Walking by
Sitting at my office desk and looking at life outside, I ponder my past and the people I’ve met. I wonder where they are and what they may be doing right now. Maybe it sounds foolish, but it’s a way I’ve found to reassure myself about my choices. The way the afternoon sun bathes the large chunks of concrete ahead of me, partially obscuring my view of the quiet 15:00 of a Thursday, hypnotises me without fail…
This exercise takes me back and forward in time, giving me the pleasure of comparing then and now. I find myself back as a promising 15 years old, rushing semi-nude through the beaches of the south… The old surf board used to give away my excitement to reach the water… A dirty and brown water, marked by oil slicks from the large port close by… As a teenager, I didn’t care. Everything was perfect: the warm sun of the tropics, the air in my long hair, the hot sand under my feet… a delightful torture until the shore is reached… the salty taste of water, the first dive… The waves against me… a boy challenging the sea.
Now, back to my office. I wonder if the boy would be satisfied with his future as me, here, right now… realising it’s hard to answer, my mind skips away to other memories until I find complete satisfaction with my today.
The sun again… The traffic… The fire truck…
Back to my dreams, I think of my first leather soccer ball… The morning of Christmas with my family all around… My first puppy… Gosh, I wish I could do my schooling over again… from kindergarten onwards… I would enjoy every second of it… crayons, G.I Joe, Lego blocks… getting home after school and enjoying a cold cup of milky chocolate… On television, afternoon movies with John Wayne and other dead icons, waiting for my father to arrive home… The settled evening until I had to take a shower and prepare for bed.
The sun again… This time reflecting light off a silver bus directly into my eyes… a reminder of reality.
Back here, I can see throughout my office different faces and ages… people with tales and dreams. I look at them and think what they would have looked like as children… Suddenly, my childhood is not far away at all… and in 30 years time, I may be thinking of today.
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Chavez, Evo & Fidel
I read a few days ago that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez managed to get an extra year added to his third term as leader of the South American nation. I can clearly see where this is going. For those who understand Political Science, it smells like dictatorship at its best. Dictators always fascinate me, because it’s impossible not to draw a line of thinking based on previous leaders. Dictatorship is an open road for dramatic changes and repression of opposition, a dream worthy of Julius Caesar. As much I disagree with this form of government, a certain dosage of dictatorship does shake up secular societies, some used to exploitation of others, and initiate waves of socio-economic changes at full speed. There are no blue-prints for dictatorship… Lots of chaos, but no bureaucracy.
I still remember when Hugo Chavez won his first election. The man rose with the promise of the low-middle Venezuelan working class, with a clean military background and Amerindian blood. …There’s nothing more dignifying than natives overpowering the established European-ruled minority. Through his first term, Chavez managed to play his political game well, and increased support for his political base in the Venezuelan Congress and the Supreme tribunal. His efforts were well strategised and paid off by setting the same man in power for a second term. It was marked by erasing Venezuelan identity and creating a false socialist ideology, which contributed to the removal of the last of his opposition.
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50 book challenge
I am thinking of joining the 50 book challenge, promoted by my writing group at Shelfari, next year. The idea is simple, the challenge less so: To read 50 books within a year. It is not impossible, but is extremely demanding. I have also to accommodate my monthly editions of National Geographic (and university-related books, if I decide to go back next semester). Basically, I have settled for failing before I even start. Still, it will provide me with the motivation required to push myself to read the greatest possible number of books I can.
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Flight of the Conchords
It sometimes seems as if there is only one joke, and it’s innocence. From Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to Jerry Lewis, Will Ferrell and Steve Carell, a comedian is as funny as he is unknowing.
The humor can be physical or verbal, the character boorish or endearing, but the key is a childlike lack of self-awareness. Jemaine and Bret are young New Zealanders adrift in New York who hope to break into the music industry with their “digi-folk” two-man band, also named Flight of the Conchords.
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A Common Word
If the unprecedented global protests over insulting depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in a book, newspaper or a papal speech tell us anything, it is that Muslims around the world can act in concert without following a leader or sharing an ideology. While such demonstrations might possess a local politics, in other words, they are shaped by global movements that lack traditional political meaning, not least by sidelining leaders and institutions for popular action in the name of a worldwide Muslim community as seen on television. The same holds true for Muslim support of global militancy, whose televised icons are capable of attracting a following without the help of local institutions or leaders. Continue reading ‘A Common Word’
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Le vrai Moleskine n’est plus
A few months ago, I decided to take my writing seriously. To give myself a couple of years of working on improving my skills (and reading about the hard life of an inspiring writer) , because I know it takes more than a love of books and literature to master the skills required to succeed in the narrow publishing world.
The easy, but costly, solution was to purchase a laptop and become what I don’t want to become: The traditional yuppie wannabe drinking cafe latté while surfing the net at Borders Bookshops. I always feels this gives a negative impression, ‘showing off’. Taking into consideration that I already own a desktop, a portable computer was not my best solution.
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Borrowing Books
I recently a bought few books and placed them into piles to read. That’s what I do… Accumulate books, read them in order of arrival then place them on my bookshelves (in no special order of importance, just size). We had friends over last weekend for ‘Petra’s girls gathering’ and a good friend asked if she could borrow a particular book. Without hesitating, I agreed, but felt this profound sense of possessiveness and jealousy when seeing it go. I guess it must be the fact I haven’t read it yet, but I shouldn’t be concerned because I have a few others to read first… It isn’t my friend’s fault at all, but I don’t know how to explain my unsettled attitude since the book left my “Man Cave”.
Where’s Freud?
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Prohibited Books
Notable authors on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books:
Francis Bacon
Honoré de Balzac
Giordano Bruno
Nicolaus Copernicus
Daniel Defoe
René Descartes
Denis Diderot
Desiderius Erasmus
Gustave Flaubert
Galileo Galilei
Edward Gibbon
Thomas Hobbes
Victor Hugo
David Hume
Immanuel Kant
John Locke
John Stuart Mill
John Milton
Blaise Pascal
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jonathan Swift
Voltaire
Émile Zola
George Bernard Shaw said, “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”
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Mark Twain
Mark Twain once received this telegram from a publisher:
NEED 2-PAGE SHORT STORY TWO DAYS.
He responded:
NO CAN DO 2 PAGES TWO DAYS. CAN DO 30 PAGES 2 DAYS. NEED 30 DAYS TO DO 2 PAGES
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Dali and the Rhino
“The only difference between me & a madman is that I am not mad.”
– Salvador Dali
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All The Things Not Said 