LEVEL ELEVEN´S TRIP NICARAGUA IN ENGLISH

as good patriots and even better students of English,we should know our typical Nicaraguan foods, places and legends in any language.My level 11 students from the Saturday course and I took a field trip to Lake Cocibolca, Granada and Catarina last October 31st.

the golden lock

March 28th,2009
THE LOST EPILOG FOR THE COLONEL´S SCRAPBOOK


1660 Georg Ludwig German monarch of Hanover who became the famous /King George I of Great Britain after the Stuart line came to dead end,is born
0193 Roman Emperor Pertinax assassinated, he had been luckier as military than as emperor
1881 Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky Russian officer and composer, dies on his birthday at exactly 42,from cirrhosis, after leaving us with Boris Godunov, Pictures at an Exhibition and Night On Bald Mountain

AFTER ME THE DELUGE SAID LOUIS XVTH

What was that deluge about, I wish I could ask the handsomest king of France. Was there an awful lot of water or just emptiness for you? If people believe god made the world, was this the feeling the deity had after making man? Was he aware of the monster he had created? I sit here, still trembling with rage and chagrin. I´m supposed to be bulletproof, invulnerable, above feeling demeaned by petty things. My mind is reeling with stupefaction.. Is there no end to the silliness of men? I don´t want the make any more questions. I´m the Cheshire cat, smile disappearing in the midst of a windy mist. As I came I go. Not on tiptoes this time but stomping my way out, boots making a lot of noise on the way out. I want to lay claim to my time, to my right to choose and not compromise, to stop leasing the world even if the world is reduced to one single being. Can one person mean the world to someone else? And if that world crumbles at your feet because your idol had feet made of clay and you caught him or her with pants down grunting on the toilet…just like anyone?
I look at my camouflaged uniform,blue and black and light blue,splotches of indigo,and I realize it has been there for so many years and it isn´t until now that notice how well it covers my so many time injured body, this is the first time I see the beauty of its pattern. I´m not wearing a slinky black nightie, not a teddy can compensate for an ugly face, ever. Cheap silk and nylon cling to your body like unwanted sweaty skin, unsexy, undesirable, sticky, yucky. Rather dead in combat than ever being caught in that attire. Why do women want to be so ridiculous? I take out a small hand mirror and scrutinize my thousand ethnias mixture of a face. Still unlined in the year turn 50. “You, incongruously pretty face above a heavy uniform, like a Japanese doll that is so expensive and dear,” said a Honduranian lieutenant colonel to me, a man who sports his grey hairs and wrinkles with such debonair elegance. He sees me, nevertheless, adrift, worrying about my time, there is such a gaping hole in the middle of my painful emptiness. It is so hard to let go. It is so difficult to slam doors and then think about opening them again knowing that you will slam them anew.
I felt like this in July 1996. My best pal was gone, he had committed suicide, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. Unconsciously, I would lift my hand and dial his number, and then I would remember no phone company has been able to connect to our memories…No longer there. His uniforms and shoes still hung in his closet at home, and at three o clock on Fridays my stomach would rumble in anticipation because at that time we would get together for tea. I know the feeling again. My noontime is mine now and I don´t want it. At 5 pm I get skyline anxious, it is like retreating and kicking a drug habit. You still get the heaves, the shakes, the drop in blood pressure. But somehow you know there is no turning back.
I am left with a long awaited babe in arms, and now born, I just want to give it up in adoption, as if once the father is gone there is no reason for his existence. Babes and kittens can be adopted by others properly without any harm coming after, but a book?
I cannot even drown it…not even in my own tears if I have any left. You remember the scene in Francis Ford Coppola´s Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein when the monster played by De Niro drops into Victor´s nightchamber on the doctor´s wedding night, and when the doc turns him away the monster pounces on still virginal Elizabeth and wrenches her heart out ? That is the exact feeling I have when I leaf through this book for which I am writing this epilog. I was aborted by an unknown hand,torn out of my womb but unlike Zoroaster who was said to have been wrenched from mommy´s womb by a monster and then survived for years eating homemade cheese(who made it? Religious stories are so incongruous and stupid sometimes, they offend our natural intelligence), I have no sense of what to do next. I´ll go back to my short stories, good down to earth money makers and providers of the red and black wings of fame that hover above my uniform and grant me comparisons with Choderlos de Laclos, and Dostoyevsky, two officers turned into writers.
I feel the gentle shadow of Modeste, my Modeste Mussorgsky whose music I have always loved so much, up to the point that I gave him a short story about his wonderful heart. He lays a skinny emaciated hand on my shoulder and upon his touch, the anger flows out. He was born and he died at age 42 on a day like this. Like Michel Praetorius too, great German composer of the Renaissance, born and died on his birthday. Is that the ultimate gift from kismet? His shadow in Russian officer´s uniform sits in front of me, crosses his knees and smiles faintly under his mustache.
Mussorgsly says to me in his Russian accent,” I will take you further into immortality, kitten.. My Russian heart tale will always be a reference, who knows if this crazy hooky diary of this colonel you were won´t be forgotten, is there any guarantee that the entries be kept in order by the person who motivated it? Would it be a bad surprise if I told you the dearest reader might as well lose it, or get it deleted, or never mind it just to show his lady friends boasting how crazy and naïve an intellectual can be? I saw something similar in Russia, something which made a laughingstock of old Peter Tchaikovsky with his famous piano concerto no.1 WE sort of had a courteous enmity with him ,for I was a member of the Group of 5 Nationalists with Rimsky, Cui, Balakirev and Borodin and Peter preferred Western style music….You remember Peter had tailored it for the great pianist Rubinstein, a big jerk if there ever was one, pompous asshole, we hated him. So foppish Peter presents his concerto for his so called friend, and the guy listens in silence, frowning ,grimacing. At the end, Rubinstein gets up and tells the poor Peter he hates every note on it, that the concerto is vulgar and crass and sloppy and stupidly sentimentaloid, so Peter just gets up and storms out of the room in tears. Back home, Peter wrenches off the page with the dedication to Rubinstein, and when the German pianist Hans von Bulow premieres the piece, Peter dedicates it to him. Peter had been so slavishly addicted to Rubinstein, and he discovered like many others did, he had been pissing up the wrong tree. It happens. You have a phrase. Shit happens. No kitten, no need to make your eyes water. Not my intention. I´m just telling you it is not the only case in history, I want to make you feel better. Now I want you to don your uniform again, with no apologies, and smile like your colleague Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia mentioned, that it is good to smile because it existed and never mind that it ended. You have something strong in your hands, never keep the grenade. Throw it or it will blow up in your face. Simply an officer to another officer´s good advice.” I glance at the chair and only a ray of sunlight is there, Modeste has left me again. With a cupful of sound and logical counsels in order not to disgrace myself.
Dead is dead said Stephen King in Pet Sematary. I looked into my file for projects in the short story area. I had three lined up and wasn´t going to practice Nicaragua´s favorite sport: procrastination. If I had the time now it was for my use, and I would lay my uniformed shoulder to the weird wheel of producing phantoms. I just hoped I hadn´t lost my touch. If I had gotten out of a wheelchair before, against all odds, I would get out of this post partum depression sooner or later and the best medication was available: more words, more letters, more literature-I wouldn´t be a writer´s block victim or a literary cripple. It may still bother me to remember what the French said that only when the flower adores does it bear the fruit. But still there was the phrase from that lousy husband but great guerrilla fighter Che Guevara, onto victory always.

