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.

Letters from the moon. Capítulo 7.

(Listen while you read – new window – La inmensidad – La M.O.D.A – in Lugano-Niza 2017)

Querido O.,

Ha pasado tanto tiempo desde nuestra última carta que apenas recuerdo qué cosas te he contado y qué no. Esto de momento no es mucho problema, me he leído algunos fragmentos de las copias que guardo y me hago una idea ligera del hilo argumental: ninguno.

Quizá más adelante en esta relación epistolar la discontinuidad pueda ocasionar alguna estéril repetición pero, al fin y al cabo, será muestra de la pesadez involuntaria de un despistado patológico y, por otro lado, subrayará la importancia inconsciente de algunas de las anécdotas que tienen menor impacto literal, que no necesariamente existencial.

Han sido días aciagos en la estación.

Como en todo espacio confinado, por grande que sea, confinado, limitado, demarcado, cualquier cambio estructural afecta profundamente las costumbres y por tanto a los humores de los seres que lo habitan.

Aquellas goteras eran un problema más serio de lo que parecía así que hemos tenido corredores aislados, despachos cerrados, flujos vitales interrumpidos. Como un virus, de desconocido origen y vía de transmisión, la agitación emocional, y en algunos casos intelectual, se ha extendido entre los pobladores de la base.

De unos a otros, de otros a unos, no ha faltado quien perdiese el control de las habituales comedidas acciones y reacciones; unos antes otros después, hemos ido pasando por esta gripe de malestar absurdo, actuando a la vez como reservorios y víctimas de esta inmaterial demencia transmisible, que ha puesto de manifiesto lo obsesivo-compulsivo de nuestro habitual transcurrir, camuflado en normalidad dentro de la inmutable rutina de una estación que ha probado exigir este perfil conductual para poder sobrevivir en paz.

Pero no querría aburrirte con anécdotas cotidianas que tal vez se repliquen con frecuencia en tu entorno vital. Me gustaría contarte alguna de aquellas que te dejan sabor de haber experimentado algo esencial.

Por desgracia ando corto de inspiración, querido sobrino, sin duda tiene que ver con la influencia en la evocación de la memoria que tiene nuestro estado emocional. Dicho así tiene mucho sentido, y seguramente muchos estudios, sacrosanta evidencia IA, que lo avalen. Pensado asá, sin embargo, se me antoja una muestra más de nuestra limitada libertad individual. Ya sabes, el ello, el super-yo… asfixiando como siempre un yo desorientado que golpea las suturas craneales, ya no luchando por su libertad sino en busca de un eco que confirme su propia realidad…

Te contaré una muy absurda pero muy esencial.

Tenía yo unos 16 años, como siempre. Hacía tiempo que me gustaba el wind-surf pero era todo un problema conseguir el equipamiento, y la infraestructura necesaria para mantenerlo. Por otro lado tus abuelos, pragmáticos ellos, no tenían muy claro como aquello podía contribuir a mantener unos resultados académicos que eran lo único que consideraban me podría garantizar un futuro, o más bien una supervivencia, digna. Así tampoco estaban por la labor de hacer esfuerzos épicos para alimentar este vicio existencial.

Se dió la circunstancia de que en un club de la ciudad ofrecían cursos de formación (que yo en realidad no necesitaba, había aprendido con 9 años en Alicante) que incluían la posibilidad de mantener posteriormente entrenamientos los fines de semana con el material del club…

Abreviaré. Hice el curso. Pasaron días, pasaron semanas. Al principio todos los que hacían el curso querían quedarse para seguir practicando. Así ocurría que teníamos una sola tabla para un grupo de varias personas y en ocasiones tenías que pasar la mañana en la playa esperando para conseguir dar una sola vuelta durante unos minutos. Decía que pasaron días y pasaron semanas y la mayor parte de los aficionados fueron desapareciendo, por aburrimiento.

Yo no me aburría, no me podría aburrir. A mi esa vuelta me compensaba todas las esperas del mundo, y esas esperas, que disfrutaba pensando en lo que iba a hacer al tocar su fin, me iban a compensar todo lo demás.

Avanzados los días quedábamos pocos, cada vez era posible pasar más tiempo en la tabla y, al ser menos, el club empezó a poner a nuestra disposición más material para que todos pudiésemos navegar durante más rato…

La historia se alarga: incluso gané un campeonato. Pero también languidece: no pude recoger el trofeo porque tenía un examen al día siguiente y no hubo muchas más trasluchadas porque los rigores del curso académico eran incompatibles con la vibraciones de sal-vaje libertad que comenzaban a apoderarse de mi.

