12 th entry for The Colonel`s Scrapbook
July 6th
July 6th
Oscar
1747 John Paul Jones naval hero ("I have not yet begun to fight") was born in Scotland, creator of the US Navy and Admiral in Empress Catherine the Great`s fleet1796 Nicholas I born in Russia, Tsar (1825-55), stubborn and lousy soldier,only listen to his cat Vashka`s advice
1937 Vladimir Ashkenazy born in Gorkey, Russia, pianist/conductor (Tchakowsky-1961)m one of Chopin`s best interpreters
Died
1189 Henry II King of England (1154-89), dies at 56.He had always regretted remarking in public that someone should rid him of prattling Thomas Bechett 1415 Jan Hus burned for heresy by the Church at Constance, Germany,So punish the Christians in such a merciful way-
1535 Sir Thomas More gets executed in England for treasonm in reality for meddling in his best friend`s marriage brouhahas
1996 Former guerrilla leader Oscar Cortez Marìn, who took Fortín Acosasco in Leòn during the 19790 insurrection, commits suicide, and some of us still grieve
On a day like today
1885 1st inoculation (for rabies) of a human being, by Louis Pasteur,father of microbiology
He promised me that one day I would find my own little drop of napalm to burn through my scepticism, to do away with my disbelief and to put me in a state of grace. But he didn`t say he wouldn`t be here to show me the ropes, to explain many things if the little drop of napalm was lost, missing,or diluted. Oscar Cortez Marìn, better known by his sobriquet of El Chele Marcos(Blondie Marcos), died by his own hand a day like today 12 years ago.He simply did it in the best Hemingway style , putting a bullet through his mouth, although he had not produced any novel yet. He would leave the writing to me, to me who should have been there but wasn`t.
The sweltering night wraps itself around my shoulders as a Jewish shawl made of memories. Right now, just up from an offtime nap, Oscar seeps into my fingers and types for me at the keyboard. He is my ghost guest writer tonight because now I understand how he felt when I didn`t come to his call. There is no worse pain or loneliness than needing someone who refuses to come or answer. Destiny has its way of dealing fair play,and kismet always sends you a bill. I got mine today. I will willingly pay. I wasn`t there when Oscar needed a shoulder to cry on. He had always had mine since we were toddlers, but it took one single night for this Chinese Wall of solidarity and tenderness to fragment itself into a million pieces.
When he put that bullet to his head, he was already one of Nicaragua`s most respected top ranking officers. Still in the army, I have to be truthful although this may mar the image that everyone, including you, could have of him. He was still on drugs. They had been his problem since high school, when he became a wiry, troubled adolescent who loved American football, wrestling and boxing. Why someone as smart and sagacious as Oscar ever got so hooked on drugs is a mystery to many, but things that happen in your childhood can leave your mind warped for the rest of your life. I will never forget when in 1988 I gave him the news that I was finally expecting a baby. His whole face lit up but then he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me gently.”But you promise me that no matter what your kitten does to you, you will never tell him or her that he wasn`t meant to be born, that you regret having the baby?” I looked at him straight into his light eyes and understood why he was telling me this.”I have awaited, desired, planned and built a whole world around this pregnancy, too much to ever make that blunder,”I replied,and he smiled radiantly. ·You shall be the best mother cat in the whole world, a true lioness, I envy the gentleman or lady that you carry now,”he chuckled and hugged me so hard I felt my ribs folding into themselves.
Many people affirm that true friendship, unstained by sex, cannot exist between men and women. Oscar and I proved that wrong. So many years of knowing each other, of sharing secrets, confessions, and participating together in several experiences only tied the bond tighter. I will never forget the afternoon when he coaxed me to try a joint of marihuana. Yes, shocking, right? Madam smoked a joint. Disgusting. Well, he was so insistent that in order to get him off my back I took two draws from the offered joint. That was the worst thing I ever did. Almost immediately my poor stomach started churning and twisting,as when you put salt on top of a slug. I got sick. Revoltingly sick. White death, it is called in the drug addict`s jargon. He was alarmed. I left and when I got home I told my folks the truth. Mom as usual tried to hit first and then ask, but luckily my dad had come early from work and he was there to stave off my mother`s slaps. I just drank some alka seltzer with lemon juice, took a shower, brushed my teeth and slept a very needed nap.
