Beastiality and Communism

All I do now is listen to ancient choral music. Voices in awe, voices coming from anywhere.

Thom Yorke, "Analyse"

A self-fulfilling prophecy of endless possibilty
You're born and raised across the street
In algebra, in algebra

The fences that you cannot climb
The sentences that do not rhyme
In all that you can ever change
The one you're looking for

It gets you down
It gets you down

There's no spark
No light in the dark

It gets you down
It gets you down
You travel far
What have you found
When there's no time
There's no time
To analyse
To think things through
To make sense

It gets you down
It gets you down
You're just playing a part
You're just playing a part

You're playing a part
Playing a part
When there's no time
There's no time
To analyse

No one here who can see her in me.

I remember playing "Asleep" by the Smiths in my high school photography class. It was for a project. My photos were of blurry autumnal flowers in my mom's garden; I said that they represented the death envisioned in the song because of the season. AM was there, listening.

Sing me to sleep
sing me to sleep
don't try to wake me in the morning
cause I will be gone

Don't feel bad for me
I want you to know
Deep in the cell of my heart
I will feel so glad to go

, overwhelmed, I can hardly breathe when I think of who I have lost.

I try to remember what Keats had written on his grave: "Here lies on whose name was writ in water."

Bookended by scenes at a school for deaf children, the movie all but explains its title, a reference to the seemingly lost language of kindness and compassion. "Have you ever made somebody happy?" a character asks at one point.

"I know one day I'll go to Brazil with you."

Everything I did, you did with me.

The pleasures of early summer and the tranquility of Conde Duque -- the art-yuppie hood next to mine -- had been undermining my anti-Spain sentiments...

Until today, of course, when I spotted an obese Spanish family by the Reina Sofia Museum. The museum is about as avant-garde as a Madrid building could get; it's slanty, red, and contains an elevator completely enclosed in glass. Actually, the older part of it was once a hospital, so it's quite spacious and cool inside. Faced with this architectural wonder, the only site in Madrid where Bunuel and Dali have left their legacy, the obese Spanish family reacted in a very particular way. Provoked by modern geometry, the middle-aged father and his son began to yell into the most triangular exterior of the building. Much to the delight of their relations, they kept doing it. I could have understood the point of this behaviour if the slantiness of the museum's walls were actually distorting their voices; but it just wasn't! As their bellies shook with laughter, their voices faded into empty space, and I had to smile while I grimaced.

“Whenever, Wherever!”: The Discourse of Orientalist Transnationalism in the Construction of Shakira

Even if it slips into a top-down analysis of how Shakira was a pure Latin/Arab being before the recording industry got to her. Que va, she was probably listening to shitty arena rock and smoking fine Columbian weed!

Looks like none of my grandparents will be making it to my brother's wedding next month. Because of complications in her leg after an operation, my Vo Lia is now unable to sit still for the length of a plane ride. The event promised so much: a reunion of bloodlines, inappropriate, badly translated jokes, awkward cross-cultural encounters, a chance to lace South American roots through a grandchild's life abroad. Now, thinking of Vo Lia's handicap, I really want to cry. It's true I feel vulnerable in Europe, so far from the Americas of my family... But now I'm thinking of her, forbidden to travel again. She and my deceased grandfather came to visit us once in Canada when I was young, and only months ago she went to Chile and Argentina. It's not so much my distance from her that hurts me; I could see her this summer if I needed to. It's the knowledge of her distance from us, how now there is a breach she can't ever close again.

All right, it's set. Unless something miraculous anchors me to Madrid in the next few months, I'm moving to Barcelona! Almodovar's town -- the heart of Spain -- will always hold a special place in my core, but I need the sea and an international community. I crave watery cosmopolitanism. Deciding this now will give me ample time to learn the ugly language (shh: dialect) that is Catalan.

Nights like this I wonder what the hell am I doing in Spain. Why am I so far from my family? Why am I in a place where it is so difficult to feel understood? I ask this last question as if it weren't just as difficult in any other place. Still, I really get frustrated with living here. The Spanish are not cosmopolitan; most don't give a shit about your foreign culture, your different points of view, your completely distinct experience of life. In this sense I see the repellent underbelly of a culture as communal as this one. It's like in Brazil, where they have no point of reference for your foreignness, where the harmony of homogeneity reigns.

It doesn't help that I just met a fucking cool guy who is from Madrid but lives in London. He is the most interesting person I've come across in a long time - he's been taking time out of visits with family and friends to lick my armpits.

I love the sun-drenched plazas of Madrid. I love the endless nightlife and complete lack of pretension in the Spanish character. But the bad haircuts and jokes about being in Africa aren't funny anymore. Hombre, they are too real on a night like this.

The top five nations on scale of rates of sexual satisfaction reported to University of Chicago researchers:


TOP FIVE

1. Austria: 71.4 percent satisfied with their sex lives.

2. Spain: 69 percent.

3. Canada: 66.1 percent.

4. Belgium: 64.6 percent.

5. United States: 64.2 percent.


Spain, Canada, yes. Considering all the mangina I have eaten in these countries, I am largely responsible for their scores. But where's Brazil????

So, all my online cruising from the couple of weeks is finally paying off. Tonight I have a date with a Columbian architect; tomorrow I'm hanging out with a guy who does restoration. At 31 years old, both fit perfectly into my new age bracket of choice. What will blossom? Probably nothing but sexual satisfaction, my mangina opened up like a flower. Either way, I'll let you know!

But what about me, I
Wondered as the parachute released
Its carrousel into the sky over me?
I never think about it
Unless I think about it all the time
And therefore don't know except in dreams
How I behave, what I mean to myself.
Should I wonder more
How I'm doing, inquire more after you
With the face like a birthday present
I am unwrapping as the parachute wanders
Through us, across blue ridges brown with autumn leaves?

People are funny -- they see it
And then it's that that they want.
No wonder we look out from ourselves
To the other person going on.
What about my end of the stick?
I keep thinking if I could get through you
I'd get back to me at a further stage
Of this journey, but the tent flaps fall,
The parachute won't land, only drift sideways.
The carnival never ends; the apples,
The land, are duly tucked away
And we are left with only sensations of ourselves
And the dry otherness, like a clenched fist
Around the throttle as we go down, sideways and down.

-- John Ashbery

Come shadow, come, and take this shadow up,
Come shadow shadow, come and take this up,
Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,
Come, come shadow, and take this shadow up,
Come, come and shadow, take this shadow up,
Come, up, come shadow and take this shadow,
And up, come, take shadow, come this shadow,
And up, come, come shadow, take this shadow,
And come shadow, come up, take this shadow,
Come up, come shadow this, and take shadow,
Up, shadow this, come and take shadow, come
Shadow this, take and come up shadow, come
Take and come, shadow, come up, shadow this,
Up, come and take shadow, come this shadow,
Come up, take shadow, and come this shadow,
Come and take shadow, come up this shadow,
Shadow, shadow come, come and take this up,
Come, shadow, take, and come this shadow, up,
Come shadow, come, and take this shadow up,
Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up.

- being sick AGAIN. It's the same influenza strain or whatever I had in November; I can't stand up without experiencing a rush of nausea.
- dream-flashes of people I once was so close to but who have now disappeared. "No lo creo."