On Poetry and Culture Shock

This baby probably is my most classically-themed poem.

Snowdrops on the ground,
White lilies on pots:
Will you live forty-two months?

Azahar en la rama,
camelia en un jarrón:
¿vais a vivir cuarenta y dos meses?

Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti occasionally includes aphorisms among the poems in his books. Since he coms from a country that suffered a coup d’état and subsequent miliary dictatorship, quite a few of his works are on torture. I remember reading this as a teenager:

Un torturador no se redime suicidándose. Pero algo es algo.

A torturer cannot redeem himself through suicide. But it’s a beginning.

I remember that little epigram, if you can call it such, every time the news say that another bastard has killed himself, or tried to, after killing a woman that used to love him. 28 dead women in Spain so far in 2006. That’s an average of one every four days and twelve hours. Half the aggressors attempted suicide. Four have succeeded, one of them last night. I’m sorry I can’t direct you to a link. Blind rage is a lot faster than Google.

As on a previous occasion, an excepcional bilingual post because this is mostly of interest to local readers but I can't bring myself to make it Spanish only. Scroll down for the English version.

Ayer asistí a la Novena Zifras y Letras, nombre que damos a las reuniones de blogueros de Sevilla porque se convocan en el blog de Zifra. Esta vez había dos convocatorias, día y noche, y se daba por hecho que los mañaneros iríamos a las dos. Lo curioso de una quedada de blogueros como ésta es que lo único que, en principio, todos tenemos en común, es entusiasmo por un tema concreto, entusiasmo bastante como para tener la paciencia de escribir gratis sobre el tema, y por otro lado, exhibicionismo. Si juntas a un montón de gente que es inteligente, entusiasta y exhibicionista es como estar en una fiesta de Hollywood, pero sin la neurosis de la competición por el próximo contrato. Ayer estaba la gente especialmente inspirada y todos teníamos complejo de Oscar Wilde. ¿A quién le damos el premio a la frase más lapidaria?

En fin. Quedada diurna: llego tarde, con Tulio, que conoce a varios pero nunca ha ido a una quedada. Cervecería Macarena: Allí nos esperan Zifra, RaveN, marh (aún sin blog) y Maruja. Luego llegan Hamlet, Luis Rull y la chica que deja que lo acompañe, que está más guapa de lo que yo la recordaba, que ya era mucho. Conversaciones sobre navajas: la de Maruja es más grande pero la mía es más práctica. Sobre tiro con arco: resulta que para practicarlo hay que hacer un ejercicio que te cambia de sitio un músculo del brazo. Ayyyy qué repelús, prefiero seguir practicando los brazos de serpiente. Tulio ha ido de caza una vez en su vida porque hay afición en su familia, y el fantasma de una codorniz que mató aún le persigue. Pobrecito. Se desahoga llamándome fenicia porque estoy vendiendo pendientes. Maruja se va a comer a su casa, prometiendo que vuelve después de comer. Mientras, hay pelea por su mechero, porque es naranja...

Le enseño a Tulio y RaveN qué es el Masmoudi de dos dum (es un ritmo de danza oriental) con una demostración práctica. Zifra dice que la realidad lo supera. Vamos a comer a donde dicen RaveN y Marh. Se equivocan de calle: hemos dado la vuelta a dos barriadas y creado el Trekking y Letras. Se nos unen el Arcángel y Guille. Nos ponemos púos de comer y empezamos a hablar de blogs, un poco, no mucho. De trolls, de Menéame. Decidimos que si son grandes, verdes, y no son dulces, entonces son plátanos macho. Alguien dice "Hay gente muy cochina que son muy guays". No, yo tampoco lo entiendo. Pasamos revista a grándes éxitos de los 80, cuando los presentes teníamos entre 5 y 15 años. Intento convencer a Eva de que se decida a bailar danza oriental ya.

