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

viernes, 31 de octubre de 2008

Reality versus tale


October 29,th 67th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
births
1875 Marie queen consort of Ferdinand I of Romania (1914-27),what a raunchy lady she was with her Stirbo1882 Jean Giraudoux Bellac France, playwright (glantine, Provinciales) wonderful reads1884 Bela Lugosi horror actor (Dracula, Body Snatcher), looks like a friend >I had in Canada before the chap ate breakfast
1912 Salvador Cardenal, foremost Nicaraguan musicologist,my adored teacher
Deaths which occurred on October 29:
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh is executed in London, so being gallant never pays your way except to hell 1885 George B McClellan Union army general, dies at 58, a great military name 1901 Leon Czolcosz assassin of President McKinley, is executed on the electric chair,sure got fried while Edison watched 1911 Joseph Pulitzer American newspaperman, dies in Charleston, SC, he was the one to whom we owe the platform for the Statue of Liberty,monument which was initially disliked by the Americans and even called “The French Whore” when they got it as a gift from France
Birthdates October 30:
1735 John Adams Braintree, Mass (F) 2nd pres (1797-1801)was so patriotic,he even died on a 4th of July 1821 Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski Russian novelist & short-story writer, the advocate for the poor and miserable,epileptic,lieutenant and almost executed
1871 Paul Valery France, poet/essayist/critic (La Jeune)he is more famous for having Picasso steal off his wife Gala than for anything he wrote 1873 Francisco Madero Mexico, revolutionary, president (1911-13), knocked on wood for him1885 Ezra Pound Hailey, Idaho, poet (Cantos)a bit too bigoted for my taste
Events
1270 8th & last crusade is launched, last of follies in the name of a god nobody is 600 per went sure it exists
Birthdates on October 31:
1632 Jan Vermeer ,Dutch painter (Procuress, The Astronomer,Girl with the Pearl Earring) , poor guy,his marital life was a mess justover a lost pearl earring that reappeared on a painting1795 John Keats London, England, romantic poet (Ode to a Grecian Urn),he was only 25 when he kicked the bucket,TB took him
1887 Chiang Kai-shek Chekiang Province, China, pres of Nationalist China),this ugly and selfish guy had the temerity to offer General MacArthur unlimited power if both,after the Korean War,went to kick the shit out of Mao Tse Tung, no wonder old Comrade Mao would laugh at him until piss ran down his pants and his stomach hurt!
Deaths which occurred on October 31:1865 William Parson 3rd Earl of Rosse & maker of large telescopes, dies ,what would he have seen these days, Internet Sattelites?1918 Count Stephen Tisza Hungarian Prime Minister assassinated by soldiers, wow they always turn on you1926 Erich Weiss better known as magician Harry Houdini, dies in Detroit, only death could have caught him
1984 Indira Gandhi PM of India assassinated by 2 of her Sikh bodyguards while getting out of the car, and she nearly killed me because I cried a whole San Juan River over her and got very sick


THE REALITIES BEYOND HALLOWEEN

While all thos countries where there was Irish influence celebrate their Halloween, like USA, Canada,Australia and others, I wonder to myself if reality isn`t a perpetual spook show. Here in Nicaragua,we have always been considered a backyard for gringos,as we affectionately or pejoratively call Americans here. So our desperate merchants,eager to please and sell, decorate their windows with pumpkins, black cats,spiders,witches, jackò`lanterns and all the witchy memorabilia they can dish out. It is not our custom. No thanks. Halloween is Celtic,not even American, because USA a the melting pot it is, has no culture of their own but is a ragbag of all the inmigrants who came to seek for the American dream and got themselves a long-term nightmare. Halloween comes from the Druids,the original Irish before Saint Patrick had the hell of an idea of making them convert to Christianity. Hall of weens is the eve of dead souls,and witches were used as live telephones to bring down those spirits to chat with them for a while. More or less what we do in internet,only we do it with live people, right dearest of all readers? So the witches had a busy night on a night like tonight, god loaded with requests and coins. Good business. Like when I have several placement tests to make at different enterprises when bosses want to know if who they hired really has an inkling of what to do in English.
I don`t like Halloween,although I have used it as materials for my short stories. My dad used to say that as a kid I looked klike a jackò`lantern,big rabbit teeth and shining eyes, round faced little hellion. I have the ahuizotes or black spooks from Masaya, shadow black ghosts who come to grab you when dead points at you. Like in Ghost with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze when he was still delicious. They have glowing embers for eyes, they are like psychopomps to guide you to hell. Sounds romantic,for I wouldn`t like to go to hell alone and without my shadow. I have my high heeled floozie, a Spanish party girl in times of the province, not the republic, of Nicaragua. She wore high heels and danced a lot until the angry wife of her lover stabbed her in the belly,spilling her guts out in the middle of the dance floor. I also have the Witch Monkey Teodora, from Leòn-our second largest city in Nicaragua. Teodora was originally a very sexy married lady who loved to play around because her husband was boring,so every night she would wait until he slept, put a broom next to him to take her place, sing a demonic chant,go to the back yard,strip under a tamarind tree, then moan to herself so her human flesh slipped off her bones and then she became a black monkey.free to roam and pick up guys. One day,her husband didn’t quite take the spell well enough,and he woke at midnight seeking for his wife.He found a huge pan of meat lying in the yard,and believing it was the meat for a succulent dish to be prepared,he salted it and thus broke his wife`s pact with the devil.When Theo came back from her fun,she stepped into the pile of salted meat and reversed her incantation but the salt had broken the spell and she was left in the shape of a nice monkey which up till now roams the roofs of Leòn.Her husbnd was a bit sad at the beginning,but then he found himself another wife,a faithful one this time. I don`t need jackò`lanterns, lovely, I have the Wailer, who according to legend was a well born Spanish girl who fell in love with a married indigenous chieftain.After they had their fun,she became pregnant but her dad ordered her to get rid of the baby as not to shame the family`s good name(which obviously lay between her legs). The poor girl went to the Chiquito River and threw her baby there to drown, but then she regretted tat and jumped into the water.It was too late,the baby was downstream and she died too.Her wails for her baby are still heard on moonlit nights,the old Leonese townsfolk say. Who needs a sad bat when I have the Nahua cart,with squared wheels and death riding shotgun,driving ghost oxen, and all kinds of spooks laughing?This cart cannot turn at corners,and continues it lugubrious,straight and macabre trip down the city at midnight.
I will never cry for trick or treat. I have the long haired spook,our Cegua, a sexy woman who has long hair,dresses in black and chases men who are out philandering, having sex with them and then returning them to their wives completely stupid. More than they were originally,which is to say a lot. What about my lovely pair of hoofies,the black and the white?Since here we are as racists as in the Deep South of USA, the white hoofy protects those who work on the night shift,the secutrity guards,workers of the exploited free zone where those Koreans and Taiwanese come to bleed our workers dry without having to pay taxes. The hoofy looks like the Taco Bell dog(the one Adam Sandler ran over,what a sadistic sob), a Chihuahua like my dad`s Le Perro who died leving him with a bleedingheart for weeks on end. The white one is good. The black one chases all those who go to partouzes,orgies and burglaring sprees.
Halloween and fright.Reality more often creates worse stories than any a horror writer like E.A,Poe,Lovecraft,Iran Levin or even Stephen King,and not leaving myself behind,can create. It was on Halloween that my favourite stateswoman was killed,Indira Gandhi. I was capturing a pirate signal of CNN in 1984 when thwere appeared the news.First that she was shot. Then that she had died. Automatically, a pain on my chest settled in. My eyes started raining. Yes,dearest.raining. WEhere does the love go when someone you cherish dies? Because I loved her. I met her at a sales in a huge department store in Paris in the early 80s..I was with my uncle Silvio buying jeans,when he spotted her.A nice housewife with covered hair,perusing some silk stockings. Silvio shyly walked up to her,and after she told him he was one of the handsomest men she had ever met, she asked me to come forward.She at first thought I was Indian,too. Those 16 minutes in which I spoke to her, enjoying how she mentioned by adored bards Ruben Darìo and salomòn de la Selva,even reciting Selva`s The Bullet, are to live forever in me. Love at first sight,maybe not in sexual context, does exist and it happened to me with Indira. What a nightmare for me to imagine her dismay at seeing her bodyguard fire at her. My imagination has been a blessing many times,but in the case of Indira`s magnicide,it played awful tricks on me, almost leading me to hell fire. No wonder I caught the worst malaria possible,and ended up weighing 98 pounds by the end of November. That was spookiest and more scary than any Halloween nightmare anyone could imagine. Still to this day,I remember Indira and how she was killed. I hated the sight of George Bush sr,then vicepresident of USA,hypocritically saying how he regretted her passing. To close this with a note of fright, a huge black moth loomed over me and sent me screaming.Then we say fear is basic but not stifling, amd specially on a Halloween night.

domingo, 26 de octubre de 2008

just ask




Entry ·66 for the Colonel`s Scrapbook

Born on October 25th

1825 Johann Strauss (the younger) composer (Waltz King), to whom the great Johannes Brahms wrote on a piece of music paper containing The Blue Danude, “unfortunately not by me”1838 Georges Bizet France, composer (Carmen), too bad he died opf chagrin after one of his masterpieces was severely criticized
1881 Pablo Picasso Spain, artist (3 Dancers, Guernica)greatest sexist of all, a ladykiller, egotistical, hard hearted manipulator, he may be the father of Cubism but he was a loathsome satyr
1967 Julia Roberts Smyma, Georgia, actress (Mystic Pizza, Pretty Woman)she is a great actress

Deaths which occurred on October 25:
1400 Geofrey Chaucer author, dies in London, what a real genius he was1892 Caroline Harrison Pres Benjamin Harrison's wife, dies at 60
1973 Abebe Bikila Ethiopian marathoner (Olympic -gold 1960, 64), dies at 46,he ran his marathon in the Tokyo Olympics only weeks after having an appendectomy

1415 Battle of Agincourt, Welsh longbow defeats the armored knight,this was during the Hundred Year War between England and France
1760 George III ascends the British throne, nicknamed Farmer George for his plans for the peasants,soon he went cuckoo, pissed in his nightshirt and ran screaming through Whitehall so he got crazy enough to lose the colonies in America
1764 John Adams marries Abigail Smith (marriage lasts 54 years) how could they put up with each other so long?