My father told my mother that she should not hit me because I had trusted them with the truth. In fact,I have never tasted marihuana nor any other drug ever since. No need to.I am crazy enough the way I already am.
So many things bound me to this strange guy with curly hair and twisted smile. Even the fact that I almost broke his nose accidentally while playing American football. After the accident, we were both sitting in the school nursery, drenched in his blood, while our parents spoke to the principal. He was overjoyed when the military academy of his choice accepted him, and he was making plans at 100 miles per hour about my joining him the following year when I graduated from high school too. Even though I told him I would prefer going elsewhere, he insisted that the military was also for me. Was he right? Anyways I didn`t follow him to USA but went on my own to France. He got a bee in his bonnet when it finally dawned on him that I had not kept my promise, and he managed to wangle mi phone number from my dad and then called me to let out the most colourful stream of vitriol I have ever heard coming from a human mouth. At that moment I was a worried about my semester exams, but after they were over the sensation of loss came over me. Like having an arm amputated, or losing something you really valued. Whoever says friends are replaceable is giving you a big fat lie. I was never to fill the big gap that Oscar left, until I found him again in Nicaragua during the burial ceremony of Colonel Santos` Lopez supposed remains. No more vitriol, only happy tears.
We literally waltzed across the square. Nothing ever felt like home like being next to him. When we went on mission to Jalapa he was there when I got the bullet into my left knee. He was the one who took off his bandanna to recycle it as a tourniquet. It was him who sat on a bench, his camouflage all stained with my blood, not eating, not drinking even water, not moving until the doctor came out to tell him my leg wasn`t getting amputated. Three hours later that a nurse put me in a wheelchair, he was still there. I sent him home to change and rest.His eyes were swollen from crying. He blamed himself for everything. I just told him he was being very silly. All this was poured into my short story The Lost Bullet, which is an attempt to exorcise his ghost from me. Somehow I can`t stop blaming myself for his demise.
One night I was translating a confidential document for a multinational company. After haggling with the corporate manager who was to pay for the translation, we had settled on a lump sum and he had taken me into his office on the North Highway-the industrial area of Managua where all the factories are. I wasn`t to leave until I finished the whole thing and I would get paid immediately in cash. I was awfully short of money, and there were bills to be paid urgently. I remembered my grandmother saying that once you have a family to feed, friends end up in the backyard. So when Oscar called me saying this time it would be no bathtub full of cold water and his blood running from his wrists like he had done years ago, but that he was going to shoot himself, I told him I couldn`t mess up at my job because I needed the money. That is when he called me names, saying Jews overvalue money and not love, that when I came tomorrow morning he would just be dead and it would be my fault.I retorted that he had been killing himself for 37 years so why not get it over with once and for all. I should have never said that. I wish I could take time back and unsay those words. I slammed the phone and continued translating. When I finished, I got paid and was driven home.
The following morning an avuncular voice was on the phone telling me that Oscar had put a bullet through his head and that I was NOT invited to the funeral because it was my fault.