El mendigo que llega y nos dice algo así como que es un día precioso. Se pone a cantar. Cuando acaba, dice que "como nos ha visto así en familia, pues se ha dirigido al cabeza de familia". ¿alguien adivina a quién se refería?

Empezamos a decaer, el calor no perdona. Tetería, cachimbas, siesteo, más frases lapidarias. Casi todos se dispersan, y sólo RaveN, marh, Tulio y yo nos vamos al Utopía. Pufs, más siesta. Y así llegamos a la segunda convocatoria.

Cuando los cuatro Utópicos volvemos a la Cervecería Macarena, ya estaban allí Marcos, Pablo, uno que toma servesita y Coquevas. No sé si fue Coque o quién, que se juntó con Tulio y sacaron a relucir vena friki: recitadores de Les Luthiers. Se pusieron a hablar en su idioma particular y tuvimos que dejarlos solos hasta que se calmaron. Después, la inevitable conversación sobre Lost. ¿por qué los fans de otras series hablan de la serie y los fans de Lost sólo hablan de cuándo van a poder ver más capítulos? ¡Son adictos peligrosos!

Va llegando tanta gente que pierdo la cuenta. Nos disgregamos en grupitos pequeños: los que hablan en un extraño idioma que creo que es linusero, los que han estudiado letras, los que se conocen fuera de la blogosfera. Me quedo fascinada por la acompañante de un bloguero: todos los niños tienen terrores, y uno de los míos cuando chica eran las alergias. Soy hija de médico y de un alérgico a mi fruta favorita, así que pensaba en la posibilidad de que alguien pudiera ser alérgico a todo. Esta chica es alérgica (creo) al contacto de todos los metales y todos los animales. Dice que la reacción cutánea a casi todo se llama "síndrome de piel de princesa". Google no lo sabe. Es como si me hubieran dicho que verdaderamente existen los monstruos de debajo de la cama .

Tardamos un siglo en ir a cenar porque somos casi treinta. Zifra me dice que necesitan un líder y creo que me toca: me junto demasiado con RaveN, ¿esperan de mí la misma decisión? RaveN nos busca dónde cenar. Mientras tanto, lesiono sin querer a JaMaRiEr pero me perdona y se pone a hacernos trucos de magia a Coque, a Maruja y a mí. ¡Le salen muy bien! A RaveN le da envidia y se pone a hacer figuritas con globos (que también le salen muy bien, no se me vaya a poner celoso).

Cenamos por fin. Los recitadores de Les Luthiers se ponen a cantar algo que no es de Les Luthiers pero lo parece sobre uno que quiere ser cura. Panda frikis. Encima se ponen a hablar del Día de la Toalla y a hacer chistes de autoestopista galáctico. Huyo de una conversación sobre el estado de la Universidad española...

y aterrizamos en La Caja Negra, un bar demasiado pequeño para bailar y demasiado ruidoso para hacer otra cosa. Digo que me voy y alguien que no nombraré me hace un chantaje emocional digno de una mujer, y además estoy en medio de un abrazo de oso colectivo, así que me quedo. Nos vamos a Alamey, que tiene unos sofas larguíiiiiiiiisimos. Resulta que la chica de piel de princesa también baila la danza del vientre. Uau. La gente se ha ido marchando poco a poco, a goteo. Cuando yo me voy, quedan menos de diez personas, todas diciendo que se irán enseguida.

La próxima, ¿cuándo?

*  *  *  *   

Yesterday I attended the Ninth Zifras y Letras, the name we give to Seville blogguer's meets because they are announced in Zifra's blog. This time there were two meets, day and night, and it was taken for granted that lunch people would go to the dinner. The funny thing about a blogger's meet is that the only thing we had in common, to start with, was enough enthusiasm about one topic to be willing to write about it for free, and exhibitionism. If you get together a lot of intellingent, enthusiastic and exhibitionist people, it's like being at a Hollywod party but without the neurosis of competition for the next big role.  Yesteerday everyone was especially inspired and everyone wanted to be Oscar Wilde. ¿Who gets the prize for the wittiest punchline?