Birthdates which occurred on October 26:
1466 Desiderius Erasmus Holland, scholar/author (In Praise of Folly)a real egghead if there has been any 1685 Domenico Scarlatti Naples Italy, composer/harpsichordist ,part of the father and son team who made a delight of harpsichord music1759 Georges Danton France, leader during the French Revoluton who at the end didn`t like the monster he created and gave up hios head to the guillotine
1879 Leon Trotsky Russian revolutionary ,creator of the Red Army,too bad he died with an icepick into his brilliant brain
1917 Felix the Cat cartoon character, oh do we need laughter to heal our scratches the cat of life makes on us
1919 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Aryamehr Shah of Iran (1941-79), the Ayatollah`s least favourite guy
Deaths which occurred on October 26:
901 King Alfred the Great, dies, and we ask how great he really was?
On this day...
1825 Erie Canal between Hudson River & Lake Erie opened ,it was about time1863 Worldwide Red Cross organized in Geneva, did Dunant ever imagine how many people would use his dream to make money on their own for less noble purposes?
1916 Margaret Sanger arrested for obscenity (advocating birth control), this is the mother of the future Pill along with Dr.Gregory Pincus,thank you milady, a thousand thanks for liberating women from our sexual slavery.


THE MUSES

In ancient Greece, each type of art had its muse, flimsily dressed pretty chicks to inspire the poets and painters and musicians, Terpsichore for dance, Euterpe for music, Thalia for theatre, Clìo for history. All of us have muses, though we may not confess anything about their existence. Some of us had mechanized our writing to such a degree that we could fire all muses if we had a mind to do it, but to tell you the truth,discipline may get you to work, but only a spurt of magic milk from the Muses`teat can produce those seamless,wonderful sheets like Mozart`s symphonies or Dvorak`s Slavonic Dances. Whoever tells you than eating an egg like those white ones produced for supermarkets is the same as eating a real one made by the rooster on top of the hen is giving you a lot of codswallop. Muses are necessary,you should know better than to question about it.
Ok, but recently I have had so many questions about muses. Particularly about the ones used in my corel paint based collages. Who are they? Have I ever been in love with any of them, or had a fling? Is there any specific reason why they are there?
I know you want to ask questions, dearest reader, and you have the full right to do so. But somehow, you never do, you make no use of that right. Th question mark peeps over the rim of your glasses, riding low on the broken bridge of your nose that I have come to cherish so much. I will try to explain how things happen when I am going to create any of those collages.
Mostof them are created to illustrate my own short stories, because nobody like me, the author,can know what I mean through them. The picture must give a basic idea of the plot,setting or timeof my short story. Since many of them have a strong historical background, many times I have to draw out pictures or llustrations about the historical personalities in the grain of the story. For example, getting pictures of the Russian composer Modeste Mussorgsky was an ordeal,for there are few in existence.It seems the chap didn`t like to be photographed when he was weaving home, droving a herd of imaginary pigs due to his inebriation with good vodka. Nevertheless, I have always been in love with his music and his potential, and I wanted to write something soppy, so both The Letter from The Russian Heart and its illustration are hopelessly sugary,as befits to be created by a diabetic like me. Sometimes my own student`s pictures have been useful for me, and when I have needed real live models that I can pinch into posing,it has been a good experience. Jorge Luis Padilla`s halo on unruly hair decorated Encephalia, my gothic story about Ruben Darìo+`s brain being put into a kidnapped baby. My star student Yaderisrael became the nefarious and sadistic Serbian colonel in The Violoncello of Serbia, and the file pictures I have of Josip Broz Tito had the chance to leave the moldened bunker in which I had stored them.
To tell you the truth,many times I seek for ugly male models so they won`t upstage me in case I am combining my self with them on the collage. I used a spoiled brat named Paul from my profile in Hi5 and although in real life he could never pose in a Calvin Klein jeans for ads to make Bill Clinton jump out of his shoes, his ugliness was perfect for the creation I needed to push out of my brain. But even ugly men can turn fiendishly arrogant when used as models.Maybe it is too much attention for them. It can happen.I wll never forget the elegant and sexy Russian countess I met in France, who was my college classmates and once proposed to Ehab,a very ugly and skinny Moroccan, to come up and see her sometime,like Mae West used to croon so sexily. The Arab was so excited because he believed the countess was making a pass at him,so he arrived in Passy so perfumed that the Countess`dogs fainted and didn`t bite him. Once in the bedroom where she put him, he quickly obeyed when she asked him to strip naked for her. He believed he was going to have a wild porn show protagonized by himself and the countess, and his equipment was running rampant and randy when in burst the countess`three young kids. She told them,”Look at this poor man, if you don`t eat your meals soon you will look like him!” The three blond children just laughed and ran screaming, Ehab`s equipment just drooped and the countess gave him 500 dollars for posing. Then she called a taxi to get him out of her mansion. Model for one day,gigolo for nothing. Well, I don`t ask men to pose nude for me, of course, and some of the pictures in my gallery contain guys with whom I have barely crossed a word with, people with whom I would never build a life together, faces and torsos only valuable for their integration into the whole picture. Recently I used a very pale, fortysh white workingman for two pictures .I had met him on the internet and I knew from the first day I saw him he would become a model, because that was what I was looking for. I simply needed that type of fellow for the collage,and I sure got what I wished.Un -luckily I don`t have the time to chat with him assiduously,as he would wish,specially if I were willing to catwalk for him on webcam.
People tend to believe that anything a designer or author publishes must have a love affair or at least a one-night stand lurking in the background. I am very sorry to disappoint those sex.obsessed people who want to imagine me getting laid at the drop of a hat. Being a muse or model is no sure fire guarantee that I will be whisked away of¡n a white horse.
Now.some pictures have been worked by me in order to express those feelings I never let out in public. You know which ones they are,dearest reader. They were created in moment when I had no other choice but to work them out if I really wanted to be honest and sincere, private words said in public, like poet T.S Eliot once said in a poem to his wife. The pictures having such a muse will always elicit that phrase by Jean Alexander of Normandie about future generations asking the details of why and when and for whom his poems were written. He had his Henri. I have you. Are your questions answered? You never spoke them out loud,but I read them in your eyes.

viernes, 24 de octubre de 2008

The United Natterers


65th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates for October 23:
1752 Nicolas Appert inventor (food canning, bouillon tablet) he eased things for us cooks1868 Rama V [Chulalongkorn], leader of Thailand (-1910),fredd the slaves and was an enlightened ruler, star pupil of Anna Leon Owens(The King and I)
1940 Edison do Nacimiento Arantes,Pelè ‚ Brazil, soccer player extraordinaire (NY Cosmos),the Black peral, Xuxa`s boyfriend
Events:

1679 Meal Tub Plot against James II of England, In England, nonexistent conspiracy to prevent the accession of the Duke of York, the future James II, invented by Thomas Dangerfield in 1679 during the attempts to pass the Exclusion Bills. Dangerfield was initially believed in the atmosphere of panic arising from the Popish Plot, but he was soon discredited and then claimed the plot was a false trail laid by Catholics to conceal a real conspiracy. The name came from the meal tub under which Dangerfield claimed to have found evidence of the plot, what a bit of codswallop!


1890 The opera "Prince Igor" by Aleksander Borodin is produced (St Petersburg), now the dances that come in it are very popular and Julio Iglesias even plagiarized one of them for his cheap croons
1942 During WW II, Britain launches major offensive at El Alamein, Egypt,this would make Bernard Law Montgomery, Monty, a military superstar after he beat Erwin Rommel
1958 Soviet novelist Boris Pasternak, wins Nobel Prize for Literature, but he wasn’t allowed to go and walk like a peacock for his award,poor chap

Birthdates which occurred on October 24:
1632 Antony van Leeuwenhoek Dutch, naturalist (Philosophical Transactions),what would he have seen under his microscope nowadays?, 1788 Sarah Josepha Hale author (Mary Had a Little Lamb) ,couldn`t she produce anything better?
1890 Chicago Mainbocher uniform designer (Red Cross, Girl Scouts, Waves),supposedly sooooooooo chic
Deaths which occurred on October 24:
1537 Jane Seymour 3rd wife of Henry VIII, dies after giving birth to her husband`s only legitimate male, but she never washed her off her birth blood and thus she rotted to death, sorry folks,crude details
1601 Tycho Brahe astronomer, dies in Prague at age 54 after being royally protected in the full sense of the word1957 Christian Dior French designer, dies at 52 in Italy, not very original but tres chic
1939 Nylon stockings go on sale for 1st time (Wilmington Delaware) ,another torture instrument for women,yuck1940 40 hour work week goes into effect (Fair Labor Standards of 1938)and curiously the one who promoted it was the fascist, anti-Semitic and hypocritical Henry Ford
1940 Japan eliminates US terms (strike, play ball) from baseball, great, I applaud, why barbarize such a nice language as Japanese.We in Nicaragua who have the honor of speaking Spanish-the most perfect language on earth. should do the same
1945 United Nations Charter becomes effective…what for? Only to consume lots of money and for the officials to believe they are kissing cousins of god?
1970 Salvador Allende Gossens elected president of Chile, little did he know what he would have to do three years later in La Moneda

