1.
Who does she think she is? How dare she tell you where you can or cannot read? Daniel, I... well, you know.
Ah, David, there is something you need to remember. She is my friend.
Oh that's what you think! She only wants to manipulate you, just like that other woman, what's her name – Tere, yes – you lived with her for how long?
A year.
And then she threw you out and now she wants you back? Daniel, Daniel, get a clue, man, they are both trying to tell you what to do with your life, and you, you just sit there and take it!
And you, David, you aren't sitting here in the bar, telling me what to do?
Well, yes, but...
You see? We are all, always, telling each other what to do. I tell you to write more and go build your house. You tell me to get off my ass and go out and read poetry for myself, not for others.
Huh. Damn you.
Yeah.
The bar maid comes by, sees my empty bottle, offers me another. Yes, I say. Put it on my tab, David says. I grunt NO! Yesterday was very nice, David, but not tonight. He nods, pleased that I have a little money to buy my own beer. I get up and go program some music. John Lennon. Jimi Hendrix. Led Zeppelin. Chicago.
This was two nights ago.
2.
A few minutes later, Scott will come in; he's a painter who works as a substitute teacher. Yeah, another artist who works as a teacher. Something very, very, very traditional, and honorable, about that. Yes. I'm a little jealous. I tried working as a T.A. once and could not handle the pressure of having to give grades. But we don't talk about that. We talk about David's office problems and all the money they're throwing down the drain and how he's gonna go get another job some day. You know, the same old shit as always.
Finally I must leave to go to the art inauguration. I invite them to drop by the exhibit opening.
That's when David reminds me Scott is a painter, and he in his turn says yes, you know, maybe he will stop by after another beer and where is it and I tell him on the corner of 2nd and Constitution and he says oh yeah I know the place the old city hall. And sure enough he drops in a hour or so later after the dedication ceremony and he walks around checking out the paintings hanging in the X-palacio gallery and says he likes the work.
It's a collective show on the theme of violence against women, works by a selection of some of the best women painters – and sculptors – around here. Lulu and Lourdes and Sylvia and Nina and others. But only some. For every woman showing a piece or three here tonight there are three or four others who aren't here. That's life in the big city. Too many artists for X, Y, or Z to shake a brush at, now. That's good. Yépez calling them mediocre, light and oportunistic or not, that's good. Everyone should be an artist. We all are. Some are just more practiced, therefore accomplished. Most don't work at it enough. Bla bla bla like I really know anything at all. Not. Boing boing boing on the Tijei trampoline high horse.
I don't see Nina. Too bad. I wanted to see her. I worry about her. I stand for a long time looking at her painting and I can feel the touch of wings. Jesus, no, please, not another one please not don't take her not yet let her live and grow healthy and paint some more and tell her story...
but
outside the gallery, in the patio courtyard, after it is all over and the gates closed, just five of us stand around and talk about music. I mentioned that two days ago I think.
3.
I was going to go to the casa de la nueve (9) last night but decided against it. Save some money. I been going downtown two nights in a row now and dropping five, six, seven dollars each time on beer and food, even not counting the free wine at the opening, no. Time to slow down a little bit. But I still got to go by la nueve (9) and firm up our plans for my show next month.
Poeta Frontera Línea forty minutes, almost an hour. Gonna do it in both languages all mixed up together. David says he's gonna come. I better show him beforehand where the place is, he never found the other one two weeks ago. Sigh.
So anyway I was gonna go by last night but decided to stay home and start writing this. Then go out for a hot dog at the cart that usually is there at the sidewalk that leads to the gate.
And I did. And the guy was out there selling hot dogs to the men and women coming home from work. It was Friday last night and the feeling was pretty good, people have finished up another week, most of 'em, and the hot dogs were delicious I only had one but saw several others being consumed with relish and with relish and with jalapeños and I also had a sweet strawberry soda in a can and ordered a hamburger to go that I took home and ate later.
While I stood there waiting for my cheeseburger to finish cooking I looked up at the night-time sky. The air was hazy but I could pick out Betelgeuse and Sirius. March and our winter stars still rule the evening sky.
4.
I have always gazed at the stars.
And watched clouds and storms.
All my life – for as long as I can remember – I have been fascinated, intrigued, delighted by things I see in the heavens.
I have seen mountains floating in the sky above the horizon.
I have seen two suns shining in the sky.
These were not hallucinations. I was not drunk. Had taken no drugs neither legal nor ill.
Merely mirages. The double-sun is fairly rare, it's commonly called a "sun dog" – I've only seen it happen five or six times in all my life (but I don't look every day all day long, no). Most of us, however, have seen "water" on the distant road, in the desert. Once in a while if you pay attention you can see distant mountains floating above the layers of air that refract their images. Then you pull off the highway and get some gas.
But the most fascinating and intriguing things of all, to see, for me, are the real ones. Especially the stars. And our nearby friends, the planets.
And the ephemeral, shimmering, movement of the atmosphere, tender with water, rough with wind; that slender blanket of air that wraps around us and keeps us warm and cool against the burning fire and freezing night of outer space.
And our nearest friend of all, the sweet dead lady Moon, whose powerful gravity pulling on the sea, creating tides, may be partially, or even greatly, responsible for the particular and special nature, shape, and forms that life has taken on this planet.