Anyway. Day Meet: I get there late, with Tulio, who knows some people but hasn't been to any previous Z & L. Cervecería Macarena: There we find Zifra, RaveN, marh (not a blogger -yet) and Maruja. Later, Hamlet, Luis Rull and the girl who lets him follow her around. She's prettier than I remembered, and that's a lot. Conversation on knives (the sort that bends on itself and you can carry on yourself) Maruja's is the biggest but mine is so practical. On shooting with a bow & arrows: it turns out that to have to do some exercises to change the natural position of a muscle in your upper arms. Eeek, I'd rather keep doing snake arms, thank you.  Tulio has gone hunting once in his life and the ghost of the partridge he killed still haunts him. Poor little dear.  He takes out the stress on me, calling me phenician because I'm selling jewellery. Maruja leaves and promises she'lll come back in the evening. There's a bit of a row about her lighter, because it's orange...

I show Tulio and RaveN what's a Masmoudi and why it is great (it's a belly dance rhythm) with a practical demonstration. Zifra says we're weirder than any fiction. We go for lunch to the place recommended by RaveN y Marh, but they get lost: we go all the way around a whoe neighborhood, inventing Trekking and Letras. Arcángel and Guille join us. We eat loads and loads of nice food and we start talking about blogs, but not too much. Trolls, Menéame. We review Greatest Hits from the Eighties, when all present were 5 to 15 years old. I try to convince Eva that she should try start bellydancing ASAP. 

A beggar comes and sings to us. When he finishes, he says that he thought it appropriate to sing to the head of the family. ¿guess who he meant?

Everyone's sleepy, it's too hot. We go to a Moroccan-themed tearoom, with those funny water-filled smoking things. More laughs. Nearly everyone leaves; only RaveN, marh, Tulio and me go to Utopía. And so we get to the evening meet. 

When we four Utopians get back to Cervecería Macarena, Marcos, Pablo, servesita and Coquevas were already there. Maybe it was Coque, I'm not sure, joined Tulio and they sang Les Luthiers songs for a while. Later, they had the obligatory Lost conversation. ¿Why fans of other shows talk about the show, but Lost fans talk about when they'll be able to watch new installements? ¡They dangerous addicts!

So many people arrive that I lose count. People dissolve into small groups: the ones who talk weird foreign languages that sound, I think, like Linux; the ones that know each other from outside the blogosphere; the ones that have studied Humanities. I'm fascinated by a blogger's friend: all small childrne have terrors, and of of mine as a little one was allergies. My mother's a doctor and my father's allergic to my favourite fruit, so I used to think about the possibility of somone who was allergic to everything. This girl is, I think, allergic to the touch of all metals, and all animals. She says that the skin reaction to nearly everything is called "princess skin syndrome". Google doesn't know a word about it.  I feel as if I had found out that there actually are monsters under the bed.

We take forever to figure out where we're going to have dinner. Zifra wants me to choose: I'm spending too much time with RaveN and they want me to be like him. RaveN eventually finds us a Mexican. Meanwhile, I inadvertently kick JaMaRiEr, but he forgives me and does some magic tricks for Coque, Maruja and me. ¡He's good! RaveN is envious and makes a few ballon animals. (he is very good at that, I must say, so he doesn't get jealous) 

We eat dinner at last. The Les Luthiers fans are singing similar songs about someone who wants to be a priest, and then they talk about Towel Day. What a bunch of geeks. I run away from a conversation on the state of Spanish Universities...

and we land in the Black Box, a bar too small for dancing and too noisy for anything else. When I say I'm leaving, someone I won't mention gives me emotional blackmail as good as a woman's, and then I'm in the center of a group hug, so I have to stay. We go to the Alamey, which has looooooong sofas. It turns out Princess-Skin girl also bellydances. Yay! 

People have been leaving in twos and threes. When I go, there's less than ten people left, and all are saying they'll leave very soon.  