THE SUPREME STUPIDITY OF DIPLOMACY

If I would have been an ambassadress, I would have gotten my country into uncountable wars. I always put my foot in my mouth., and say what is not expected for the occasion. So that is why what I will write about today will probably leave everything messed up and everyone gaping at me in horror or disgust. I believe the United Nations should be shut down. Better still, it should have never been created. Lapidary words, right? Let`s take it from the beginning, dearest of readers. For me diplomacy is just another way of dressing hypocrisy and trying to turn her into a lady. But how can I forgot my adored Korean student, Jung Yon An, who told me that in Korea, a lady who often proclaims to be a lady, is probably no lady at all? The Organization of the United Nations was tailored with the sad abortion of another organization, Like Woodrow Wilson `s pet project of the League of Nations, it was a stillborn baby. And there is only one sane thing to do with a corpse :bury it.
Ok, so World War I ended with the Treaty of Bersailless(the second one to be called so,because the first one was when the USA became independent,I don’t know why Americans love treaties called Versailles, maybe they want to be artificially elegant) and November 11th,the day the armistice was signed in 1918,became Veterans`Day. While in Paris, old Woodrow Woodpecker Wilson refused to heed what a patriot called Nguyen THrat Tat (Ho Chi Mihn) told him about self determination for people of Viet Nam, but since these people weren`t whites who cared about independence or if the Frenchies mistreated them? That was their lot for being slanted-eyed! Ok so the League of Nations was a dream,a nightmare in the wool, and out of that botched abortion in 1945 would spring the UN. Supposedly it was fashioned to stop all war conflicts before they were even thought up of. Wow,so preventive and wonderful.With godlike powers to stop everything,like Superman wearing his underwear on top of his tights. But Superman doesn’t fit into everybody`s imagination, nor does the UN as a peacemaker. Not even a cardiac patient`s pacemaker,because the world`s heart is already dead.
I remember while I was in elementary and even high school-and I went to an expensive private school -where you were brainwashed into thinking that the American Dream was not a nightmare, to think in English to oppress your people, and to eat apple pie-that UN Day was sacred, everyone had to genuflect and thank the White God for this blessing of an organization. The middle American loves pageants even though they are a festival of silliness, and we had to spend large sums of money getting silken costumes to act like the different pieces of this waste of time and money called the UN. Whoever didn`t participate in this dumb play was getting a flunking grade.
So many years of brainwashing didn`t convince me of the necessity of having the UN alive and well and living off people`s wallets in New York. When I was studying language translation in my college years,everyone would coo,”Oh sweetiepie, get a job in the UN as translatress and you will have achieved your dream.”Whoever said that was my dream? My nightmare probably. So when the Nicaraguan chancellor,Nora Astorga, a wonderful woman who has been the only worthy chancellor we have had in all our history after Maximo Jerez, proposed to me to go with her to the UN when she was sent as an ambassadress there, I declined. I wouldn`t hav been able to be in my best behaviour,saying sweet nothings,dancing cool adjectives,twisting my tongue to speak ribboned silliness and gibberish. It took a while for Nora to understand that it wasn`t anything against her,because she knew I worshipped her. She was over there when she discovered a lump in her breast. Soon she died of breast cancer,and I would dare to say that her job over there was the culprit for her untimely death. Being in the inner sacred sanctum of hypocrisy and uselessness is enough to neuter ovaries, peel off dicks and rot anyone.
Have the elegant blazered people of the United Nations really stopped any war? Have they fed all the hungry people? Have they prevented The Scream from getting stolen?
Did they stop the massacres at Kosovo and Afghanistan? Can they eliminate the carnage in Iraq? Thousands of dollars are spent every year to pay checks to these people who are so conceited they think they are the working testicle on god`s apparatus. With all those dollars, how many sacks of food and how many shelters could be bought? In 1945 on a day like today their charter was born. In the fifities we saw Ho Chi Mihn giving birth amid streams of innocent blood to what is today the thousand times glorious nation of Viet Nam. At the end of June 1950, 5 short years after the UN was delivered, the Korean war-never a forgotten war,sorry- exploded and forever split the Korean family in half, leaving so many people dead. Of course, it would be a while before the UN would look elsewhere while terrorism of state like the one practiced by Truman when he dropped the two fatsos on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 would happen. But it did happen again! Maybe not two big bombs, but the constant raiding and killing of the Persian Gulf War, or the bloody “cleanup” in Afghanistan after September 9-11 and afterwards the tragedy of Iraq. What did the Un do to stop the Vietnam War? What were they doing to each other while there was the Soccer War between Honduras and El Salvador in the 60s..?And all the conflicts in Africa? Lebanon? Kosovo? Come on people, sending a guy with a red hat(looking like a match and not like a vial of holy water) is not going to solve anything. Man will continue having wars and skirmishes and ambush as long as he shall live, so why waste money on people who believe themselves untouchable and above the rest of us humans?
One of the bosses I had, to be sure the best, had his wife working in the local UN building here in Managua. Stout,ugly,overbearing and very haughty,this bitch on wheels would terrorize all the workers under her husband`s orders with her airs of nobility in power, and ever since the officials of the UN all have the same stone face as Mrs,Nadine had. She had properly been hired for what she was, a mediocrity who pretended to be useful. Projects,projects and projects.Carried out they don`t work.
It is all done so pompously that nothing truthfully gets achieved. But all those who are involved in this sorry institution continue to be parasites, well –paid,aloof, almighty in their own idiocy, but there.And that money somehow comes out of our own pocket,from us,the “lesser beings” who have to be civilized,whitened and taught how to obey. This comment may sound so bitter to you,but the reality is exactly as it is,and it won`t get any better.
UN Day.No, I don`t celebrate this whitened day. Sorry,as I could never celebrate Columbus Day because I rue the day that stupid syphilis-infected and lice- ridden adventurer ever came to rip us off and kill our own civilization in order to impose the dogma of hypocrisy,which is what international diplomacy under the blue flag of the United Nations really is.

miércoles, 22 de octubre de 2008

the roses from the thorns




Entry 64 to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates for October 22:
1811 Franz Liszt Raiding, Hungary, romantic composer/virtuoso pianist , pioneer of the music idol figure and one of the most womanizing males of all history1845 Sarah Bernhardt France, Jewish diva and actress (Camille, Queen Elizabeth)
1919 Doris Lessing novelist (Golden Notebook), who worries so much over her cat
1943 Catherine Deneuve [Dorleac], Paris, actress (Repulsion, Hunger), a masterpiece made in Francem no wonder Marcello Mastroianni went nuts over her
events
1746 Princeton University (NJ) received its charter, so many centuries after the Sorbonne and Alcalà de Henares….
1962 JFK imposes naval blockade on Cuba, beginning missile crisis, so after he breakfasted with his own overbearing, he had to take Jackie with him to sheepishly lunch with shame with Fidel

