Tras haber creado mi anterior blog cecilmundo varias personas, muchos de ellos mis alumnos, me sugirieron que creara una secciòn dentro de cecilmundo para publicar mis obras de docencia de idiomas. Dado que la cantidad de documentos de explicaciones, ejercicios y exàmenes de inglès son muy numerosos porque tengo màs de 30 años del ejercicio de la docencia, preferì estrenar blog con mis alumnos a como ellos realmente merecen. En este blog planetcecil no solo iràn mis documentos didàcticos de inglès, sino tambièn la producciòn literaria de varios alumnos que se destacan en las letras. Tambièn darè oportunidad a aquellos que tienen excelentes obras pero que no han logrado publicarlas ya que en mi paìs Nicaragua todo se mueve por la marrana polìtica, y si una no pertenece a determinado partido no verà jamàs publicado su opus. Tambièn tenemos la desgracia de contar con seudoeditores quienes al no conocer verdaderamente de literatura se convierten en mercenarios de la imprenta solo para llenarse ellos mismo de dinero y fama a costillas de los escritores. Todos aquellos que deseen participar en este blog, denlo de antemano por suyo. Aunque lleve mi nombre en un arranque de egolatrìa, yo soy sencillamente vuestra servidora.Cecilia

Las alas de la educación

Las alas de la educación
La educación es un viaje sin final.

La lección de física

La lección de física
Casi aprendida

domingo, 13 de julio de 2008

Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies



18th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

Born on July 13th

1396 Philip the Good Duke of Burgundy, how good was he for what that we have to remember him by a sobriquet, apart from patronizing painter Jan Van Eyck and putting Burgundy as a foremost military power-We owe him the capture of French patriot Joan of Arc. Father of 18 bastards and spouse of three ladies, he had 24 documented mistresses, wonder what they saw in him.


Died:
1954Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist of Jewish origin, very close to being the perfect woman. Marxist, paintress, extreme patriot, cook and lover of animals, too bad she couldn`t have children. One of the most valuable disabled of history, the best woman paintress of Latin America.
1793 Jean Paul Marat French revolutionary, medic and agitator, was murdered in his bathtub by the beautiful yet stupid Norman woman Charlotte Corday.
1961 Arnold Schoenberg Austrian composer (Second Quartet), dies at 86 in USA after having fled persecution in Europe.He had a bad fight with Nobel Prize winer Thomas Mann because Mann had modelled his Doktor Faustus on him.

Events

1898 Guglielmo Marconi patents the radio, not knowing what a monster he had created. Marconi was a lousy father, playboy and had Fascist sympathies.
1865 Horace Greeley, journalistic editor, advises his readers to "Go west young man" although he didn`t follow them. Wasn`t that dumb.. 1865 PT Barnum, great entertainment entrepreneur, sees his museum burn down. Later on he was destined to be the owner of the Most Beautiful Elephant of the World, Jumbo.

UN TRUTHS
“What the world doesn`t know, won`t hurt it. It might kill it for not knowing.” Kamala Napurdalah