In a previous Seville bloggers meet, Zifra and Luis taught me The Prisoner's Dilemma. In the most recent one, Zifra made me think again about human relations in challenging ways. 

When a couple hugged I said that the more happy couples are there in the world, the more statistically probable it is that single people will end up in a happy couple themselves. Zifra, who happens to be a Math professor, said I was wrong: the more couples there are, the less chances single people have of ending up in a couple because there are less singles available. Who is right?

Both of us are because we were talking about different things. Zifra referred to available, single people: evidently, in a world with plenty of singles it is easier to find a partner. But I was not talking about simply pairing up: I believed that every happy couple is a small piece of evidence of the existence of love. The more loving couples there are, the likeliest it is that true love exists. Zifra never said a word about love, though...

The autobiographical bit: there is actually a bank in the place where a café used to be. But I have lovely memories attached to the place and I can't translate my sense of loss into a haiku. 

En tu bar favorito
el que yo odiaba
han abierto otro banco.

A new bank has opened
in your favourite bar,
the one I used to hate.

Phew, talk about a sense of loss. Today is the birthday of one of the heroes of my adolescence, Bono, the U2 singer. The thing is, I had a very late adolescence. U2 appeared when I was three years-old. They started to be very good when I was about ten. I would have loved them had someone introduced them to me, but since my musical tastes were dictated by my father and TV, and none of them was a U2 fan, I didn't even knew they existed. What with one thing and another, I survived for 17 years or so without U2. I became obsessed with them in the way only people in their early teens should be allowed to, and somewhere between me overcoming my crush on three of the band members, and Bono losing his voice (some time near his 40th birthday he woke up sounding as if he had a cold and it hasn't improved ever since), and the band losing track of why there were good in the first place, it's not that I don't like them any more, but that I don't like anything they've done in ten years. I do listen to the old songs. 

Probably the most significant thing I can say is that as I take a look to an online discography, I can't find a song, that I really feel like posting here as if it was poetry. Most of them don't work when read, they suffer from the "brilliant-line-lost-in-mediocre-song" syndrome, and all the best lines are overused. As I read I find the lyrics of a song I didn't like very much, back then. Now that I read the lyrics they seem to be spoken by one of those very cruel lovers that get tired of you but don't say so, leaving you waiting for a reassurance or a break-up that never come. Enjoy.  

Haven't seen you in quite a while
I was down the hall, just passing time.
Last time we met it was a low-lit room
We were as close together as a bride and groom.
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time except you.
You were talking about the end of the world.

I took the money, I spiked your drink
You miss too much these days if you stop to think.
You led me on with those innocent eyes
And you know I love the element of surprise.
In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart.
You, you were acting like it was the end of the world.

In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they'd learned to swim
Surrounding me, going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy.
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy.
You, you said you'd wait till the end of the world.

It's not that I'm the biggest expert on New York City; far from it. But yesterday I was shocked (culture-shocked, of course) when I was driving, listening to the radio, and I heard a truly absurd description of New York in a Spanish pop song. The song was good enough in itself, a bittersweet complaint from a man who has left his life in Spain behind in order to go and live in NYC with the woman he loves. The chorus says: 

Iré tan pronto como pueda donde hablen español
estoy viajando, como un tonto que ha llegado a Nueva York
Hay mil tiendas de pistolas, rascacielos de cartón,
y la verdad es que tuve miedo en el avión

I'll go as soon as possible somewhere where people speak in Spanish,
I'm travelling, like a fool in NYC
there are thousands of gun dealers, cardboard skyscrapers,
and the truth is, I was afraid during the flight.

Erm... I didn't see a single gun/weapons shop in my stay in town and I think it's not easy to buy weapons in New York State. Besides, it is obvious to anyone who has spend more than an hour in New York that all you have to do to find people who speak Spanish as a native language is maybe go to the north of Manhattan. It's amazing what people will assume when they apply a stereotype to a whole country.

