There are many things that I might have told you already and yet those letters continue growing in my heart and my hard drive with no clear intention nor accumulation of facts.
The station, you know, suffered dramatical impacts of an asteroid fragments not far. Life seemed to have stopped for a glimpse on our hearts, souls were just awakened and brains would fail to work hard.
Some were ejected to Mars, as you probably could picture with the previous notes. Communication is poorer on the red land. And interferences from Venus would easily overlap. I was on that bunch.
Días extraños no wonder, my little beast. There was a bit of ignorance of any further bite, a bit of obscurity and anguish, some bits of anger and pieces of pathological happiness when the base was still to be properly staffed. Still a thread of hope would breach into anyone chest and head, desperation, so we choosed not to let through any.
¿Pero quien sabe de esta Realidad?,
frustrante caricatura del desear.
Plagada de verdades sin contar,
de mentiras poderosas,
ángeles y demonios, siempre quieren jugar. Dío con los dados: esperad una mano más.
Os he clavado unos pareados, perdonad por el spam.
Es fruto del respeto a la Verdad, esa que nos esforzamos por buscar,
con mucho cuidado de no llegarla a encontrar.
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.
España XXI 