The world careened, sank under my feet. I didn `t go to the burial. I still don`t know where he was buried. I refuse to know to this day. He lives in my worst nightmares, and sometimes I see him running after me, with his broken head in his hands and the head instead of crying tears emits blood. I have tried writing him short stories,but it is no use. 12 years after his death he is more alive to me than when he was here. I am still his Orpheus, and he the beast I have to soothe. Just the fact that I am here, remembering him after so many years, convinces me that I had in my hands the best treasure a person can have:a friend. Anything after this will pale in comparison perhaps. Did Henry II Plantagenet feel this way after he woke from his nap to find that 4 courtiers had torn to pieces his best friend Thomas beckett? I know he went into penance ,crying, so much remorse filled his goblet of life. He was never the same after Beckett was killed. I have not been the same ever since. Maybe you now know the reason why I cannot attach myself to anything or anyone. I know that whatever made Oscar the perfect comrade doesn`t exist anywhere else in anyone else. We are unique, people, the sooner we realize that the better. I close this with a heavy heart, but with the memory of the smile that could have led me to my own little drop of napalm
1747 John Paul Jones naval hero ("I have not yet begun to fight") was born in Scotland, creator of the US Navy and Admiral in Empress Catherine the Great`s fleet1796 Nicholas I born in Russia, Tsar (1825-55), stubborn and lousy soldier,only listen to his cat Vashka`s advice
1937 Vladimir Ashkenazy born in Gorkey, Russia, pianist/conductor (Tchakowsky-1961)m one of Chopin`s best interpreters
Died
1189 Henry II King of England (1154-89), dies at 56.He had always regretted remarking in public that someone should rid him of prattling Thomas Bechett 1415 Jan Hus burned for heresy by the Church at Constance, Germany,So punish the Christians in such a merciful way-
1535 Sir Thomas More gets executed in England for treasonm in reality for meddling in his best friend`s marriage brouhahas
1996 Former guerrilla leader Oscar Cortez Marìn, who took Fortín Acosasco in Leòn during the 19790 insurrection, commits suicide, and some of us still grieve
On a day like today
1885 1st inoculation (for rabies) of a human being, by Louis Pasteur,father of microbiology
He promised me that one day I would find my own little drop of napalm to burn through my scepticism, to do away with my disbelief and to put me in a state of grace. But he didn`t say he wouldn`t be here to show me the ropes, to explain many things if the little drop of napalm was lost, missing,or diluted. Oscar Cortez Marìn, better known by his sobriquet of El Chele Marcos(Blondie Marcos), died by his own hand a day like today 12 years ago.He simply did it in the best Hemingway style , putting a bullet through his mouth, although he had not produced any novel yet. He would leave the writing to me, to me who should have been there but wasn`t.
The sweltering night wraps itself around my shoulders as a Jewish shawl made of memories. Right now, just up from an offtime nap, Oscar seeps into my fingers and types for me at the keyboard. He is my ghost guest writer tonight because now I understand how he felt when I didn`t come to his call. There is no worse pain or loneliness than needing someone who refuses to come or answer. Destiny has its way of dealing fair play,and kismet always sends you a bill. I got mine today. I will willingly pay. I wasn`t there when Oscar needed a shoulder to cry on. He had always had mine since we were toddlers, but it took one single night for this Chinese Wall of solidarity and tenderness to fragment itself into a million pieces.
When he put that bullet to his head, he was already one of Nicaragua`s most respected top ranking officers. Still in the army, I have to be truthful although this may mar the image that everyone, including you, could have of him. He was still on drugs. They had been his problem since high school, when he became a wiry, troubled adolescent who loved American football, wrestling and boxing. Why someone as smart and sagacious as Oscar ever got so hooked on drugs is a mystery to many, but things that happen in your childhood can leave your mind warped for the rest of your life. I will never forget when in 1988 I gave him the news that I was finally expecting a baby. His whole face lit up but then he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me gently.”But you promise me that no matter what your kitten does to you, you will never tell him or her that he wasn`t meant to be born, that you regret having the baby?” I looked at him straight into his light eyes and understood why he was telling me this.”I have awaited, desired, planned and built a whole world around this pregnancy, too much to ever make that blunder,”I replied,and he smiled radiantly. ·You shall be the best mother cat in the whole world, a true lioness, I envy the gentleman or lady that you carry now,”he chuckled and hugged me so hard I felt my ribs folding into themselves.
Many people affirm that true friendship, unstained by sex, cannot exist between men and women. Oscar and I proved that wrong. So many years of knowing each other, of sharing secrets, confessions, and participating together in several experiences only tied the bond tighter. I will never forget the afternoon when he coaxed me to try a joint of marihuana. Yes, shocking, right? Madam smoked a joint. Disgusting. Well, he was so insistent that in order to get him off my back I took two draws from the offered joint. That was the worst thing I ever did. Almost immediately my poor stomach started churning and twisting,as when you put salt on top of a slug. I got sick. Revoltingly sick. White death, it is called in the drug addict`s jargon. He was alarmed. I left and when I got home I told my folks the truth. Mom as usual tried to hit first and then ask, but luckily my dad had come early from work and he was there to stave off my mother`s slaps. I just drank some alka seltzer with lemon juice, took a shower, brushed my teeth and slept a very needed nap.