I haven't written a two-line haiku in ages. Ages. I would really appreciate opinions on this one (I don't know if it's too flat and dry, rather than bleak as I want it to be). It is partly inspired in a love poem by Juliet Wilson.

Jamás pudimos compartir musa.
Ni cama tampoco.

We could never have shared a muse.
Or a bed, either.

I have the feeling that something's connecting a certain Poet and me.

Last night I had to chase a blackbird out of my living-room. The stupid thing wouldn't leave the room: chased towards a door it would perch on top of furniture. This went on for about half an hour, until I could let a piece of cloth fall on it and I left it outside in the garden.

This morning I could hear an extremely loud chirping. Not a song. Eek-eek. It was very obvious that it was a baby blackbird saying it was hungry: that was why last night's bird wouldn't go. She couldn't leave her baby behind. It took a long search to find the wee one hidden behind a pile of books. Two thirds grown, all the adult feathers on the wings but not yet on the body. It was very easy to wrap it on the same cloth and throw it out on the quietest corner in the garden. A very black blackbird (a male, therefore) immediately flew to the center of the garden and sang very fast and very loud. In a matter of seconds, at least three birds had taken the baby with them, helping it into a bush so that it could hide. I didn't know that territorial animals could be so cooperative.

Classical haiku material.

Catorce madres:
Mirlas al rescate
del pollito caído.

Fourteen mothers:
blackbirds come to the rescue
of the fallen chick.

Maruja, this is the poem I told you about yesterday. The one that steals from you the word "ajedrez". It was a question of syllable count, nothing personal (and I know your living room does have books).

Tankas are a type of poem, historically earlier than the haiku, with a syllable count 5-7-5-7-7. I have composed a handful of those.They're easier than haikus but it's necessary to consider very carefully if you really, trully need the two extra lines. 

Madre moderna:
un colegio bilingüe,
ajedrez, tenis.
En el salón sin libros,
colección de bonsais. 

A modern mother:
Bilingual education,
chess, sports and ballet.
In the book-less living-room,
a collection of bonsais.

"Guiri" is local slang for foreigner, especially a tourist. My friends disagree on whether foreigners who aren't Caucasians are guiris. The term is humourous and mildly negative.

The last trend I have seen in guiris: when a family has little girls, they are wearing the traditional dress that us locals only wear on a couple of holidays a year. Definitely not on a normal day out. Besides, the dresses look odd in the children because they are supposed to be very, very tight, but the guiris wear them like you would a normal dress, slightly loose. I still haven't decided if this is all ludicrous or kind of cute.

About two years ago, I attended a sort of conference for poets, with publishers and other interested people. There was a dinner and I had the chance to talk with a few professionals, with amateurs like me, and publishers, and someone quite ruthless said a way of telling apart the bad amateurs from the promising ones. I'm translating as faithfully as I can, and I wish I remembered the person's name: 

Lots of young people write poetry. They are easy to sort out because the mediocre ones stop writing when they get into a steady relationship.

That fits nicely into the usual male-oriented explanations of the creative impulse as something nearly sexual. There is the Sheherezade model: being creative makes you sexy. There is the Sublimation model: you put into creating the energies that you'd put into sex if there was an available partner. There is the Oedipal model: you write because you want to beat your influences (your influences are yourf ather and Art is your mother: apply Oedipus to the triangle.

I haven’t had the opportunity to see if that critic's theory applies to me, for the very simple reason that I have not had a long-term relationship since I started writing "seriously". Even so, I doubt it works on me. Not because I believe I am above mediocrity, but because I think I write faster and better when I have an audience. I think it's very funny (in both the "strange" and in the "amusing" senses) how most of my most creative spells, the ten-poems-a-week fits, have taken place in the bubbling ground at the very earliest stages of relationships. I am curious about whether, if I ever have a steady relationship again, that person (or me getting lazy and comfortable) will kill my Muse. I hope not.