The sun, of course, is a star. It is very nearby. That's why it's so damn bright, eh? Eh.
But there are others. Five, ten, twenty, forty, a hundred years away (the sun is only eight minutes away from us). Those are the closer ones. Right in our neighborhood, so to speak. Sirius is one of them. Closeby. Only seven some light-years away. Much brighter than our sun; if you were to get just as close to it you would be blinded. But then, so will the sun do you if you stare at it long enough.
NO NO No no they have NOT forgotten.
The stars they know perfectly well
that WE are coming their way.Soon.
Oh, no, not you and I personally, no, little 21st century monkeys with our short lives, we won't see it. Only our children's great-grandchildren's great-great-great-great..., well, they will see it, after the ecological holocaust has burnt and melted the icecaps, etcet., after the great 23rd and 24th century of interplanetary piracy and war between satellites and Moon and Mars and asteroid chandeliers and then, them, they, the emperor clones of Saturn's moons, and then TITAN, and later, the first trips to Centaurus, Sirius, Castor, but not me, I won't see it (even though I fore-see it) and maybe not you, until some later you who might read and pray God might have forgiven my blasphemy or I repent, yes. Then you will see it.
And in 3712 the first great spreading will reach the cluster of the Hyades, all those new worlds and stars, so young, so raw, so undeveloped, yes, and then... no. I will not see it, only fore-see it.
But the stars, with their lifetimes measured in thousands of millions of years... well, they will see it. Yet they
probably already have seen other creatures come and go and say hello. Before. Now. And again, tomorrow.
Then there are the stars that are a next step or two away, two, three, four hundred light years from Earth. Betelgeuse is one of those, a red giant that – if you put it where our sun is – would swallow up everything out past Mars, even. That's how huge it is. It is also unstable, variable, swelling up and shrinking. We see it getting brighter and then dimmer. Sometimes when I look at it, it is wimpy and weak looking, barely making it through the city glare of streetlamps. Other times it is big, bloody red, and beautiful.
Out in the countryside, of course, away from city lights, the stars are something quite different. Magical, powerful, monstrous, everywhere twinkling and dripping light...
Most of us have forgotten them.
But they have not.
Not forgotten.
5.
They said on the radio it was going to be foggy last night, and when I woke up this morning it will be cloudy. Coastal clouds. Supposedly tomorrow will be hot and sunny. I don't suppose you believe I am at all surprised by the news yesterday that the government used the patriot act to trample on citizens' rights. Please. I mean, get real. This is the death of freedom. Get used to it. Babylon.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shin'ar; and they dwelt there.
And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.
And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men were building.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be withheld from them, which they have schemed to do.
Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there upon the face of all the earth: and they ceased to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Bavel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Bereshit/Genesis 11:1-9; The Holy Scriptures, Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd., 1992.
Auh in yeh yuqui in oaccico in Babylon
And when they had already arrived at Babylon
"Babel" or "Babylon" is a word that derives its meaning (in our contemporary, poly-lingual "western" and "global" culture) from a variety of sources. There are, of course, the references in biblical writings, both Jewish and Christian. There are, also, the archeological writings from excavators, adventurers, scholars et al in the 19th and 20th centuries, who dug and studied the ruins and eventually told us who Hammurabi was. There is that old Greek word, "Mesopotamia" that we all had to learn in school, and which is linked to the ancient writings of Herodotus (father of history and father of lies) who gave form to the story of the great city. And there be the Yah-inspired I-and-I reggae music that sings of the power and corruption of Babylon, a thread of meaning dear to the heart of antiglobalizationalism.
The word/name stands for both the ancient city and the ancient civilization, as well as the very idea of civilization itself and its reverse side, profound and absolute corruption. How the mighty are fallen, etc. Indeed, "mighty" and "fallen" are double-synonyms for the name itself.
And yet, at the same time, "Babel" (a variation of Babylon) has become a separate word, meaning, of course, "babble babble babble" or a great many tongues talking and no one understanding anything. And this meaning goes straight back to the story enshrined in the book of Genesis (or Bereshut, as its authors call it).
A close reading of the original text (excuse me, a translation of the original text) reveals several interesting points.
1. Supposedly this story is about God ("the Lord") creating multiple languages to confuse people and divide them into different nations.
2. But it is also about how to make mud bricks in a land where there is no stone to carve into walls.
3. God is a jealous, butt-insky, interfering, spoil-sport divinity who doesn't want humanity ganging up against him/her. He/she "comes down" to look at them and then decides that he and his companions in heaven must intervene in human lives and history and "confound" their language and scatter them around the earth.
4. God is plural; many, not one; "let us" he/she says. Either that, or he has a court of angels or some kind of beings (the Arabs call them djinni) buzzing around in heaven.
5. Or, at least, there is the question of to Whom, Exactly, was/is God speaking when he/she says, "Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
6. Or maybe that's the point: after this event, we cannot understand, with any certainty, any speech or writing.
7. People are wimps. So afraid of being
broken up and scattered around the world that
they will get together and build a
great big tower right
up to heaven.2. They.
2. You.
2. We.
2. I.
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10.mar.2007
:
80.winter/invierno
22.moon/luna
50.spaceage/edad.espacial
sectores
gringoticos:
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