Taller de Bordados Rubén Darío
Porque también con aguja se hace poesía
Masaya capital del folklore nicaragüense
Tel. 00 505 88236333 , e-mail bordadodario@yahoo.com
Desde sábanas, manteles, ropa de cama, servilletas,cortinas y faldellines
Hasta trajes de boda, guayaberas, cotonas, huipiles, chales y pañuelos.
Bordados a mano y a máquina.Al detalle y por mayor.
Operando desde 1987.
Propietarios: Juan Markovik y Mercedes Brenes de Markovik

FRESH FROM THE OVEN

Newest poems by Adolfo Beteta

THE ANCIENT FEMININE LEGACY
For María Alejandra Jirón Vílchez

In your Herat exists a legacy that transcends the rivers of time,
And this inheritance is clearly reflected in your left eye.
It is the throne you majestically sit upon,
A birthright,
Of the divine being that you are.,

And the delicateness of your touch is pure,
An indication of the tenderness you possess
For those who surround you;
A microscopic glimpse of the inmense compassion
That you carry in your soul-
An ancient soul-
Who spiritually resides in the vast dimensions of such a beautiful moonchild
Who tends to hide behind the dawn
In order to avoid the negative energies
That occasionally attempt to disturb your inner silence.

But you shouldn ´t fear,
Because those anonymous to your frequency will be chased away
Efficientl,
By the lunar eclipse of the amber katana
Of your personal Ronin.
And this Ronin will never rest until you reach your full bloom
And become what you are ordained to be-
A living embodiment of your sublime feminine mysteries.


GENERATION LOST

There´s a strict type of repression in certain times.
And sometimes,
These lines become personal letters of a decadent generation
Who tend to roam foolishly
Like unlearned jaguars in the midst of a Mayan jungle.
(And to what extent?)

This is why I collect your thoughts for future reference,
(Along with the exquisiteness of your stare that penetrates me the furthest)
And this profound knowledge enables us to be,
Together,
In a coffin like state of inner peace.
(This child cries in the penumbral shadow of Isis´ throne)

And despite the fact that I´m invisible,
You can clearly read between my veins.
(Something different)

And the identification of a lost soul
Does not need any savvy technology to be identified.
It´s a lawless rule in a decaying world
That refuses to heal because most prefer to drown
In their private indifferences.

How do they manage?
Most allude to religions
(the easiest escape for self-doubting individuals)
And others to materialism.
(And this materialism comes in all shapes and forms)
This has been the downfall of many generations-
Sadly,
I have been a witness to all of them.
(Particularly my own)

The greatest gift is breathing,
But breathing is NOT easy
And if it is NOT easy,
Then I shall be the first to do so for my generation-
I just hope my efforts are not in vain.



WHEN EYES SPEAK AND LISTEN

The invisible light of Ra breached my right eye this morning
As I was riding the 119,
Sitting on a thought,
Basking in a dream.
This light revealed to me the end of men;
But not an apocalyptical end like you learned in Sunday school
Or from overzealous radicals who attempt to persuade your spirit through fear,
But instead similar to Ragnarok,
Where most men and gods alike will be devoured by a wolf-
A noble wolf.


And this end heralds the beginning of
The Amber colored daffodils that rotate piously into oblivion,
And the faster the revolution,
The more it expands-
Like a divine consciousness.
Thankfully,
I´ m not allergic to wildflowers¡
(Although I´m allergic to forced literature¡)

This is why I dream upon pauses that harbor a continuous subtle prowl

That I occasionally scrub off as if they were historic stains,
Like the Crusades.
(this scrubbing usually occurs during the quarter moon of the Autumn Equinox.)
Thus,
The unanimous solitude that envelops me is quite fashionable nowadays,
Especially in selected Egyptian circles where,
If it weren´t for the Christian gossip,
We´d have no identity-
Yet alone an existence¡

This poem is proof that prophecies disappear in the midst of civilizations,
Of how they are ignored,
Like Cassandra´s,
Yet the civilized are the first to burn and plead to the universe for forgiveness-
But the universe is deaf to your supplications
Like you were, on the crucial Saturday dusk
WhenApollo´s warning echoed from the chosen lips of the Trojan princess…
This is why I choose to live with the incurable disease of listening.
And I don´t want a cure,
Or medical diagnosis,
Nor prescribed tablets by unlearned men.
Ok,
Maybe a tablet,
But it better be Emerald.
(Enough ¡This poem must be perpetually halted because it is heading to the unborn tears
Of your next verb!)

“Perhaps the calamities of humanity CANNOT be solved by the daily application of
Shaving cream”.

(This was the academic reasoning of one Billy Flannigan from Worcester, Massachussetts, who, before his fantastic death, uttered these last words of hope for Humanity´s sake with an unmoving godlike conviction.)
I believe Billy could´ve been right,
If he only would´ve learned to listen properly.
But what do I know?
After all,
It is complex(but not impossible)to listen clearly when your left eye is trying
To understand your right one.

POETRY BY ADOLFO BETETA

It is a great pleasure for me, as a writer and lover of poetry, to introduce you to the young poet Adolfo Beteta. Born in Nicaragua but raised in Massachussetts,USA, he is also an outstanding English teacher and a great connoisseur of literature. From his book Autumn Whispers I took these poems he wrote.

Self Portrait

Advancing.
True bigot controlling his element
Forever vibrant in a poetic coma.
Dismal backgrounds encircle the flagrant ghost of his chapters.