NIGHTMARES

I couldn`t live without them,honestly. IN the real sense of the words I say, because many of them become short stories,and when published,they become money. Anyone would say it must be Chinese torture to have a two-session movie flick dripping blood while you are supposedly enjoying your sleep. Does my bed flood with so much blood from my nightmares? I always remember a quotation by D.H.Lawrence about a bird dying frosted but never feeling sorry for itself.Imaginary blood on real sheets? Come on,sounds so pathetic.It isn`t. I always remind myself of a quotation by English writer DH Lawrence in which he mentions that a wild bird gets frozen but never felt sorry for himself. The same thing has happened to me through so many accidents,fractures, losses and war traumas. How do I take this in stride?How could anything like this happen to anyone?
Things turn to be very simple in life,it is just a question of analyzing things clearly. From the moment I stepped into a military boot and off I went to Teotecacinte in 1983,on first mission,I was heading for trouble.I wan`t stopped by my father,who was a World War II veteran,with so many medlas that on November 11th,Veteran`s Day, he had so many medals on his chest that he looked like a walking Christmas Tree all decked out. Was he to stop me?Well, he certainly didn`t push me into a battlefield, but he did nothing to stop me and he kept the mother lioness of my mom at bay while this curious little cub went chaing bats instead of pinky butterflies. It was probably his fault,also.He never read Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood to me at night, in fact he said all those fairy tales were the disgrace of many young lady who dreamt later of Blue Princes in a world where even counts like him had to work to bring home the bacon. His bedtime stories were culled from his own vivid and agitated past, and he spoke freely and without bitterness about how he had been captured 3 days after he landed on D Day in his native Normandie while taking what he called a galactic shit in the middle of a trench. He would make me go to sleep by announcing that next on the real not fi channel of Bernard`s tricky mind,there was an even more surprising chapter lurking ahead. So as you see, I am not trying to blame anyone,truth is truth and that is it.
A bullet in 1984, while climbing onto a chopper after I had slung over my shoulder a fainted French cameraman who reeked like rotten onions and cheese, woke me up from the dream that it would never happen to me. I wasn`t superwoman in red cape, nor Wonder woman with her bullet proof bracelets and starred bloomer,so in love with her colonel Trejos, not even Fantomas the Elegant Threat with his cpe showing only mysterious slanted,Slavic eyes. How could anyone in his right mind want to shoot pretty little fat me? Ocelots and lynxes were already on the endangered list of species,and I looked like one. Even to the detail of the camouflage. But there I was, blood pulsating out my knee, the the flow staunched by a tourniquet made from a bandanna. There started the rosary of pearls praying for more pain. But I still didn`t jump when someone approached me from behind.
It wasn`t until after I broke my spine at La Penca,and carried next to me the corpse of the strangest yet gentlest young man in the world,Rubendarìo, who was only a few days away from concluding his military service,that the blood,instead of oozing out my skin,started to drip inwards. Not even my own pain with my broken spine made me weep like the death of green-eyed Rubendario. I felt destiny had played a bad joke on me. But still,I continued. Seeing dismembered bodies on the battlefield worsened the drip of blood drops from my heart that I didn`t know was there. When I saw a mother and cub sloth,lying dead and bloody in the midst of a battlefield near the woods,I knew I had downed the cup of poison that kismet serves punctually to all soldiers. I just sat and cried and didn`t care that big girls don`t cry but get even. If I had known who had killed that blessed furry angel and her cub I would have gleefully cut him into pieces with no remorse. Contrast? Men get into war knowing war is stupid. Animals have no wars because they are smarter than we are. Why should a sloth and her baby die just because the Sandinistas and the counterrevolutionaries decided to fight over the control of this poor wretched country. I ordered that the animal and her young be buried,and my soldiers just glanced at each other wondering if I had lost my mind. Every time I hear the song war is Stupid by Boy George I remember that sorry sight. At that moment I wished to believe in god so I could ask for a special pair of angel wings for the mother and kid I had helped bury. Up until now, I can`t see an animal suffer, I can`t bear watch a child in pain.But soldiers, yes,I hurt butnot as much.They got what they wanted,in a sense.
All those awful sights I can never erase from my mind were heaping up on a macabre pile, like the skulls left by Genghis Khan`s men after the razed cities under their trampling feet. The crowning point of this was when my parents died in a plane crash in Honduras in 1989 when they were fleeing from the confiscations and persecutions Daniel Ortega-still president in1989-was subjecting them to. Have you ever see n how people look after a plane crash? Don`t attempt seeing something like that before you sit down to dinner, dearest. That was the crowning jewel of it all.
I went into therapy with Douglas Guerrero, a very gentle psychiatrist I had met in the army. Owner of a drugstore also, he looked after me with loving care. Since I was not allowed to cry at home over my parents, I would do it at his clinic. Unfortunately, this guy who mended my psyche so well a far as he could, was bound to be killed and torn into bits later on by a stepdaughter he had raised and her lover. Douglas was the one who told me I would never rid myself of the nightmares,so I told him that if life gave me lemons I might as well make a good pitcher of lemonade. Which is the best I have done so far, I guess, knowing that I will have nightmares for as long as I live.
The forming of a nightmare comes automatically, whether I eat like two horses put together or I decide to skip dinner. There in full color,with credits at the end,musicalization by me of course,and special effects that Hollywood hasn`t even suspected could be made, comes the nightmare. I roll around, bite my spouse`s arm,drop the pillow to the floor, almost strangle myself with the blanket.I wake up scraming and I write it down while I drink a long cool glass of water. I discuss some tiny finishing touches with my cats. The fundoshi that Yukio MIshima was wearing under his uniform when he committed seppukku on November 25th 1971 shortly before noon in Tokyo gets mixed along with Jumbo`s death stricken by the locomotive, my broken and reconstructed wrists give their opinion and Ruben Darìo`s lost brain comes to the surface, I recall from somewhere sultan Bayezid Yildrim`s gray eyes and I stir them into the melting pot where I have the clothes hanger from my childhood fears, the cats that have been my confidantes and associates throw in their hairs and claws and I start the cooking on the computer. I give my heart to Mussorgsky`s shadow while I kiss the memory of the formidable woman chancellor Nora,who we had the privilege of having in Nicaragua until breast cancer whisked her away from us. I dig up my crush for Tito and Stefan Cel Mare to mix it with the gray skies of Paris that lie on the inside of my eyelids, and all the ghosts come marching in to the rhythm of a Dixie band or Astor Piazzola`s tangoes. The writing itself is not painful, unless the characters run rowdy and they force me to sit on my poor broken ass for hours non-stop,getting up only to pee or serve lunch as is my duty because one single steak is worth a thousand words in any good ignorant`s table of values. I laugh,I jump in my seat,I sweat profusely,and if I am menstruating inspiration comes faster along with the flow. Most of my short stories have been written while the menses stream out of me. Remarkable proof of women`s superiority, as my idol Mary Shelley knew. Once finished, I am satisfied like a new mother with her baby. I peruse it, I smell it,I love the way the printer moves. Lateron, sending the story away to be published gives me the sense of being a beauty parading herself on the best fashion show by Coco Chanel. The money?I need it,we all do.Writers also have bellies. But that is the least of all satisfactions. I am in love with what I write. My short stories are no less than O.Henry, Guy de Maupassant or Poe`s.
But they are a historian`s works, they were forged by a war veteran,who knows what nightmares can do to you when they come alive. Like my broken spine, or my bulleted knee, I have come to get an infatuation with my own nightmares. I hope after death,when my heart is thrown into the San Juan River, may it populate the rapids with ghosts and other spooks from my imagination, because there is no greater blessing than to be able to turn thorns into roses, without losing the original thorn.

martes, 21 de octubre de 2008

not said in verse



63rd entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred October 21:
1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge England, poet (Rime of the Ancient Mariner), I learned it by heart and I have a candle in my heart for this man 1790 Alphonse-Marie Louis de Lamartine Macon France, writer (Ren‚),his Meditations inspired Franz Liszt for his tone poem Les Preludes 1833 Alfred Bernhard Nobel Stockholm, created dynamite & the awards that carry his name after he was announced as dead by mistake
12 Sir Georg Solti Budapest Hungary, conductor (Fidelio) great baton man1917 Dizzy Gillespie trumpeter, a creator of modern jazz,such an extraordinary guy
1921 Malcolm Arnold Northampton Engld, composer (Bridge over River Kwai),I learned to whistle with his theme tune for the fil Bridge over River Kwai

events
1520 Magellan entered the strait which bears his name, and did he ever have any inkling that his voyage would have no return for him because he would be eaten by the natives in Mactam? 1553 Volumes of the Talmud are burned,oh we have been so passionately loved us Jews!
1879 Thomas Edison perfects the carbonized cotton filament light bulb, it was his nth attempt, that guy had patience
1945 Women in France allowed to vote for 1st time, what had happened to the Libertè,Egalitè and Fraternitè of the French Revolution?

POETRY
Prince Korkut`s chants for the Mevlevi dervishes waft from the speakers of my PC, my shawl is wrapped around me and I sit down, now without uniform, boots off, in a flowered dress,to write to you. On a day like today one of my favourite bards,the Englishman Samuel Taylor Coleridge,was born. I fell in love with his Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner when I was a kid,but unlike most crushes, this was has lasted a lifetime. This has nothing to do with I miss you sweeties that ether of internet or old yellowed pages can hold. I have passionately loved my Samuel through all my life.I still recall his famous poem verse by verse. The fabulous and poisonous charm of poetry, although I have never been able to write a single line of it. Dearest reader of my heart, what wouldn`t I give in order for me to be able to lay at your feet a sonnet like the ones Petrarch or Shakespeare wrote, a madrigal that would put even Guillaume D `Aquitaine to shame, something to make Ruben Darìos bones-buried in the cathedral of Leòn-.shake with envy? But I have been denied that privilege,so you must try to be happy with the humble entries of this non fiction scrapbook I modestly offer at the altar of my inmense respect and tenderness for you. Poe could do it with his Raven, Jean Aleixandre of Normandie)my own ancestor) could sing to his adored Henri and tell him that his measurement of love was to love him beyond measure, and Miguel Hernàndez makes me cry with his Nanas de la Cebolla(Nursery of Onions), and I grow green with envy when I read Ya Habibi(the pen name for the formidable Sultan Sulyeman Kanuni of Turkey) when he mentions to his Roxelana that she is his gazelle. So please undertand me, poetry was the road I couldn`t take, and may Robert Frost forgive me for using the title of his most famous poem. It was the world I couldn`t create like James Weldon Johnson did when he said he was lonely and he would make himself a world, and I never learned to whistle softly, far and wee like e.e.cummings`little lame balloonman with the goat`s feet. That Rubèn Darìo, the Prince of Castilian letters, was born in my same country only makes me proud of him, but he left nothing for me to say in meter and rhyme. Did I make his website
www.cablenet.com.ni/rubendario as a compensation because I cannot write poetry? What can I do besides love him without restriction and wish I had been single and young when he was in the same condition too? ? I still haven`t found my Clancy of the Overflow just like the Bnjo Paterson depicted him.
Don`t get me wrong. I can technically write poetry. I know the format by heart, and that I must give my thanks to my teacher James Martin. I know about how to measure the feet, that a sonnet has 14 verses as Lope de vega said when “a sonnet is what Violante sent me to do”, and I have sighed profoundly with Whitman`s Leaves of Grass, and in my high school years I astonished everyone by describing DNA in a series of perfectly rhymed quartets that I handed to my contrary biology teacher Mrs.Eberhardt, who never liked me because she was anti-Semitic. I pleased my teacher Pletzke who always asked us in the least gentle tones to shut the fuck up our battering,chattering and nattering traps and wrote a few sonnets. Technically perfect poetry.`Yuck,it tasted like wet cotton,sorry folks. Something must be missing in my hormones that I cannot produce poetry. I can quote it,recite it,memorize it.I memorized Beowulf,to give you and idea, and Chrètien de Troyes Romance of Tristan and Isolde on which the anti semitic and sexist Richard Wagner built his screaming opera that sounds like cats in heat mating on top of my roof at he sleepiest moment of the night. I memorized tons of poems by the Indian Rabindranath Tagore(Nobel Prize for Literature 1913), Lin Yu Tang from China,
T.S.Eliot(particularly his Hollow Men, and the whole book of Old Possum`s Book of Cats where it is stated that the naming of cats is a difficult matter), the love poems by Boris Pasternak for his mistress(somehow I feel his Dr.Zhivago is trash compared to his poems), and even those that the Zulu Unifier U Shaka Zulu wrote for his three red haired Abyssinian cat colonels. If I could write anything like what king Stefan Lazarevic penned down while he was depressed, I would be lucky. I am not the shadow of Veronica Franco, nor the wind that ruffled the feathers on his head of Tatanka Yotanka(Sitting Bull) of the Sioux. I have translated many poems into English, even my own compatriot Ruben Darìo`s which are so difficult to work on. But the ultimate joy, the final rapture of producing a poem of my own…has yet been denied.
I have used other people`s poetry in quotes for my stories, even some popular songs. Poetry has a bewitching charm for me that nothing except music can challenge. I will continue to read poetry until I die, and if you throw a book by Antonio Machado.Khalil Gibran or Vinicius de Moraes in my coffin when I expire, be sure I will be reading it before the worms eat my stormy looking eyes. Poetry still has the power to eliminate all my fracture pains,flushing away all the sediments of anger I may have kept from the day`s work. I grab a book by Salomòn de la Selva or Thibaud de Champagne-who was uselessly wooing the hard –hearted and domineering queen Blanche of France-and you are there, at the tip of my fingertips. Neruda or Alfonso Cortez, or his relative Silvio Alejandro Cortez whom I had the privilege to meet and make friends with, have the same effect. I am full of quotes from great poets,and I like them better than any politician. Someday it will be possible to recite a few to you- But the final rapture of giving birth to a full live poem is yet beyond me, and I must continue having the feeling of being a sterile woman who must admire the others`kids when I find a poem that expresses exactly what I wished to say, the shadow of the flame is there, and it is enough to spark a whole day.