No se si piensas que la moraleja de esta historia es: trabaja por lo que deseas, siempre lo conseguirás.

Nada más lejos de la realidad. La verdadera moraleja es que si haces lo que te gusta el resultado siempre te sabrá a mar, a éxito y a libertad. Por supuesto estaba más contento cuando finalmente pude dedicar más horas a la práctica real. Pero lo que creo debes observar es que estaba disfrutando cada segundo en aquellas mañanas de esperas sin fin, que el éxito, una vez mas, está en el camino, cuando esas piedras del camino eres tu quien las coloca…

Bueno, una carta de cotidianidad y anécdota, de poco peso existencial, así es como está tu tío hoy: shallow.

Que le vamos a hacer.

Una de las cosas que pronto tuve que aprender a aceptar al tener a residentes a cargo es que es imposible transmutarse todos los días en Hipócrates o Ramón y Cajal. Aún poniendo en juego el propio orgullo personal y profesional es importante no ocultar a los discípulos las miserias de la realidad; no para entristecerles precozmente o robarles su entusiasmo jovial, sólo para que el recuerdo quede en su memoria y les ayude a aceptarse en los días, a veces aciagos, que están por llegar.

Nada más, querido,

Que andes siempre con los tobillos y pienses mucho con las orejas.

Have a rest now, be prompt later.

Te quiere.

Dr. J.

Letters from the moon. Chapter 6 (2.2, 5bis)

(Listen while you read (new window): Dave Matthews Band –  Two steps – Live – Central Park – Peripatetic sounds 2014)

Hey kid/s,

here I am again with my boring odd stories that however help you sleep a bit. Today in a hurry. I have been doing quite a bit of nothing the whole evening long but still I feel unease to see the clock figures fading away the very few occasions I look at the upper left corner of the screen.

I shall well tell you nothing interesting about the jour, we just surfed pass it, But many things happened despite none of them might fit the desire of your ears.

I had strong memories of Talavera this morning, I’d better say recurrent feelings and, as it couldn’t be less, most of them were linked to the amazing medical experience I had there. Despite Pio Baroja would had include it in his «Arbol the la ciencia» without a blink, the real experience was at the same time less gross and more deep.

I would definitely recommend you to follow the way of our latin-american colleagues and their «rural stage», but at the start of your specialist practice. It is not that Talavera was a little village at all. Not only you’d find an «El Corte Inglés» on it’s city center, you’ll find a capital city of a hugely diverse region framed beyond political borders by geographical accidents will. I don’t want to go too deep on the description of the place that urbanists of the time called «the ugliest city ever». One day you should visit, just as any other place. Let me just tell you: from La Vera to the lake, having madrilean Gran Vía as your holiday escape, on that way to Lisboa that you could theoretically sail, you would have to make a big effort not to feel as a king on its domain. Beware, there are as many kings as citizens, you’d better not forget.

 

Enough Talavera for the day.

I have doubts about the next bit. I was part of a quite remarkable surgical hit today. You would think I got to solve a difficult technical problem, or I managed through a mess of clinical information and images through to a brilliant diagnosis. None.

I had the opportunity to be a real assistant to a new surgeon on is very first solo on a particular type of procedure. It is not that I assisted with the tools, not even much with the strategy, none with the planning. Still it made me remember of so many previous OR assisting experiences, since Medical College to the day: the thrill of performing the intervention with all the time and energy devoted to your brain, none wasted on your hands, the huge power given by being an (almost) mute support. Could seem boring or lame to you as a young doctor but realize you have all the advantages, the perspective, the lack of stress… and none of the risk. You have much more time to think about different possibilities, gestures, tools… Of course you shouldn’t make those preferences too public or you’ll never get to be a first operator yourself. Yes, being first operator is also quite an important way to learn ;).

Any case, remember nephew, in case you choose to get into this path: no time in an OR is wasted while your brain is awake and calm.

 

As said, not much to give a damm. The water yesterday was a pipe leak that someone enjoyed to crack. Today the windows are trembling and it’s as much impossible to explain. Each day in this moon of ours is one step deeper on the sand of a desert that we can’t just picture as a whole. Hope to read you soon.

 

 

Have a rest now nephew. Be prompt later.

Big hug.

J.