Unknown heritage impregnates the jargon of his silence
Leading it to milestones beyond normal.
His katana orbits the mind patiently waiting to decapitate the queen.

Abel felt the wrath of Cain,
Bringing an end to certain rules.
Still elevating.
Runaway scenes tantalize the unchallenged valor that yells with zest.

Spasms of an Impossible Love

My life sleeps helplessly in your kiss.
Never will I be born to see the crystal tulips growing from your hair awake,
Freely, gently flowing, streaming madly in my face.
In a rubber prison bouncing from lunatic rage
Transparent love incarcerated in your eyes partake.

Black sun enter.
Shed misery on the weeping cherry trees leaning towards the sky.
Dying fields nurture withered magnolias falling from the lips of time
To a silver screen of scorching hailstorms trickling from
The eyes of invisible hummingbirds that encircle buried tombs.

I hear you calling from ivory mountains floating blindly in a sea of flesh
Splashing ruby colored water drops extinguishing your fears.
Grab a comet by its tail and make it change its course.
Swim in the forbidden
And as you drown in its erotic fury you will resurrect in bliss
And emerge triumphantly like a golden Phoenix out of ashes you will rise.
Naked immaculate lunar eclipses hail the butterfly rainbow chariot.

Pandemonium sleep!
Pandemonium sleep!
Pandemonium sleep!

Snowflake

You fell…
From an Olympian haven descending slowly you reached
The path I trek alone not knowing where it will lead
My feet listen and never speak
Until the day we met along my journey.

They spoke to you of past lives,
Different phases,
Romantic escapades in the forest of my thoughts
And mythological heroes immortalized in stars.
They spoke of Promethean fates and Heraklean feats,
Poetry’s paradoxical nature and the poetic justice of my life.
Alexandria still prevails in the shadow of time.

They spoke of revolutions that sparked enlightenments
And of cunning philosophers who dared to think,
Of exotic and rare poets who never kept silent
Despite the criticism society links.

They spoke of great migrations,
Cross continental tides of flux for a dream.
The route of silk they know in texture,
A frozen tundra they’ve endured.
Tropical heat waves they have suffered
And felt soft meadows of green grass grow.
Industrial changes they’ve encountered,
They have adapted to social wars,
In city pavements they’ve been nurtured,
They’ve been oppressed and said no word.

And now they’ve stopped to greet your presence,
To wonder if you’ll respond at all,
But all you did was sit and listen
And watched the Summer turn to Fall.

In spite of this you didn’t melt…

They were amazed by your performance,
A role of Oscar worth and more,
The epic soundtrack of your poise revealed to them the many doors.
They opened one and then another,
Divinely contemplating every room,
Every corner,
Until they knew that it was finally the time to rest.

I’m gently falling like a feather,
In the ravishing emptiness of your abyss;
My feet have stopped their endless journey
To rest inside a prolonged bliss.

Orgasm

Ghastly images sustain the linguistic tongue's
Granite like delivery of the humble poet.
His verses implicate the process of Evolution
Putting it in jeopardy.
But the poet's destiny is unaffected
For it is guarded by the cosmic lectures of truth.

The morbid morale of infinite thoughts brings fear
To the skeptics who doubt the notion of the impossible.
Therefore,
The outspoken poet paves the endless quest for realization.

He frantically writes the words he receives from an inspirational frenzy,
Savagely inflicting pleasure upon the paper.
This is how he reflects his theory of life,
By unloading an exotic realism only a voracious vigilante can conceive.

His weapon is yesterday...
That personal zone that amplifies his addiction.

Emptiness

Living painting,
Dashing through your woods like an autumn breeze,
Encountering the Willoping people
Who dangle like a string.

Vicious vultures circle the wondering spirits
Waiting to feed off the innocent soul.
My range is precise...
Invisible bodies invade the coliseum of Karma seeking triumph
Just to get defeated by the perception of Kronus.

Thoughts hung on emptiness,
In silence,
In the pandemonium of night.
Capricorn dwells in Saturn,
In the home of Time.
No origin is one
Complete
Whole.

Blank Page

It starts from loneliness, from an undisturbed meditative solitude inside.
I sit there curled in a grown fetus position waiting for something to occur, but nothing does.