domingo, 19 de octubre de 2008

The Rosenkavaliers`rules to good chat



62d entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook


October 19th
Born
1899 Miguel Asturias Guatemala, poet/novelist/diplomat (Nobel 1967),so far the only Central American writer who has gotten the Nobel Award,even though some have even drafted letters to beg for that award
deaths
1983 Maurice Bishop prime minister of Grenada & others murdered in coup after the US 82d airborne division fell on the tiny Caribbean island, my eyes still tear when I remember him,.I met him when he came to Nicaragua

1812 Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow, his ass halñf frozen, it would thaw in blood 3 years later when he was defeated at Waterloo
1818 US & Chicasaw Indians sign a treaty , and thus disaster settles in1845 Wagner's opera Tannhauser performed for 1st time , not his best by the way1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became 1st woman in US to receive medical degree,it was about time


ETIQUETTE IN THE CYBERBOUDOIR…DON’T TICKLE ME!

Globalization is here to stay, although it started a good thousand of years before, and conquerors like Alexander the Great had their own candle in this long funeral.The world has become a village that can be spanned by internet. Now it is perfectly safe to hear someone say he has a lover in Scandinavia when he dwells in the middle of Dark Africa, having his connection by laptop right under the largest tree in the jungle. We must better believe him,my dear.We are nobody to say that is a lie,because we surely know it isn’t,although sometimes I find that mos l anguages don`t have words to define these type of relationships. How valid are they,many may ask But the tears, pains,anger and laughter you can find in the fact that you are “dating” or “seeing” someone from across the world are not virtual. Sir,they are real. And so sometimes,when these relationships edge on the ridiculous part of life,the peals of laughter are real.
Let`s say I am a turquoise colored cat who just landed on earth,I am a citizen of Mars although the NASA will never credit me for being here and least of all existent.
Okay,this turquoise cat will go through the vocabulary used. All the aberrations committed against poor language.The gonnas,brbs and stuff.That is nothing, that can be forgiven. If I sit down to analyze a couple, one of them in Japan and the other one in Mali. The “cybersuitor” asked the lady being wooed to catwalk in front of the camera, which in itself is a lack of respect. He lays out all the instruments on the span covered by the camera, and starts making noises,hums,and all sorts of things. Meanwhile, the woman tries to see that nobody sees her,oh hour difference, because she is at work and he may be at home. Doesn`t dry humping seem so funny until you realize how pathetic it is? Like if you were doing push-ups and the human pillow beneath you suddenly upped and left? The French always have had a better way to put it,”tous les animaux sont tristes après l`amour”,all animals get sad after lovemaking. What are you going to grab when the legs get back in place, whatever has to be spilled was spilt, and the warmth goes out of your body…?The cam? The PC, come on people! This is the bestof cases, in which the fleeting satisfaction was perfect yet always ephimeral,
How many things can go wrong in a cyber-courtship?
The question has so many answers as stars the heavens possesses. How can anything be taken for granted? Excuses are abundant. How do you get someone to open his messenger if he simply doesn`t feel like it?After the tantrum, or the mean games, the manipulation, the blackmail, excuses come streaming down his beard or across her breasts. The net fell, my cat pissed on the webcam, no energy sorry, I was asleep, I forgot, whatever. The things people ask for in the chat! So far I have been wooed for an imaginary marriage, asked for non virtual money in a screaming,whining monster tone, demanded to send a laptop because I have more money than the person who asked, a crazy Sihk who had cut off his hair to be more American, asking me to come and have his baby and if the kid was a girl, to accept being packed back to Nicaragua, a lesbian who wanted me to lap dance for her, doing a s trip tease with my gala army general`s uniform. There are no limits to the things people can do,and although some may be endearing, like leaving the webcam open so you see the sleeping beauty of the Arab prince snoring and farting in his sleep, the farts looking like little bubbles in the ether of the webcam, sorry to be so graphic or even pornographic. I have also almost presenced a suicide with an old fashioned stylo, so dramatic I wanted to sing an aria from Puccini`s Madama Butterfly,but was too busy telling the fool to stop… and doing some screaming myself. Proposals for genetic experiments, pleas for money in exchange for rosy messages, an old fart asking for a belly dance on cam and if I did it he would give me the Sphynx as a gift, Sending it by DHL,straight to my bedside.
Are there policies or rules to follow? What is churlish,caddish,knavish and base, and what is gallant? The best of all cases I have heard about came from one of my sister`s friends, and it is the one of a big gorilla-looking monster who would command his “lover” from Dubai, grunting to her to never wear miniskirts, nor deal with men at her job,and threatening he would appear any day in her native city of Leòn, whisk her away and set her up in a triple locked apartment in Dubai, naked except for earrings and toe rings,waiting to satisfy him only. No marriage either because he had a wife in India, as if the poor lady would have ever wanted that. Should there be unwritten rules to outlaw some practices? How many have been astounded when a guy asks them to do unmentionable things like putting chicken bones into their ears or the whole hand where there is no business putting the hand into?
The messages outside the yahoo or hotmail are also worthy of a soap opera.Once Erica Jomg said that each country deserved its own circus, with Italy having the Catholic Church,Spain the bullfights. But all humanunkind loves to ridicule itself,so the whole world makes a bigger circus than the bloody one the Romans had,killing all those poor animals. The animals we kill in this circus of internet are the shadows of the ourselves we could have been. Sometimes the messages left on places like tagged,facebox,hi5 and fanbox are pathetic and reflect our human miseries in the most vivid way. “Don`t be a butterfly man, you are mine, I will be sad,” or ·the others are only that but you have shown me how much you love me” written by a poor Colombian woman with a cucumber nose and 70 kilos of overweight, and by the way in the poorest grammar I have ever seen in my 32 years of teaching English. Richard Strauss`Don Juan tone poem wafts out of the speakers of my PC as I write this,and the irony is too much to bear. How sick can we be to leave our droppings behind, like cows do as they walk towards their abattoir? No shame,no dignity,what does the ether of internet do to some people`s senses?
Sometimes I philosophize about the everyday craziness of the so called globalized world.How much seed and how many sighs are spent in front of a monitor?Or wasted?Could we have populated the earth again in seconds?Luckily, for those who do have cybersex sessions,they don`t leave anyone pregnant.
Erica Jong,not only for being Jewish and wiseass,happens to be one of my favourite writers. She builds real truths like the Taj Mahal. So when she says that those who watch porn deserve to be fucked with their eyes wide open and without joy, that applies to those for who the breakdown of their PC hurts more than the first bout of impotence or a lump in the so mauled upholstered breasts of a catwalk chick. How much meaning can there be in all those miss yous and love yous said after you have monkey-played with yourself in the saddest parody of love?All those crying scenes on cams,rolling around naked with the risk of catching a cold through your ass, come on, the other person will not even hear you sneeze or dry off your drippy reddened nose.
I know that for every thousand failure stories of meeting on the internet, there is a case or two of people who chatted,liked each other,met and married and now they have kids.
One in a zillion. Sorry to whet your appetites or wet your enthusiasm. Pragmatists like me will always catch my thumb under my chin and wonder how much chatouille,as the French say for bullshit,I am being fed. But we could be stoned in public as we placidly walk down the street, our heads not in the clouds but thinking of where the supper for tomorrow night will come from. Sometimes June 18th falls on you from the sky,like the alien ship we wish existed but probably doesn`t, and the spark is there,so much that you don`t need to turn your body into pretzel shape risking a fracture or getting caught by your boss, break wind like an old fan or debase yourself to the point that the selfsame person who asks for all those evidences of love ends up hating you for your unwise obedience. Words of love are too precious to be wasted on someone who won`t ever want to be in the same room as you are or throw his deck of cards on the same table with you to build a future together. If you ever have any doubt,ask yourself,would this chap or lady wish to hear Bartòk`s Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta with me while I lay in bed with the flu? If the answer is yes, then maybe you are one of those blessed ones for whom the onslaught of internet in a long ago globalized world can be the fair answer for your prayers.