Splat! Or the Americans would jokingly say, Pop goes the weasel. Surprise and dismay.
And the logical reaction YOU NEVER TOLD ME, to which many times we get the snide remark, usually with a shrug of masculine shoulder, wellllllll-you didn`t ask. Slime is running down my face over the slapped cheek turning red. That is the effect of untruths.
Omission,ladies and gentlemen, is a cardinal sin to be expiated with blood, preferrably from the person who shut his mouth around something we should have known. And I say his because the majority of the authors of flaming untruths are men. Sorry, no sexism involved.
Just plain hard facts, as solid as Gibraltar and as big as the Kremlin.
No wonder it was an extraordinary woman, Indian journalist and novelist Kamala Napurdalah, who would put in easy words the reality about the majority of common men.
I have worked with men for so many years while I have worn a uniform. In addition, I have been married to one for the last 20 years, so if I have the license to have a Ph.D.-aside from the one I have in universal history-it could me given to me for the knowledge I have of the human male`s formidable capacity for producing untruths. You may even think, gentlest heart of my readers, that I am aiming missiles, but if sincerity has always been with you as I strongly suspect, you may duck your head and just chuckle over all the untruths that I have heard, of course, not coming from your own mouth. The real question I ask simply is WHY?
It takes only one truth to make anything clear, and the truth is only one. But you may need 20 more lies to cover the first one., or a full sack of evasives to get yourself out of the momentary fix. I have been accused of being a heartless woman, a rude and brash person who has no tact. But nobody in my 48 years of existence has ever been able to accuse me of bullshitting him or her. Truthful guys do exist, my reader, and I was stupid enough not to value the only two that I had close to me when they were alive: my father and my best friend Oscar. I never got a single lie from them, although many times their bare and naked truth did make me angry or sad, Every time I find I have been told an untruth, my dad comes to my mind, that inevitable, unforgettable green-eyed presence who had the power to tame the beast that lives in me to this day. Dead since October 21st,1989, when he had the crazy idea of going on a TAN-SAHSA flight to Miami with my mother, he is the man who never lied, unlike the reputation that smarmy old George Washington has earned without deserving it. Oscar sometimes was so blunt that he would shake me completely, only to grab my chin, make me look into his pixie face with the nose I broke by accident when we were teenagers, and would growl at me to just look into his eyes so I knew he was uncapable of a session of bullthrowing. I forgave him so many times for the things he said because he often had me see what my eyes refused to admit. I have been missing him since he committed suicide in July 1996.
Some untruths can demolish an ego. My spouse threw one at me that has been eroding our relationship since the beginning. I was only his fianceé, not even his wife yet, when one hot October afternoon, I decided to wear an olive drab tank suit that had been given to me by the boss. It was one of those long-sleeved, full bodied outfits that soldiers wear when they drive a tank, with buttons running down the front,over your chest and belly. May god help you if you have a sudden attack of diarrhea while wearing one of these suits,because getting out of them means you will have no time to do so and you may disgrace yourself and shit inside while you struggle frantically to take it off. Well, I had gotten fat little me into this suit and I felt sexier than Demi Moore, which is to say a lot. I got into my IFA truck and went to visit my boyfriend. As soon as I got out of the truck, I saw an expression I had never seen before on his ruddy face. I paraded before him and he started coughing.
Then he said,”Lovely, my darling,lovely in that suit!” I felt like a goddess. Weeks later we were married and connubial bliss was supposed to begin. Lo and behold came the first quarrel.
When he was at loss for arguments and saw he wasn`t on the winning side, my consort wielded the only weapon he had available, the truth behind his untruth. “And by the way, let me remind you how ugly you looked that day when you wore that awful tanksuit that your boss gave you. You lloked like a muddy elephant with moss growing on top, and glory be that you haven`t worn it again because I would again be utterly ashamed of you.” Silence. Pain, as I had never felt before. This was a dart out of hell, a poisonous scorpion living inside my shirt and ready to prick at me. Muddy elephant. With moss growing on it. That was mean. I retorted that he was the first to compliment me on how I looked, he had done it in front of all the other officers who worked with him.
Or was he just brown-nosing me, because besides his fiancée, I was his direct boss..? What kind of monster was I married to? To assert his point, he added insult to injury.”That can teach you, my lady, not to trust whatever people tell you-So naïve and dumb that you are,”he chuckled. A big dead spot started to grow poison ivy inside me. I picked up a few clothes, said nothing and left him laughing there. When I got to my parents`house with my little overnight bag, I was closely questioned by my mom. She was appalled that I was back with them after barely one week of being married. My dad came in and also cross-questioned me. Was I leaving the guy for good, or was it just a strategy to let him know I was upset. I told him the truth, that I wanted to make my marriage work but there were some things I wasn`t about to tolerate. Then my parents dictated that they refused to make enemies with my recently acquired hubby, and that I should go back to him and not use their house as a haven. My spouse was called upon to fetch me because no decent married Jewess ever deserts the homestead, and after a good lecture on the duties of a wife, my parents watched as I left in a taxi now escorted by my consort. “Once you are married you belong in body and soul and piss to your husband,” goes the old Jewish adage. But this attitude that my parents took set the pace for the tons of untruths I would continue getting over the years, a running glacier of “I forgot” and “you wouldn`t have liked it” or “you could have gotten a bee in your bonnet anyways.” Just like Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter, and his paintress wife Frida Kahlo who died on a day like today after having half her leg amputated. She was a s much of a doctor in untruths as I am now, specially when her grotesque but talented husband ended up having an affair with Cristina-her own sister-and never bothered to notify Frida all the monkey business that was going on.
How many untruths did the creator of radio broadcast to his wives,with a mike or hertzian waves? He was a champion bullshitter, for all his genius and the fact that he was a workaholic. Not to mention that he was a ruthless man who cut the children by his first marriage out of his will, leaving all his fortune to those he had with his last wife, a stuffy and uppity Italian princess named Cristina Bezzi Scali. Always wonder what kind of untruths he fed her with, and how much of a brain the poor lady had under those charming blond tresses.
Untruths have always been the causes of tragedies and betrayals in history. Look at this guy John the Good of Burgundy. Good for what? That he gave prosperity to his duchy, big deal. That is expected from anyone who steps into a ruler` s shoes. Otherwise why bother to rule? He patronized painter Jan Van Eyck, but it wasn `t for free, since he wangled many portraits from the artist. Droit de seigneur, my dear. What is that, patronage or slavery? You give the definition. What we remember this man for is that he was the one to hand in the Maid of Orlèans, Joan of Arc, to the English, who later tried her for witchcraft and cross-dressing and later roasted her at a stake in the marketplace of Rouen without salt and pepper in 1431, when the poor and illiterate religious fanatic was just 19 years old! How many untruths did he feed his three successive wives so he could manufacture 18 bastards sired on several mistresses, of which a handsome number of 24 is recorded? Politicians are always a live walking nest of untruths, baskets of serpents in humanoid shape. That is why we abhor them.
Documents don`t lie, although we are free to place in them whatever we see fit. But at the moment of choice and truth, whatever is on paper better be there in reality or you could end up in jail. Nevertheless, the road to untruths, or omissions or however we want to call them, has been paved by the shroud of complicity that we may bury those infidences in. That is why history, which has been written mostly by guys, is always wearing a veil over her face, and it is up to us to remove it.

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