I am surrounded by space, starless space, colorless lifeless space
Yet in the barren horizon lingers an idea that wants to exist, to emerge from emptiness.
It wants to be grasped, understood and nurtured, but it is still invisible and complex,
And in the process of deciphering it,
I discover a levitating mirror forest lurking in the midst of my evolution.
Confusing images swirl from mirror to mirror laughing, crying,
Yelling silent echoes heard only by windpipes running wild.
I close my eyes and hope to awake…

I’m still here yet not exactly there when I stopped to stare at mirrors speaking to me in strangely familiar riddles. Clink, clink…clink, clink, clink the sound is near, behind the grove the memory fragmented waterfall speaks my years in a tongue only I can understand. Piece by piece they fall like feathers gently to the unconscious lagoon whose banks I am kneeling by reaching down to grab a drink, but the holographic transcendental moments of my life slip through my fingers trickling back where they belong. I thirst, but can only contemplate my collage of nature versus nurture.

Sitting on a thought watching life pass before my eyes in rapid multi-colorful flashes of light dashes that flow within and without you bringing you closer to the glory of death in every breath I inhale, but not necessarily meaning that I will exhale and prevail to escape the clutches of my lungs… but I don’t really care if life is zooming by at such an accelerated haste.

I carefully observe the world from my placid mental state and choose to flow according to my natural rhythm. I’m all about keeping it real to myself for health, but that’s ultimately the biggest wealth one can ever attain, so I won’t refrain to what I just felt in this passing second of my existence, inner peace and great persistence to all those minds out there who demonstrate resistance don’t you fall into the void, stop, get out, and find comfort in your joy. I do declare you sit back, relax, and lend my words your ears and glimpse the process of a particular existential awareness. This is an idea that just wanted to be born from a blank page and become a rhythmic smooth poetic rage, but not against the machine that produces all these dreams of heart pumping, heavy breathing, erotic fiction – before you answer think: Am I turning you on? Wink, wink. You never felt this kind of friction, and if I haven’t satisfied you yet then you weren’t meant to read my diction.

Parthenogenesis

90th entry to the Colonel´s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on March 26:
1479 Vasili III great prince of Moscow (1505-33)/son of Ivan III ,father of the monster Ivan IV Grozny,did he have any idea what he would beget when he jumped on top of Elena Glinski?1577 Elisabeth of Nassau daughter of Willem I & Charlotte of Bourbon, not as silent as her dad the Stadholder of the Netherlands
1911 Tennessee Williams Columbus MS, dramatist (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Tramway called Desire)one of USA´s most charming gays
1931 Leonard Nimoy Boston MA, actor (Spock-Star Trek, Mission Impossible),Mr.Spocl from Vulcan, with the Pointed Ears, delicious. Idol of my childhood
Deaths which occurred on March 26:
0752 Pope Stephen II dies only 4 days after his election, shit poor guy didn´t even live to enjoy his power
1566 Antonio de Cabezon composer, dies, somehow I like him even though he was Spanish
1827 Ludwig van Beethoven German composer (Appassionata), dies in Wien (Vienna) at 56,raging at the storm, fist threatening the storm,what a colossal way to die
1892 Walt Whitman poet, dies in Camden NJ at 72, father of free verse, blue eyed gay who was one of the first to wear jeans
1918 César A Cui Lithuanian fort builder/composer, dies at 83 ,was so mediocre no one could even say Cui about him1923 Sarah Bernhardt [Henriette-Rosine Bernard] actress (Qn Elizabeth), dies at 77,the Divine Jewish Diva
Happened today
1526 King François I returns Spanish captivity to France, and the coward sends his son Henri (future King Henri II) to take his place
1942 1st "Eichmann transport" to Auschwitz & Birkenau Camps,train chockfull of Jews, for extermination.WE SHALL NEVER FORGET

Parthenogenesis…Look Ma; no male!