Poesía popular (universal): Quiero acostarme contigo.
Antiguo Testamento: No sé lo que es, pero seguro que está prohibido.
Lírica griega (Anacreonte): Quiero emborracharme antes y después de acostarme contigo.
Lírica griega (Safo): me encanta acostarme con mi marido, pero mis amigas son especiales.
Épica griega: Un hombre (o dios) se acostó con quien no debía, y mira la que armó.
Lírica romana (Catulo): Follar, polla, coño, HHmmmmm!!!!
Épica romana: Nuestros héroes no se acuestan con quien no deben.
Nuevo Testamento: ¡Dejad de prohibir cosas y quereos un poco!
Épica medieval: No quiero acostarme con nadie, estoy demasiado ocupado matando dragones / en la guerra (depende del país).
Lírica medieval: véase poesía popular.
Lírica medieval sacra: No quiero acostarme con nadie, estoy demasiado ocupado enamorado de la Virgen María.
Lírica medieval culta, no sacra: Laura no quiere acostarse conmigo.
Lírica renacentista: Estella sigue sin querer acostarse conmigo.
Shakespeare: Quiero acostarme con muchachitos vestidos de mujer.
Lírica postrenacentista (Inglaterra): Paso de ti, si no te acuestas conmigo ya lo hará otra.
Lírica barroca (España): Después de haberme acostado contigo, haré penitencia.
Neoclasicismo: Todos los anteriores deberíais haber utilizado mejor sintaxis y haber sido educativos, panda de sinvergüenzas.
Romanticismo: mi sufrimiento queda mucho mejor en los poemas que mis ganas de acostarme contigo.
Postromanticismo: Quería acostarme contigo hasta que descubrí las drogas.
Modernismo: ¿Sexo? Quién quiere sexo con lo bonito que es contemplar el nenúfar en el lago?
Vanguardismo, surrealismo: Los edificios grises de la gran ciudad quieren acostarse con los espinosos rosales del parque.
Música pop/ rock: véase poesía popular.
Canción protesta: No nos dejan acostarnos juntos, y me da coraje.

Popular poetry (universal): I want to have sex with you.
Old Testament: I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure it's forbidden.
Greek, lyrical (Anacreon): I want to get drunk before and after having sex with you.
Greek, lyrical (Sappho): I love having sex with my husband, but my girlfriends are special.
Greek, epic: A man (or god) had sex with someone he wasn't supposed to, and see what a mess he made!
Roman, lyrical (Catullus): Fuck, cock, ass, Hhhmmmmm!!!!!!
Roman, epic: Our heroes don't have sex with whoever they're not supposed to.
New Testament: Will you stop forbidding things and love each other for once!
Medieval epic: I don't want to have sex with anybody, I'm too busy killing dragons // at the war (depends on the country).
Medieval, lyrical: see Popular.
Medieval, lyrical, sacred: II don't want to have sex with anybody, I'm too busy loving the Virgin Mary.
Medieval, lyric, not sacred or popular: Laura won't have sex with me.
Renaissance: Estella won't have sex with me either.
Shakespeare: I want to have sex with boys dressed up as women.
Post-renaissance (England): Whatever, if you won't have sex with me, someone else will.
Baroque (Spain): I'll be penitent after you have sex with me.
Neoclassical: All the previous ones should have used better syntax and should have at least tried to be educational. Pack of shameless good-for-nothings.
Romantic: My suffering looks a lot better in a poem than my wish to have sex with you.
Post-romantic: I wanted to have sex with you until I discovered drugs.
Aestheticism: Sex? Who cares about sex when you can gaze at the beautiful lilies?
Modernism, surrealism: The grey buildings of the big city want to have sex with the prickly roses at the park.
Rock music: See Popular.
Protest song: We're not allowed to have sex and it pisses me off.

I have heard Zifra and others talk about "the long tail", meaning "the thousands of blogs very few people read", and of ways to allow very small bloggers find more readers. I'm one of those very small bloggers, on a double basis: there's the oriental dance blog, and there's this one, although the dance one is about three times bigger than this one (in links and in traffic). It's only natural: the only blog about belly dance in the Spanish-speaking world should have more readers than yet another "artistic musings" one, in English. Even so, I still think the subtitle in this blog is still valid. The blogosphere, la blogocosa, does need haikus as much as it needs rants on Bill Gates. This would be a sad and grey place if everyone spoke about the same things. We need as many highly specialised blogs as we can find. And if they're arty, so much the better. 

From now on I'm going to try to link to other blogs more often. Preferably small and arty. Under the "other people's poetry" category, of course, which I have always taken to mean "other people's art". After all, poetry comes from a work that means "to make". 

Yesterday I discovered an artist who, as far as I know, doesn't have a blog, but she should. Lyr uses Flickr as a gallery for her gorgeous photos. Start from the self-portrait gallery, and if you leave a comment, say hello from Nia. 

Mis palabras te tocan,
hablo,
hablamos,
y mis palabras se enredan entre tus dedos.
No sé qué tienes que me hace hablar.
No sé qué haces que me tiene presa.
Es algo rojo y suave,
frágil,
es algo que cambia cuando lo describo
(si hablarte es tocarte,
si mis dedos te tocan, te cuentan un cuento)

My words touch you,
I talk,
we’re talking,
and my words get tangled between your fingers.
I don’t know what you have that makes me talk.
I don’t know what you make that has me enthralled.
It’s something red and soft,
fragile,
it’s something that changes as I describe it.
(if talking to you is touching you,
when my fingers touch you they tell you a story).

This poem should be in the archives but it has vanished for some reason. It's probably the densest collection of allusions I've ever managed. Most of them are too small or obscure to be noticeable.

Today is Geek Pride Day, a bit of a joke that some people are taking very seriously. The celebration is today, I think, because it's the anniversary of the 1977 release of Star Wars. I'm never been much of a Start Wars fan; as a child, I associated it with kids older than me. I mean, I was born that year.

Anyway. Zifra gives us a meme to tell what is the geekiest object we own. Do I count? Am I a geek, a "friki" as we say in Spanish? Friki is sometimes used to mean "fan, fanatic, obsessed", even about things that are not tipically related to geeks. Anyway, I'll pretend I count as a geek in several different counts.

Fantasy Literature: I own a photo of Terry Pratchett holding my ID card because someone took the picture as a surprise for me while I was at work. I also have two books signed by the man himself.

Music: I have Peel Slowly and See by the Velvet Underground, a humungous CD set. And I do listen to it, but I'm careful, so the banana is still attached to the front.

Blogosphere: I own a Limited Edition Gapingshirt. Mine is the "I can't take this shit anymore" one. And I have worn it to work. It was a mistake to throw away the limited edition certificate, but I think mine is number 17 or so.

Literature: A very early edition (1943) of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets; it's identical to the first edition but it doesn't say "First American Edition" on the copyright page.

Random: is a Swiss Army Knife a geeky thing if I carry it on me at all times?

Edited to add: How could I forget my collection of the Cookie Monster stuff? According to Raven, I have the geekiest wallet in the world. It's black and the Cookie Monster is embroidered on it. I also have a cookie monster metal box, two frosted glasses, and a Sesame Street mousepad with the Cookie Monster, Elmo, Ernie and Big Bird on them (el monstruo de las galletas, Elmo, Epi y Caponata). 

I have heard "Art is what makes us human" "humans are the only animals that laugh" and similar proverbs. Today after a long lunch with a lovely friend I ended up thinking that friendship make us human.

In purely animalistic /materialistic terms, there is no need for the existence of friendship. Workmates are necessary: we need to cooperate in order to survive. Families are necessary: we live with other people to make the most of the resources. Love is a glorification of the sex drive. But... friendship? there is no cooperation-in-order-to-survive and no sex involved. So, in animal terms, there isn't much of a point. 