sábado, 18 de octubre de 2008

inspiration and perspiration



61st entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

October18th

1925 Melina Mercouri Athens Greece, actress/politician (Never on a Sunday),even Camilo Sesto made her a song, wow
1939 Lee Harvey Oswald JFK assassin, born to be a scapegoat for the magnicide of John F.Kennedy
died
1931 Thomas Alva Edison inventor, dies in West Orange, NJ, at 84, the light bulbs were turned off for one minute in his honor, too bad he killed so many animals experimenting his direct current

THE PERCENTAGE OF GENIUS

When Edison said that genius is 10 percent inspiration and the rest of it perspiration,I think he told us a great truth, starting by his example. That phrase has inspired me all the time, whenever I felt more like doing anything except open a book. I sit down to write about a man whom I can never forgive for having killed so many animals while he was testing his direct current-a battle which his rival George Westinghouse won with his alternate current-and who was so callous to his first wife that on the wedding night he went into his lab and forgot his shaky bride was waiting for him in the nuptial chamber,crying,thinking he was slighting her. I don`t like him as a man. But the light bulb which warms me and allows me to be writing this for you came out of his head. No wonder when he died on a day like today, everyone turned off their lights for one minute to salute him.
Edison was a man who knew the value of knowledge. He knew because his mother had shown him the way when he was kicked out of school. His first teacher said he would never learn.Those are the historical mistakes that astound anyone. The dyslexic, “useless” kid grew up to be the greatest inventor that has ever exited. Sometimes kismet,or destiny,or karma or whatever you choose to call it, really laughs in our faces.
I will never understand the so permanently repeated excuse posed by most Nicaraguans and third world citizens:I cant. WE are unlucky,we are poor,we are weak…we have had bad times. The policy of the hammock,always being pushed because we never try to improve on our own. People are as stupid as their laziness wants them to be. As my associate in one of my webpages, Adolfo, says,”Constantly helping the weak will make him a cripple for he doesn’t learn.” Edison would have said the same thing.
Edison would have lost his patience here in my country. Three slaps, kicks or shoves have to be duly administered to people here, even to get a phone call back for something that you are paying for. In some companies, you get the impression that the customer is the beggar and his money is not worth anything, although their payroll comes from each customer they have. They do nothing to keep the customer happy,it is not worth the effort! Then when their sales digits go down, there comes the panic. There may have been inspiration at the moment the company was founded, but the continuity of everyday perspiration has been lost. Or it never was there.
In 1984, I had a chance to help organize a music festival here in Nicaragua. Nicaragua Musica 84. I was assigned to be the simultaneous interpreter for the French singer Maxime Le Forrestier. His visit here was a series of frustrations, one after the other.Lodged at a posh hotel,Hotel Camino Real, he couldn`t even get fresh towels from the administration,in his room. Perhaps the chambermaids believed the old wive`s tale that Frenchmen don`t bathe, and thought it was utterly unnecessary. Maxime spent his week and a half in Nicaragua complaining,sounding like the most cantankerous man in the world. 90 per cent of the time he was right, because he couldn’t get an international call, nor fresh vegetables, nor anything although he was paying for all that. Everything in Managua semed to be against his wishes,and he would just growl at me,”Nicaragua est un pays qui ne marche pas.” Nicaragua is a country that doesn`t work at all,doesn`t function. So one afternoon he sang the same tune again,but I had my period,I had had a big fight with my mother,and I was upset.So I finished his noise off by kicking him into the swimming pool, which fortunately was full of greenish water or I would have killed him if it had been empty. He ogled me furiously,coming out like a big skinny frog out of the murky water. He had been kicked for repeating a universal truth and that rankled. He knew most things went wrong because people didn`t put any effort into giving a good service. I knew it but was tired of hearing it rubbed into me. IN apologized quickly and he did the same, but both of us knew we were lying out of that polished hypocrisy called courtesy. We both knew that we were facing little perspiration in our people from Nicaragua, and it ashamed both of us.
Along life, the same attitude of laissez faire, of slumping and waiting for things to solve themselves on their own, has been met by me on different people and situations. When you tell me the same happens anywhere in the Third world, I know it is like an impending doom that has fallen on a good portion of humanunkind. For many people, finding a job is the worst punishment destiny can give them. They have barely signed the contract when they start making up excuses for not reporting themselves to work…the piddling salary, the hard conditions, the regulations. Everything is like a thorn on their side. Getting the job is the worst thing that has befalling them, like being raped by a horde of furious baboons in the middle of a duststorm. We often ask ourselves why we do the same thing over and over, like automatons. WE wonder why we don’t get lucky.I don`t believe in luck, like Edison didn`t either.You forge your own luck by hard work. Not praying because even if god did exist he may be in Chechenia and not listening to you, nor hoping because even though it is the last thing one loses, it doesn`t run far.But by rolling up your sleeves and getting down to business. But hard work is not everyone`s plate of cream. Pople prefer to believe in fairy tales,which only take the effort exerted by the shiny wand of a fairy, charmingly shaken with a lipstick smile over someone`s head, really.
In real life, things happen in the lab, or the office or the battlefield. And the one who had the best idea and got it working. He or she is the one who will reap the real rewards of the imaginary gold pot at the end of effort`s real rainbow.

martes, 14 de octubre de 2008

when we mistake the peacock from the hen



80th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Born on October 14:
Grover muppet (Sesame Street), for the delight of kids and grownups

1633 James II king of England (1685-88) ,since William III sounded him off as boing boing in the Battle of the Boyne, he had no more choice than to let his treacherous daughter take over the throne and go with his wife Mary of Modena to live as kept birds of Louis XIV1644 William Penn English Quaker & founder of Pennsylvania, what a way to shake off
1882 Eamon DeValera NY, Pres of Ireland (1937-48, 51-54, 57-59) , sorry,liked Michael Collins better than him1888 Katherine Mansfield New Zealand writer (Aloe, Garden Party)very entertaining
1890 Dwight D Eisenhower Denison, Tx (R) 34th Pres (1953-1961)poor guy,when he chose to have an Irish mistress, his boss Marshall told him he would personally make his life a living hell 1894 e. e. cummings Cambridge Mass, poet (Tulips & Chimneys),sure hit it right when he said a politician is an arse on which anybody but a man has sat on
Deaths which occurred on October 14:
1944 Erwin Rommel German Field Marshall (WW II-Africa), dies at 52 , poisoned by orders from Hitler, so payeth the devil to those who serveth him well1959 Errol Flynn actor, dies, top child molester and lover of Tyrone who had the Power to drive him crazy
1990 Leonard Bernstein composer (West Side Story), dies at 72,I still hum his Marìa without being aware of it,well, it figures, he had Jewish excellence
Events
1066 Battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror wins England, this wise bastard really knew how to earn himself the throne…left king Harold with an arrow through one eye on the sandy beach 1586 Mary Queen of Scots goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth,what a plotting conniving wanton she was!
1980 Bob Marley's last concert,after that it was known that he had a brain tumour and would die the following year…thus we lost one opf the most talented guys of popular music
1964 Martin Luther King Jr wins Nobel Peace Prize,they already owed him that award when he got it