I knew that one day I would be destined to produce something without the physical aid of a sweating male getting his own good pleasure on top of my exhausted body. My father would laugh about it when he said I would be capable of parthenogenesis. Asexual reproduction. My father, like my blond boss Lorenzo, so long gone, fatherly miens to understand how complex the lack of penis can make us humans who are denominated females. I subrepticiously see the stars on my shoulders and I am sure of something: I did it all alone. I owe it all to myself. Could every woman chasing falling stars or being infatuated with someone write a book? No, sir, the world would then be a library. And it isn´t. The only stars I have ever touched lie not in my each day more deteriorated hazel eyes, but on my shoulders. Dust to dust, everything goes back t where it came from .I wallow in the loose and splotched comfort of my air force camouflaged jacket. Paradise found again, not Milton´s Lost Paradise. Paradise as described to me among chimeras doesn ´t work. I ´m the freak on my own leash. It is only fair. At the end,the acknowledgements are there but passed over. We want to get to business, ma ám,says the cadet.I just wanna read the book, he says in his embryo English. Someday he will learn not to contract and say want to.
How many times we feel sorry by all those who stand up to receive an award and hear them blab about thank you wife, thank you dog, thank you milkman? Everyone gets credit because we creative people, specially those of us who wear breasts, are inured to the fact that we should be cooking or washing the floor instead of writing, we are told that the time we spend writing stuff should be given to another baby or being nice to the mother-in-law. NO NO NO:I wrote this myself .It came in a bubble of sunlight and it goes on into an arid steppe, a puszta once inhabited by delibab. Dust to dust. Only a nut would write to a muse he has never even smelled. Try smelling the muse-if you ever catch her- after a dust storm, says an imp that lives beneath the third star on my shoulder. This imp is a minion of mirth, and is constantly laughing at me. But is always so intrinsically right that it scares me. It is the same imp that tells me this creation was just another way of reached self-glorification, an easy road to self gratification. Literary masturbatory practice. Why not? Taboos are being lifted from ipsation in the physical sense. Why not lift the barriers that take writers to masterpieces..?
Books don ´t die. They have an immortality that flesh and blood will never possess. Muses get flushed down the toilet every day along with other waste materials our life produces. Did Hector Berlioz ever regret having met Henrietta Smithson and dedicating his Symphonie Fantastique to such a mediocre moneydigger? Well, his pocket certainly suffered. All to end in despair and disappointment. Can he call me as welcome new member to his club, along with Dante cuddling a doll who looks like Beatrice or Petrarch with his mummified cat still longing for Laura? No. I never took my muse to the barber, nor shared a breakfast with the shadow. As much as nobody can get pregnant from watching a greedy Mahgreb gigolo ejaculating against the wall through a webcam, you cannot take responsibility for someone who has never sneezed over your left cheek. Fairy tales are only that. Sorry. But they can yield interesting products, such as these words that now you devour. Someday my grandkids will pay their college fee with money given by this non fiction book written by their crazy yet pragmatic ancestress, and they will invent stories about a shadowy phantom dancing in the background, but whose bloodline they aren´t related to.
There is no labor blood around my ankles. No placenta to show . I gave birth alone, like a hen who saw the shadow of a rooster and laid a white egg, as my grandma used to say. I used lots of music, my knowledge of history as the historian I am, the circumstances given every day to me by life, sometimes on a silver tray, other days with a kick in the ass. I almost deluded myself sometimes into believing there was a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, or a happy ending like an American Hollywood blockbuster film. The almost made all the difference. Translation into Spanish is one penstroke away from this. A hard or soft cover is only a matter of choice. The pictures will come easily and the book is done. Elton John wrote Your Song. I wrote this scrapbook, and all the time it was focused on one person: the me that I became while I was life ´s avid student.

The road untaken

Entry 89 for the Colonel´s Scrapbook

Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of March 17:
1473 James IV king of Scotland (1488-1513)was so unlucky as to be killed on the battlefield of Flodden leaving 4 bastards behind and among his legitimate kids the useless James V
1787 George Simon Ohm physicist (discovered Ohm's Law), thanks Georgie
1834 Gottlieb Daimler Germany, engineer/inventor/auto pioneer-designed 1st motorcycle, and since then so many people have ended splat
Deaths which occurred on March 17:
0180 Antonius Marcus Aurelius [Marcus Verus], Emperor of Rome, dies at 58, of dysentery ,unlike Vespasian who died on foot despite having loose bowels, he died in bed and not poisoned by his not biological son Commodus0461 St Patrick patron St of Ireland, dies in Saul (according to legend), what a lovely saint
0432 St Patrick, a bishop, is carried off to Ireland as a slave, for his benefit and that of the Emerald Isle
1836 Texas abolishes slavery, legally…but is it real?
1960 Eisenhower forms anti-Castro-exile army under the CIA, old squirrel hater couldn´t do without barking orders, maybe to vent out his frustration over his impotency and his frustrated love for Kay Summersby

