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.
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.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario