Mes faux Pas

20th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
July 15th

Born July 15th
1606 Rembrandt van Rijn in Leiden, Netherlands, painter (Night Watch),one of the greatest artists of all time

Events
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte captured alter the Battle of Waterloo. He should have called in sick to work because he had a rather embarrassing problem
1893 Commodore Perry arrives in Japan, and with the occidentalization of Japan came so many problems
1869 Margarine is patented in Paris, for use by French Navy, so they wouldn´t have to eat rancid butter, yuck!


OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoops should I have said that?

One of my most sentimental experiences that I have had during my 48 years of existence was when I met Marengo. Yes, the famous horse who belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte, and who was abandoned by Le Pètit Gèneral when Lord Wellington simply kicked his hemorrhoid-ridden ass during the Battle of Waterloo. I have always loved animals, and hated Napoleon, although my dad used to think it was a sacrilege to hate the man who created the Legion D`Honneur, the system of prefectures in France and had the gall to put a pope in his place. Ok, so I finally arrived at the British Army Museum during a visit to London in the early 80s. I was still a young exchange student in Paris, and I was visiting London. In I went and under heavy glass, there he was. Or what was kept from his skeleton, because two of his hooves had already been transformed into snuffboxes. Marengo was a sturdy Arab, imported from Egypt, who Napoleon Bonaparte had named after one of his famous battles in Italy. When Bonaparte had to go and meet his fate at the Battle of Waterloo, he was in no good shape. And he had bleeding hemorrhoids. He would face Lord Wellington on his steed Copenhaguen. Anyways the Corsican went on to get royally beaten, and when he fled he left a disoriented Marengo on the battlefield. The horse was captured by the English and taken as a war trophy to England, where he was lionized, adored and well-fed. Marengo first appeared on display in 1823 or 1824 in the Waterloo Rooms in Pall Mall. Later Marengo was put out to stud, something I am sure he enjoyed as much as eating... After the horse's death in 1831, its skeleton was sent to London Hospital to be articulated. Its hide, with its distinctive "N" brand, was lost. The skeleton went on display at the RUSI museum. One of its hooves was incorporated into the Guards' Officer's Mess at Buckingham Palace, another hoof had been lost and supposedly converted into a snuffbox. I started musing over how man has always sacrificed animals for his benefit, and Marengo was one more. Hot, silent tears began dropping from my eyes. My friend Julia was embarrassed. A security guard came to ask me what was the matter, he probably thought I was drunk or high on some kind of dangerous drug, you know those brown people for elsewhere always have some kind of sick problem. What was I supposed to say?
I explained that I was an animal lover and for me it was barbaric to have the poor horse`s skeleton there. I am sure he regarded me as some kind of freak who should only be taken out on a leash, of course the leash being held by someone who was white.
One of my greatest faux pas was in Strasbourg in 1981. My percussion professor,Jean Batigne, had decided to parade this purple lion in front of one of his best friends, the German composer Karl-Heinz Stockhaussen. Dearest of mine, I swear to any god including Marx, that it was not because he was German. I never believed he should be considered as a composer. This was the guy who made “electronic music” but it sounded more like the explosion at a firecracker factory in China. Batigne said he would kill me if I didn `t go dressed to the nines to the Palais de Congrès, where the concert would take place. In order not to run into conflict, I obeyed. I couldn`t even fall asleep during the concert because of all the noise going on. I had not eaten so there was a crouching tiger and a not-so-hidden dragon fighting between each other in my stomach. Batigne was probably appalled that I had arrived in my typical Nicaraguan folk attire, with colored ribbons in my braids, the epitome of Nicaraguan identity. So grabbing me by the hand, Batigne almost dragged me
To where Stockhaussen was holding court. I had never seen a more pathetic and uglier man than this one, and he had the most horrible teeth I had ever seen in a smile. I thought, there should be a law drafted and passed by means of which this guy ought to be forbidden to smile. Batigne raved about the beauties of a Nicaragua he had never even seen in his drunken nightmares full of delirium tremens and blue devils. Then the German asked me if I like his music. Shit. I started sweating oil, so I just said,”No sir. I hate your music and all the decadence it stands for. When a factory burned down in my native Managua, the combination of firemen chopping down doors, the water falling from the hoses and the people screaming sounded more like music than what you have ever played in your entire life. And I find your teeth frightening, so would you please close your mouth?” had I really said that. Unlocked door of my heart,yes. All the Al-sa-tiens (because they pronounce like that) were gaping upon me in horror, wondering why this little sale indienne(dirty Indian) had had the effrontery to say that to a German(for them kissing cousin of God, because after the 1871`s Franco Prussian War they had been Germans, and then they had been scraped out of Germany`s rotten and defeated stomach after World War I, so everyone called them the Regurgitated Ones). Stockhaussen blanched for a second, then flashed his frightful smile again and said, ”Refreshing, my darling! It is the first time that someone has the sincerity and nerve to tell me the truth while all the rest just genuflect. Refreshing!” Batigne looked as if he was going to toss the dinner he hadn`t yet consumed and probably wouldn`t because he would have his mouth busy apologizing for my words later. I had said it, finally, I was speaking my mind. What should I have said? What should I have done, join the marching army of liars and hypocrites that populate this world and first tell you how fantastic you are and ten days later they slam the door in your face because they never liked you in first place?
When I went to the Vatican, I was one of the millions of people who go with eyes gaping wide open. The one thing that breaks the harmony of all you see is that ridiculous clownish uniform the Swiss Guards wear. You see them everywhere, although they are the smallest army in the world. Pope Julius II, the patron of Michelangelo, was the one to form the first Swiss Guards, and he must have loved it for he was a connoisseur of male beauty. I slow ly approached a small altar studded with precious stones and was about to touch it when a Swiss Guard grabbed my wrist. “Look, neither Cantinflas nor Harold Lloyd nor Fernandel ever had to wear that striped clown pajama you are wearing to make anyone laugh, but I have the full right to touch any altar here because the gold that shines here was stolen from my people in America. So cut the out the batshit and let me be, because I am as a descendant from Diriangèn the true owner of all this that was extricated through death and domination from my ancestors. ”The guy could not believe his ears, and worse that it was growled to him in perfect Italian. Should I have stayed quiet? Truths are truths no matter who feels shocked. Truth will always come spilling out like an avalanche, sooner or later, unable to be contained. Some may say that I always put my foot in my mouth, and I may agree with them. But I have never been called a hypocrite in my life, and in this modern world that is a record.
Yet, the most tender of all encounters for me is the one I had in a department store in Paris, when I saw a sexy old lady buying stockings on sale. I had not noticed her and it was my uncle who saw her first. He hissed in my ear,”There she is.Mrs.Gandhi.” I looked up and saw her there, simply dressed as any ordinary housewife. My heart literally jumped out of my mouth and landed at her feet. I walked up to her and introduced myself. I was so nervous. I had idolized this lady since I was a little girl. The woman smiled at me and started asking me questions, then when I answered some of them she quoted Rubèn Darìo and Salomon de la Selva, two of our best Nicaraguan poets. I was fascinated. I told her how much I admired her,and she smiled while a sudden sadness reflected in her eyes.”You have no idea how hard it is being me, but it is the only choice I have been given and I am trying to make the most I can of it. I am not admired by everyone, you know.” “I pity those who don`t realize how great you are, Ma àm because someday they will find out and I hope it won`t be too late,”I said. Those words, I wasn`t even fully aware of saying them, and how they turned out to be prophetic. On October 31st of 1984 Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by her Sihk bodyguard. It isn`t until so many years after her death that many have realized how admirable she was. I never forgot her.I was back in my country when I got the news of her magnicide. Her death impacted me so much that after I homaged her with the making of a documentary, I got so sick from malaria that I nearly died. Perhaps my words will haunt me until I die,and even after. Should I have said anything else?

