was sited physically in Centro Párraga, Murcia. That’s your grandma region, and your uncle something, point being it was even weirder than the italian thing, nobody in Spain, including my self, would have pictured such a time-forward exposition based in such place…
Omg, my attention deficit is peaking, it’s the hours, sorry. Well, that exposition, was simply amazing. It would enclose everything, or at least everything I needed to understand what netart was, the reason to it’s existence, the beauty of it’s pieces and the essential importance to it’s observation: having a perspective OVER the net. That’s been natural to you and the one’s born embebed in an http protocol but it was no less than a beautiful huge task of learningship to the beings on my time and earlier.
I was telling you about the continents, my continents (not that the rest are less important at all but those, America and Europe, were the ones I had the opportunity to minimally grasp before leaving the planet).
So, I was quite well equipped when I arrived «the americas» for good. I had visited several times the States, a bit of Brasil, Argentina and Canada, and, more importantly, I was deep waters on diving in their cultural products, mainly made in USA in the audiovisual, more commonly latin-american in the literary and musical. Still my best piece of advice as introduction for a European travelling away the Açores would be to read the book from a French woman in the middle XX century. Weird. Yes, I didn’t see it coming either: America by Simmone the Beauvoir.
This classical yankee trip from coast to coast, by train, described by her, felt to me, before and after leaving my temporary rooting in Montreal, the best guide to avoid the weird sensations we talked about before when flying the Atlantic the opposite trip, from east to west. Furthermore it showed up to be a magical vaccine to deeper uneasiness when facing other thrilling realities as distribution of open spaces in a whole different dimension and other many unexpected shared characteristics of all Americans, from Ushuaia to Nunavut, well, maybe not Nunavut, let’s say Hudson Bay.
So the continents… Then I would tell you how I, against will, discovered a gap in-between anglo and latin culture, or such was the way I managed to explain reality at that point… But I think is probably more interesting and more in touch with the reality you met if I tell you more about the net and all the continents…
So, I’m not sure if you’d be able to picture 1950 but when I landed Montreal in 2014 I had very much in mind the experiences of other colleagues that embraced a similar fate years before. Not that I knew those experiences deeply but I could imagine it was for them more alike travelling away the Via Lactea for us now; while for me everything was more similar to a bus trip.
It was a really short time before I had the «office» running. Home, computer and internet, mobile phone (yes, it used to be in two different devices) and even some acquaintances. And I feel this last one would be the important one to talk about. I shall tell you about the medical experience any other time, but still this day I’m wondering a bit about it.
The point is, we were living the 3.0, the golden age of Facebook, the imposition of WhatsApp, the explosion of the social apps… Tinder, OkCupid… Still, it was Montreal. You would easily meet people around with whom to interact and even, sometimes, start a journey.
Well, that was not the point, it was the context.
The point was we had so many things in common! I mean, it was already natural to us, unconscious as we were that the meaning of the word «global» had dramatically changed, to be able to have a joke with someone across an ocean and be sure to expect a laugh or at least a smile. We all shared a meta-language, sincroniced, protocolled, it could be music, cinema, favourite colours, undoubtedly 1 or 2 shared friends in Facebook, more surprisingly, some mirror experiences and analysis.
Despite this, or altogether with this or beyond this… when reaching deeper we were all surprisingly different. I do not mean individually, and, of course, I am not making an introduction to political nationalism here.
The experience I try to share with you is the one related to have a fast connexion but also the possibility of a very destructive shortcut. The «Museum of Beaux Arts» was indeed warning about it with an exposition of a similar time of cultural interaction and innovation in the XXth, and then a World War.
So, in the personal level you would really fast learn to identify more subtle characteristics in the people around to be able to appropriately relate, enjoy and live. This was somehow easy, and a life-term learning; for good, and for bad.
Unfortunately in a global level that would be much more difficult to explain. On the one hand you would be sharing a sunrise with someone in Taiwan, or would feel very close to someone base on the fact you «liked» similar stuff. On the other your individuality would be more and more individual, further from the close and away people you shared a planet with. This could have any effects but what, for sure, creates is tensions.
We were lucky, the unfortunate Hiroshima y Nagasaki were horror enough for everyone to know there was a path nobody, nobody, was willing to cross. Finally Openheimer could have slept all-night-long if he had been there to watch… It’s amazing how History plays tricks on those who try to apply a moral level to facts… I wonder now if we ever say sorry…(sorry I would do it again in the same in the same situation but never ever again).
Well, I guessed this was an historical letter, never guessed it would, Natalia’s and her teacher fault maybe. Despite Luis Camoes I’m really not fond in people who thinks in historical terms. Future is now and history follows its course as a wild river, you are able to get in the flow, even modify it, but not to bend it to your will…
I guess it’s time to sleep , at least on the east coast, all of it.
Take a rest now. Be prompt later.
Love.
J.
España XXI 