WRONG TURN
The driver who was behind the wheel of the car which took Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his beloved morganatic wife through the streets of Sarajevo took a wrong turn and delivered these people to the gun of Gavrilo Princip, the TB-ridden patriot who dreamt of a free Serbia. Some wrong turns are not as drastic, though.You can always unwalk the path and get back to the main artery of your life. All of you know that I am not religious. Today is Saint Patrick´s Day and green Ireland is afeast.On a day like today he was abducted to be taken as slave to Ireland. Had he stayed in his native isle, would he had become the formidable, honest to god saint he became? He converted the Emerald Isle to Christianity pushing aside the Druid religion, and supposedly got all snakes to leave Ireland.Was he aware of the steps that would guide him when he was abducted? He was barely over childhood, and out he went into the world, not exactly by choice.
Choice. Women have less choices, perhaps because of the double standard. If a man sacrifices his family to duty he is a patriot. If we women do it we are heartless egotistical bitches in search for crazy glorification. My uniform is in the closet, peeping at me, the stars twinkling on it. Have I ever been out of it, even when I don ´t officially wear it? I can´t imagine if there really is a choice once you get so far in life. Once I read Virginia Woolf´s short tale Solid Objects. A guy leaving all he had for something supposedly meaningless for everyone but himself. Some things wil never make sense to everyone at the same time. If you are running after freedom on a wild goose chase, running wild, dropping things on the way while the finicky quetzal of freedom flies into a tree, lands at a pool of desire, winks at you…how much do you have to shed to fly like it? Once obtained, the bird is just a sad creature. Heart pulsing like mad under fear, trembling, a fistful of feathers, clinging hopefully to life, begging for one more minute of life, asking you to spare him from beady eyes. It has lost its charm because freedom that is attained only to seek for a new type of slavery is worthless. No parakeet wishes to change cages, it longs for the jungle only. That is what I have always meant, and the bird is bird with or without feathers of whatever colors it may be. What I´m trying to say is that with or without military uniform the same discipline is there, the same sense of following my own code of Bushido One of my friends, now retired, says that you can leave the army but the army inside never leaves you alone.
Patrick comes to me again. Not in the religious sense, because I don’t believe in that kind of sainthood. The man who was Pat, the tall and burly redheaded who always had a jovial smile. I have a little chat with the historical Patrick. He would tell me nobody leaves all for all if all is relative. He´s about to smack my bottom and say that woman, that was a mess but it is easily arrangeable. I can still retake my path. He will laugh and comment that I painted myself into a stupid corner. Risking all for chimeras isn´t only stupidity, it is suicide. He would remind me that another Irishman, Oscar Wilde, would say, centuries after Patrick lived, that innocence is a fragile blossom and if you touch it the bloom is gone. Virtual is a delicate blossom and reality when it touches it wilts it off, is my version. I´m back in my old office, the air conditioner hums softly. But these are only the trappings, the physical skins of power or what we think is power. We have access to our dreams by what we sacrifice for them in reality. But dreams come in two versions, sweet ones and nightmares. Nothing is worth making sacrifices for nightmares. Remember how they make us scream. Words have a way of developing iridescent curves when we see them on a screen. Real concepts don ´t temptingly snake a belly dance for us. They are solid and concrete and have seven seals on their bent backs.
No, I can unwind my wrong turn. In fact I just did today. Was green-clad, redheaded handsome Pat there? Probably, as well as all the living dybbuks of my Jewish past and a few hand picked jinns from Muslim legend that my ancestress Fatma Osmanli took in her bags when she married my French ancestor? Somehow many people long to go back to the womb. A sense of welcome comfort engulfs me. My Pikachu glucometer on my desk, my Taz cushion. The iced tea, Lipton, already foaming in its pitcher in the small fridge. I take my Jungle boots off and doze off. Dreamlessly I wade through unconsciousness, until I wake up again and realize it is reality. I have just exited a murky swamp of confusion. My next class is in three minutes .I don ´t have to apologize for being me or having no time. Like Lot´s wife I want to turn around, but my computer screen confirms me I am ok.The image of my long dead ocelot floats on the screen and a smile suddenly has no choice but to explode upon my face...