Do animals have friends? I don't think so. For that to be possible, a couple of animals wouldn't need to cooperate in order to obtain food. Gregarious birds, or a pack of wolves, even without blood ties, are not friends but workmates, because the essence of friendship is the fact that it is not necessary. Like Art and laughter....

I adore this song. It's probably because I'm not a big fan of blues as music but I do like it as a poetic form; on the other hand, I love soul music. And thematically, this feels like Blues but, oh, it sounds a lot like soul. In Spain, it has been spolied by overuse in commercials. The whole song rotates around the line "I've had nothing to live for", which I find very difficult to translate literally. 

Sittin' in the mornin' sun
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come
Watching the ships roll in
And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah

'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the 'Frisco bay
'Cause I've had nothing to live for
And look like nothin's gonna come my way

So I'm just gonna sit on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

Look like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same, yes
Sittin' here resting my bones
And this loneliness won't leave me alone
It's two thousand miles I roamed
Just to make this dock my home

Now, I'm just gonna sit at the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Oooo-wee, sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time.

Sentado en el muelle de la bahía.

Sentado por la mañana,
seguiré aquí sentado cuando anochezca.
Viendo entrar a los barcos
y viendo cómo salen otra vez.

Estoy sentado en el muelle de la Bahía,
viendo cómo baja la marea.
Sentado en el muelle de la Bahía
perdiendo el tiempo.

Dejé mi hogar en Georgia
por la Bahía de San Francisco,
porque no tenía nada por lo que vivir
y me parece que a mí no me pasa nunca nada.

Parece que nada cambie
Todo sigue igual
No puedo hacer lo que me digan diez personas diferentes
así que creo que voy a seguir igual, sí.

Sentado aquí descansando
y esta soledad no va a dejarme tranquilo
He viajado tres mil kilómetros
para venirme a vivir a este muelle.

Me voy a quedar en el muelle de la Bahía
a ver bajar la marea
Sentado en el muelle de la Bahía
perdiendo el tiempo.

I get the impression that the proportion of Spanish visits to this blog has been increasing steadily during the last few months. So, I'm going to take back what I said about this blog blending my two languages. From now on, all posts are going to be bilingual unless the nature of a poem or a pun is untranslatable. Making each post bilingual is going to be messy, a LOT more messy than having two mirror blogs, one for each language. But right now, I need it to be messy. As messy as the bilingual contents of my mind. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Tengo la sensación de que la proporción de lectores hispanoparlantes de esta bitácora ha aumentado progresivamente en los últimos meses. Por eso, retiro lo dicho, y voy a dejar de mezclar los dos idiomas añadiendo toquecillos de español a la base inglesa. Desde ahora, todas las entradas van a ser totalmente bilingües, a menos que un poema o un juego de palabras sea intraducible por su propia naturaleza. Crear entradas bilingües va a ser un poco lío para los lectores, desde luego menos estético que tener dos bitácoras-espejo, una en cada idioma. Pero ahora mismo, necesito que sea un poco lioso. Como mínimo tan lioso como mis pensamientos, bilingües, dobles, trenzados sobre sí mismos.

Compuse un haiku para regalárselo a Fanshawe y en vez de ponerlo aquí se lo mandé en una postal, porque él sacó el tema. Ahora que la postal ya le ha llegado puedo poner el haiku aquí sin estropear la sorpresa. Fue el último de un ataque de inspiración en el que salieron casi solos diez haikus en cinco días, más o menos. 

Lo que se pide.
Lo que se desea en silencio.
Lo que se obtiene.

I composed a haiku for Fanshawe and instead of posting it here I sent it to him in real-world mail because his post on postcards inspired me. Now that I'm sure the letter reached him I can post it here. It's the last of a ten-haikus-in-five days frenzy I had earlier this month.

What we ask for.
What we silently desire.
What we're given.