My father told my mother that she should not hit me because I had trusted them with the truth. In fact,I have never tasted marihuana nor any other drug ever since. No need to.I am crazy enough the way I already am.
So many things bound me to this strange guy with curly hair and twisted smile. Even the fact that I almost broke his nose accidentally while playing American football. After the accident, we were both sitting in the school nursery, drenched in his blood, while our parents spoke to the principal. He was overjoyed when the military academy of his choice accepted him, and he was making plans at 100 miles per hour about my joining him the following year when I graduated from high school too. Even though I told him I would prefer going elsewhere, he insisted that the military was also for me. Was he right? Anyways I didn`t follow him to USA but went on my own to France. He got a bee in his bonnet when it finally dawned on him that I had not kept my promise, and he managed to wangle mi phone number from my dad and then called me to let out the most colourful stream of vitriol I have ever heard coming from a human mouth. At that moment I was a worried about my semester exams, but after they were over the sensation of loss came over me. Like having an arm amputated, or losing something you really valued. Whoever says friends are replaceable is giving you a big fat lie. I was never to fill the big gap that Oscar left, until I found him again in Nicaragua during the burial ceremony of Colonel Santos` Lopez supposed remains. No more vitriol, only happy tears.
We literally waltzed across the square. Nothing ever felt like home like being next to him. When we went on mission to Jalapa he was there when I got the bullet into my left knee. He was the one who took off his bandanna to recycle it as a tourniquet. It was him who sat on a bench, his camouflage all stained with my blood, not eating, not drinking even water, not moving until the doctor came out to tell him my leg wasn`t getting amputated. Three hours later that a nurse put me in a wheelchair, he was still there. I sent him home to change and rest.His eyes were swollen from crying. He blamed himself for everything. I just told him he was being very silly. All this was poured into my short story The Lost Bullet, which is an attempt to exorcise his ghost from me. Somehow I can`t stop blaming myself for his demise.
One night I was translating a confidential document for a multinational company. After haggling with the corporate manager who was to pay for the translation, we had settled on a lump sum and he had taken me into his office on the North Highway-the industrial area of Managua where all the factories are. I wasn`t to leave until I finished the whole thing and I would get paid immediately in cash. I was awfully short of money, and there were bills to be paid urgently. I remembered my grandmother saying that once you have a family to feed, friends end up in the backyard. So when Oscar called me saying this time it would be no bathtub full of cold water and his blood running from his wrists like he had done years ago, but that he was going to shoot himself, I told him I couldn`t mess up at my job because I needed the money. That is when he called me names, saying Jews overvalue money and not love, that when I came tomorrow morning he would just be dead and it would be my fault.I retorted that he had been killing himself for 37 years so why not get it over with once and for all. I should have never said that. I wish I could take time back and unsay those words. I slammed the phone and continued translating. When I finished, I got paid and was driven home.
The following morning an avuncular voice was on the phone telling me that Oscar had put a bullet through his head and that I was NOT invited to the funeral because it was my fault.
The world careened, sank under my feet. I didn `t go to the burial. I still don`t know where he was buried. I refuse to know to this day. He lives in my worst nightmares, and sometimes I see him running after me, with his broken head in his hands and the head instead of crying tears emits blood. I have tried writing him short stories,but it is no use. 12 years after his death he is more alive to me than when he was here. I am still his Orpheus, and he the beast I have to soothe. Just the fact that I am here, remembering him after so many years, convinces me that I had in my hands the best treasure a person can have:a friend. Anything after this will pale in comparison perhaps. Did Henry II Plantagenet feel this way after he woke from his nap to find that 4 courtiers had torn to pieces his best friend Thomas beckett? I know he went into penance ,crying, so much remorse filled his goblet of life. He was never the same after Beckett was killed. I have not been the same ever since. Maybe you now know the reason why I cannot attach myself to anything or anyone. I know that whatever made Oscar the perfect comrade doesn`t exist anywhere else in anyone else. We are unique, people, the sooner we realize that the better. I close this with a heavy heart, but with the memory of the smile that could have led me to my own little drop of napalm
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