THE BATTLE THE SEXES

On a day like today,my great great ancestor William the Bastard or Willy the Conqueror,call him as you please, went from his French duchy of Normandie to defeat Harold II at Hastings, leaving the English king dead on the sandy beach with an arrow poked through one eye. With the Battle of Hasting, not only did England get herself the guy who would build the Tower of London and introduce aplle pie, but also the person who through his Norman invasion would unwittingly incorporate so many French words into the Anglosaxon jargon that until then was English. It was a Battle that on the long run improved the future for England,and its language. But some battles, like the one of the sexes, is something that never has as many losers as winners, the defeated and the victorious always end up mingling in the strangest ways possible. Today, something I presenced made me think of the thin Demilitarized zone that is the division between the sexes. What is feminine and what is masculine? Can someone in military boots and at the same time wearing breasts ever define that? I have been called a tomboy, even suspected of being a lesbian until I married at the very late age of 27 (at that cipher, women who remain unmarried in my country are viewed with suspicion), and my climbing upon the ladder of hierarchy has been hampered by the fact that I was unwilling to climb it on my back and with my legs splayed open. What is mannish,what is womanish? Is the difference exactly in why we sport a penis or if we wear makeup?
The scalpel goes deeply into the skin, which has by now undergone so much asepsia you could eat your meal right off the surface. First,a thin string of blood, then the yellowish fat underneath,then the ruby muscle,and flesh. The surgeon draws in his breath. After so many surgeries, what does he feel exactly? It is a human being in his hands, his chance to play god, and so many medics have the idea they are indeed some major or minor deity. Nothing is lost. Dearest reader, if you have a stomach that easily gets queasy, be aware I am going to describe to you a sex reassignment surgery performed in Nicaragua by a Nicaraguan surgeon, on a Nicaraguan male who slowly realized after 34 years of living in the wrong body that he had to do anything necessary to wear the skin and shape of the woman he had been since birth,by one of those ghastly mistakes that sometimes Mother Nature-turning into a stepmother-makes. Two British surgeons are there,watching. Do they believe it can`t be, that what they watch is impossible,a brown-skinned third-world-born surgeon is really doing this? It is not the first time I watch surgery being performed on someone. When one of my childhood chums,Mathilde, born her last son in 1986, I was still an imprudent and impudent maiden with a videocamera taping her labor in the wee hours of Mother`s Day,and I had the privilege of holding her son Sergio as he was taken out of her. Squeamish I am not, heart of my heart between the lines. I shalt not faint,and I didn`t.
Wow,playing god to reassign sex. Nothing is lost, I think as I take pictures. Not one ounce of the penis,which has been diminished by female hormones like estrogen for months before the surgery, is lost. From the dark skin of the scrotum the new vulva will be fashioned. This man will look like a real woman after a few months. A strong blood cataract comes out when the new vagina is being formed. For some time after this person will have to keep working with dilators so the pocket of flesh that is newly formed doesn`t collapse and scar, closing the entrance that is not crowned by the omnipotent uterus from which life springs. This new woman will never menstruate,and never have the joy of bringing forth a child. Medical science hasn`t been able to produce the spark which gives us the basic fire of life. In that, my heroine Mary Shelley was right when she wrote at age 19 on a single night her masterpiece Frankenstein. Men haven`t been able to do away with us for that purpose, which is why we women continue to reign although men have been dumb enough not to realize it.
A small wave of dizziness hits me. No I am not weak or afraid.I am having my blessed period,maximum of blessings that we women have apart from childbirth. The camera keeps on clicking as the translation into English automatically flows from my unlipsticked mouth. A damp spot grows on my back,pasting the light yellow and purple cotton dress to my clammy skin. I am glad it is not me on that operating table. How much blood and pain will this person have to shed in order to attain what she believes may be her dream,as long as it doesn`t turn into a nightmare. As a new woman, this person will learn to handle high stiletto heels, the snap of a bra( there already splendid cup c breasts on the chest, heaving softly in the ethereal rhythm given by the anesthesia),and the way skirts flow. Why do these transsexuals learn things that even natural women like myself don`t eventually do? I hate high heels, never wear a bra because there is no sound reason for it with my modest cup size, and I care know how I cross my legs because skirts are second nature to me. And all the legal hassle of redefining your birth certificate,changing your ID cell(a process which in Nicaragua may take ages due to the corruption, inefficiency and red tape in the Supreme Electoral Council), getting a new passport. This person will wear lipstick,and choose perfumes supposedly assigned to women(although I find Eau Sauvage and Burberry`s Weekend, both for men, more appealing than Jontue by Revlon or Shalimar by Guerlain). This person will stress that the cooking skills are necessary in a woman, and try to do the best possible task at daily chores. Feminine. Whoever invented that the woman has to always be salaaming to the man? I ask myself this question every Sunday while I cook a huge meal surrounded by my mostly male(although spayed)cat population.
Is this thing of defining what is good for a guy and what is stereotype for a girl what causes us to always be having hassles in our relationships between men and women?Does it have to be a rule that a baby boy must have blue and that a man in a pink shirt is suspected of being a sissy? How many homophobic words do we have coined in any language, just to punish those who have another taste? Bull dykes, lessies, Miss Tortilla, nacarados, queer, poofters, pèdes, cochones, patos, queers, queenies, ladybugs, maricones,all languages are full of sexist slurs. All flesh is warm and it all bleeds under the scalpel, I think while I sympathize with the person laid open on the surgeon`s table. Pain will be the same,whether he is satisfied with the results, or not. The largest sexual organ is the brain,and its basic composition,regardless of its weight(women have heavier encephalias,sorry guys),is basically the same. And don`t give me the bullshit of female and male soul, because in first place as atheists say we might not even have one for all we know and the grams lost at the moment of death may not be the soul departing with its luggage but the quantity of piss or shit we let out when everything is finally relaxed by the soothing hand of Lady Death.
The surgeon finishes refashioning the person`s genitals.Is our identity there? Is a lady`s honor, or her family`s pride,there in a thin membrane called the hymen?
I think of all the pain,discomfort,itching,stinging and numbness this person will feel .Going to the toilet will be an ordeal, walking around true Chinese torture. Will satisfaction be the pot of gold at the end of this person`s sex rainbow? Will this person also become sexist,discriminate against others or be discriminated against by being called a butch?
How much does the flesh have to endure in order to attain a femninine ideal?Will this person become a feminist?
Sex, my reader, was the real serpent in the paradise of Adam and Eve. If nature had created a third sex, would there be more or less strife in the Battle of the Sexes? How long shall this battle rage on, if we don`t put a stop to it by common sense, which is the least common of all senses?

lunes, 13 de octubre de 2008

getting our deserved education



59th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
October 13th

Born:
1921 Yves Montand France, actor/singer (Z, Napoleon, Grand Prix),what did this guy with a cucumber nose have that he drove Marylin Monroe crazy after having managed to marry the incredible Simone Signoret?
1942 Paul Simon Newark NJ, singer/actor (Kodachrome, 1 Trick Pony), what a big noise his sounds of silence made!
Deaths which occurred on October 13:
54 Claudius Roman Emperor, dies, gaunt and ugly, he is the maximum authority as a historian on Etruscan period, too bad his fifth wife didn`t appreciate that 1601 Tycho Brahe greatest naked-eye observer, dies in Prague, having been royally patronized


1972 Uruguay to Chile plane crashes in Andes Mountain, (12/23 rescue), poor soccer players, never believed they would have to digest such a menu

WHEN EDUCATION FALLS IN THE HANDS OF BUCCANEERS

As if foreshadowing what I am going to write about, everything seemed against the fact that I needed to sit down at my PC and write about this. I had a difficult time getting home, where more often than not the climate is contrary to any radical yet truthful thing I would have to say, and there was even a physical barrier for me to jump over so I could get to my keyboard. A supposed antivirus that wasn`t worked momentarily banned me from sitting here to spew my words for today, and feeling like I am about to whelp a calf because I am on the first of “one of those days” that men so often use as an argument against us females, I honestly don`t know how much bile is pent up inside. I picture you sleeping placidly, your dark curls on the pillow I would have wished to share with you since I was a baby, unaware how much rage is pent up inside this me that you have learned to identify as your purple lion. As a teacher, I am in pain today. Why is it that education has been falling into the hands of pirates, mercenaries who deal with lack of quality, mediocrity and easy grading? Well, as long as the euros or dollars appear on hand as promptly as possible.
I have been a teacher for 32 years. I learned my trade when I wasn`t even a high school graduate, but I tried to teach my own mom and grandmom the best possible English at that age, and succeeded at it. After they both rained beltings on me when they made mistakes, because they-like Far Eastern teachers that haunt the memories of many Koreans-usually believed in physical punishment, only that it was the other way around. The student made the mistake and hit the tutor(me). After those two prize students, I felt I could put up with anyone or anything that was thrown by kismet my way.
What I never imagined was that problems don`t only come from students, but from the administration of an institute or academy that rules the teachers, and can withhold their salaries for any reason, including the pressure exerted to pass a flunking student just because daddy is a magistrate or the mom is the pet mistress of a rich politician(oops, unnecessary repetition, have you ever met a politician who is poor?) Education is never a method for getting rich fast,at least for the teacher. Sure, institutions promise you that in three months you will speak better English than all the poet laureates of England put together, but you and I know that is a fraud. The administrator of the institution buys a new car every year, but teachers never see the benefits of their job. In countries like Nicaragua, being a teacher is the kissing cousin of being a fakir, and all the pressures and tossing around that we get are the equivalents of the bed of nails on which to splat your hungry roaring stomach. Being a teacher is like getting a sure fire vaccine against serenity, a good salary and stability. In private schools you can be fired just because the spoiled brat doesn`t like the color of your hair, as happens in places like the school I went to for my elementary and high school. A kid learns to treat you like his housemaid as soon as he learns to spell his own name. Then, in the public school system, where you might desire being fired soon, the salary is so piddling you might consider it a bit below alms given to the beggar. If you belong to any political party other than the one in power, you may never get to see an eraser while that type of government is in power. So, whether it is the government that demands that its teachers be politically manipulated and manipulative at that, or the capital that backs up the institution that you work for, education is in the hands of condottieri(and I like that Italian name), buccaneers and pirates worse than the ones driven away from our San Juan River in 1762 by the brave mulatto Rafaela Herrera trying to preserve the interests of the Spanish king and not those of the future nation that Nicaragua would be.
When the gangrene begins by having someone as rector who has such a dirty past that he should feel ashamed of showing himself in public, or the dean is a woman who doesn`t even speak English and refuses to take advantage of an intensive course her boss will pay for her …and she drops this opportunity saying that on those days that the lessons are taught she must cook for her husband, how can this selfsame person even dare attempt something like checking on a syllabus which has to be written in English? How can a syllabus for another language to be taught be written in Spanish so the mediocrity in charge of the pensum can read it? Can anyone learn to swim without getting into the water? In Nicaragua many private universities have been opened in large garages, a few chairs added, and the teachers they hired are being paid a miserly sum with so much delay that sometimes the poor professor has to walk miles because he has no pennies for the bus fare because the salary never comes on time. How many of the degrees conferred by these so called garage universities can be useful when job-hunting? What knowledge exists there in the student`s brain to back up the piece of paper that credits him as a bachelor, master or doctor? Would I as an employer take this person who paid for an education he or she didn`t really receive because he was royally ripped off? Can you get a degree in Managua from a dubious university when you live in Serbia and don`t even speak Spanish?
Now you may ask me, okay, why does the government allow such fraudulent institutions to continue with open doors? It must really be a truly honest government, like the one Ataturk had when he put together the bits of the Ottoman empire to create Turkey as we know it today, it needs a precisely enlightened ruler like Kig Chulalongkorn of Siam to promote education. Most corrupt governments aren`t interested in the people`s furthering their knowledge. Having knowledge is having power in your hands,because an educated person knows his rights and protests when his rights are being neglected or abused. A reading person knows which law defens him in any case arising from injustice. Many countries forbid women to educate themselves because the rulers know that an educated woman will not let any jerk tell her to stay at home tending only to the kids, pregnant all the time, or “suggest” to a woman writer that it is best to write love stories in which she and the husband are the Romeos and Juliets. An educated person will not let anyone trample all over him or her. A well-read person can question his ruler as to where does all the money for taxes go, or why is he letting so many foreigners come to injure people in the name of foreign investment, as happens with the Taiwanese who kick our women in their sweatshops and go scot- free after all they do. A truly enlightened ruler,as was Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg in the Century of Enlightment, or Vespasian in the Roman Empire, who enjoyed bantering with professors and journalists, will always be open to criticism, knowing that the feedback he gets from his people is exactly what will make his procedures effective and his government to benefit all people. It was her fine education that led Eleanor of Arborea, giudicessa of the free Sardinia, to write down her Codi di Logu, a code of law that was way ahead of her medieval times. Had she been illiterate, we would not even be mentioning her with so much love and admiration because she would have gone down into the pages of history without a cry nor a bang nor a whimper,as said T. S. Eliot in his poem The Hollow Men.
While education stays in the hands of people more in love with the easy money a garage university can bring or a high school that is more of a prison or reformatory where kids do absolutely as they please and never get good grades, passing dirty notes to the English teacher asking her to let herself be seduced and be a collector`s item in the array of women the class playboy has bedded, we have no guarantee that society will have any kind of real progress nor development as such. While schools or language centers continue to be used to launder money coming from other less palatable sources, while educational authorities don`t set a great example so kids can take them as genuine role models, we will have no true learning going on. While so-called religiously overzealous people keep knowledge divorced from the people, brutally censoring the most unsavoury parts of history by using euphemisms or superstition, our children will continue ending up as titled ignoramuses.
It is up to us, the intellectuals of the world, and the people who want to leap out of ignorance, prudery and other evils that come from having pirates and thieves trying to merchandise so called education, it is up to us to denounce those mercenaries who prevent us from truly learning and being able to serve society, humanity and our nations as proper citizens of the world that we are. As the great historian and emperor Claudius said once,”You can change the past, but you, by doing this, will lose your origin and most probably your future.”





domingo, 12 de octubre de 2008

I refuse



Entry 58 to the The Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on October 12:
1537 Edward VI king of England (1547-53) ,the only legitimate son poor gluttonous henry VIII could beget among his 6 wives, son of Jayne Seymour,who sacrificed her life for the king`s whims1798 Pedro I 1st emperor of Brazil (1822-31), king of Portugal, who gave his first wife Leopoldina such a hard life through his womanizing, becoming the objet d`amour of the troubled Ophenisia
1872 Ralph Vaughan Williams Down Amp England, composer (Hugh the Drover),England`s foremost composer,although I confess I like Purcell and Elgar better
1935 Luciano Pavarotti Modena Italy, operatic tenor (Yes, Giorgio), if he wasnt singing his mouth was always full
Deaths which occurred on October 12:
1694 Matsuo Basho greatest Japanese haiku poet, dies, one of the greatest Japan has ever produced
1870 Robert E Lee General of the Confederate Army, dies at 63, such a gentleman, too bad he fought on the wrong side1945 Jesse James Payne lynched in Madison County Florida, what a sad end to such an agitated life of pure mischief

1285 180 Jews refuse baptism in Munich Germany, they are set on fire.So foreshadowed history the coming of Hitler in the XXth century1492 Columbus arrives in the Bahamas; the real Columbus Day,for the woe of us Indians who had to be sacked,looted,raped,killed and worst of all,converted to a faith not ours and decimated by all the sicknesses this “disgraceful admiral” brought along


DAY OF OUR RACE (DEATH OF OUR RACE?)

Perhaps ignoring that there is the term coined as “white trash”, the dumpy yet pallid Spanish teacher who used to torture the students at a marginal high school I used to slave for, she was so excited from the month of September about celebrating “The Day of our Race”, as this date is so euphemistically called in my country as well as other Hispanic nations. Celebrate?No, my dear,deplore. Day of the Race? What race, the one the Spaniards came to kill? So many years,centuries after, I am still stewing with rage. My wrath has no bounds. I cannot celebrate the coming of a damned white man who brought disgrace to our Mayan, Aztec, Inca and other civilizations. With him camegonorrhea,syphyllis,measles,smallpox,piorrhea…the list is endless. Other worse maladies came to stay:pain,sword,gunpowder,slavery, the rape of our maidens who later refused to bear more babies so the Spanish wouldn`t have free slaves. They took our gold,silver,illusions,corn,tomatoes,potatoes,yams,cassava,cacao,avocadoes,beans,mangoes,
Pineapples, turkeys, macaws, mandioc,yucca and sour oranges. They deprived us of our self-determination, ruined our health and we got few good things in return,like the horse or the most perfect language in the world. Celebrate? That so-called teacher, and I don`t dare to call her a teacher because we teachers form, not distort, the minds of our students, has no idea in which yard the dog is barking. She thinks that just because she looks white she has to proclaim false values. As a descendant of the chieftain Diriangen, who preferred to jump from a cliff than submit to the Spaniards, I feel outraged.I feel ripped off.My fury has no end. I carry not one single drop of Spanish blood, blessed be kismet! I have dark skin and hair. While we continue having Nicaraguans who consider that any white has the right to come and bark orders at us, while we splay our thighs like cheap whores every time we are promised “foreign investment for the progress of poor little Nicaragua”, while whites continue to view us as their backyard brick shithouse, while we don`t raise the flag of our dignity as did our heroes Benjamìn Zeledòn, general Josè Dolores Estrada and the teacher Emmanuel Mongalo, we will continue to be the plenipotentiary ass kissers with a top star rating among third world countries.
I know what you will think: hey ,dear ,but you have a Turkish ancestress who made a cheese factory although she was an Ottoman, and your dad had red hair and blue green eyes, and in your family tree is a Portuguese love-mad king who exhumed his third wife to have his nobles swear fealty to her post mortem…what is all this foaming at the mouth and kicking up of your fractured feet supposed to be about? I agree with you, dearest reader, most necessary of people. But somehow, the raging patriotic blood of Diriangèn runs wilder through my veins, perhaps because I look most like him than any other descendants, or who knows why, but the patriot who lives in my left armpit foams and rages any time someone thinks his capital can buy a piece of our brown skin. I have been abused, and most curiously, not in France where I studied and where I was treated as an equal all the time. The worst discrimination came from other people who have as dark a skin and as tortuous a history as I do. I have been slapped on the face by the blackest oil of capital and left there,wet in the rain, wondering what the hell went wrong. I have taught at a posh school, the same where I graduated from, and been denied a fair salary reserved only to Americans, people who were not even high school graduates or were blacklisted in the USA, even though none of them held the degrees I have. There is a salary for Nicaraguans and one for Americans, at the American Nicaraguan School. Just the fact that we are nationals and not US citizens make us third class personnel for them.
In 1992 I was fired from the largest newspaper in Nicaragua, which proclaims to be The Diary of Nicaraguans although long time ago they forgot they are nationals and they make believe they live in Miami, simply because I refused to praise the coming of Columbus as the Holy Arrival of the Messiah to these places with the Spanish Conquest. It was the best thing that happened to me then. I had returned to my usual rebellious attitude, valuing my dark skin over the obscure interests of western capitalism and genuflection. I still continue believing we would not be a sorry place where to live if we still spoke nahuatl, had our pyramids and the most perfect solar calendar of history. It was our fateful doom that horny Isabel of Castille decided to favour her lice-infested Genoese adventurer and defying her useless husband Ferdinand, rewarded her lover with a series of journeys to fill the barren coffers of the finally united kingdom she had so unpleasantly created in her marriage bed.
She didn`t even pawn any jewels, what for? She had recently fleeced Muslims and Jews by kicking them out, confiscating their properties, or throwing them into the stake and torture chambers of her Top Inquisitor and Confessor Tomàs de Torquemada. So all that ratshit fed to children that pseudo teachers like the dumpy sexless gnome I had as a workmate at the rundown almost reformatory is just that, ignorants`codswallop. Gistory has a way of making things even her own way, and when Columbus died m the wronged husband that Ferdinand felt himself to be was too busy trying to father an heir-in times when the idea of Viagra was just a wet dream- on Germana de Foix after he drove his first consort Isabella to an early grave, and the debt for his deeds went unpaid to Columbus. So pays the devil to those who serve him well. No wonder our own Nicaraguan bard, Rubèn Darìo-himself more aboriginal than white like me-called him disgraceful admiral in one of his poems. He not only disgraced himself but also the thousands of souls that populated this paradise called America when he came on a day like today. History was so fair to him that we carry the name of Amerigo Vespuccio, another navigator and mapmaker, and not his name. Out of this continent we would have the bravest examples of indigenous leaders like Lautaro-who captured and killed the Spaniard Pedro de Valdivia, whose forearms were eaten without salt and barely roasted by Lautaro before finally slaying him. Today his war tactics are still perused by future commanders in the choicest military academies. No was always an answer to so much strife and abuse brought to us by the unbatheable Spaniards,as it is still a reply for all the globalization and neo colonialism so in fashion everywhere. I refuse to salaam to Americans as much as I refuse to do so to anyone who can think he can acquire me because he has petrodollars euros because the sovereignty that lives in my body and my mind belongs only to me.
I had nothing to celebrate today, much to deplore. The word conquest holds within its letters so much pain, domination and humiliation. They found our ancestors half naked and with the best calendar, so they destroyed their culture and dressed them up to their discomfort. It is much like what someone proposed to me, to be soft and yielding and never write these scathing remarks nor wear boots nor think for myself nor make such unromantic stories or corelpaint pictures…and I would be a kept woman standing barefoot and pregnant(at my 49 years of age, can you imagine such a ridiculous thing?) waiting for the men to eat and see if anything was left for me, wearing rings on my toes and no panties in case sir had a sudden lustful fit. That I denounce as colonization too. My body is not a territory to be ravaged. My mind is not an appendix on someone else`s map.That supposition of total devotion is also submission. A word that has no meaning in my personal dictionary of life.