On Bastille Day

19th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

July 14th
Libertè.Egalitè et Fraternitè?
Born on a day like today were
1486 Andrea del Sarto Italy, painter (Recollets)one of the best artists that Italy has given the world 1602 Jules Mazarin France, cardinal, French 1st Minister (1642-61)…was it true that he married Anne of Austria in secret?
1918 Ingmar Bergman Uppsala Sweden, director (Cries & Whispers, The Serpent`s Egg)I will never forget how my father snored while I was watching The Serpent`s Egg

Died
1958 King Faisal II PM of Iraq, assassinated at Baghdad, what was solved by his deah?

1789 Bastille Day-citizens of Paris storm Bastille prison, thus beginning the French Revolution
1969 "Soccer War" between El Salvador & Honduras begins, to show how naive and dumb Central Americans still could be back then

It is easy to think about libertè, egalitè and fraternitè at so many kilometres up in the air, lulled by the soft oiled purr of the helicopter 325 Vercingètorix moving smoothly under an iridescent sky, warm in a cocoon of safety, sipping some tea, at the keyboard of the laptop fitted into the helicopter as part of its gear. I am free from the pull of gravity, libertè. If this gadget falls, we will al equally die or live to tell a wonderful horror story. Egalitè. WE are joking, or reading something, or writing something. We smile.The pilot hums something by Siolvio Rodriguez of the new Cuban troubadour movement, while the two French guys aboard sing something by Edith Piaf. Fraternitè. Today is Bastille Day in France.Champagne, Place de la Concorde(the square where more liters of grapeshot were spilled), and everybody will weave home completely sou (drunk). But did France and the world itself finally achieve these three things after all? Do we practice them every day? The French that lives under my sallow skin want a goblet of champagne or Anjou Rosè, because I still believe that wine and French are synonyms and all the other people who have tried to produce wine have succeeded in making sweet vinegars or the utter ridicule. I confess I still think in French. I still think of the Tour Eiffel and my heart skips a beat, like when I see you so elegant in dark, my dearest reader, and I cannot hold back a smile. Isn`t it funny that now I evoke those tartes aux fraises from Fauchon, the merguez which I ate despite knowing what they made it from, the quiches Lorraine I had for breakfast and I feel a certain pull of pining for Paris? Am I not supposed to be well rid of that? Is it that Pablo Neruda was right when he said that love was so brief but forgetting was so long? Can I continue loving my other half patrie, despite Vietnam, and Chad? Can I ever be successful at tearing out a piece of my heart that I deposited by Pont Neuf by the statue of the Green Gallant Henri IV, if I had a French dad?
I go quietly during flight, writing and letting my thoughts go by, up, around, all the imaginable prepositions. I go to 1798. The Parisian people was tired of seeing the Austrian Ma.Antoinette wearing new dresses every day, the infamous Madame Dèficit, while they never ate anything. The poor cuckolded king Louis XVI, fat, stupid, impotent and a predator who killed all the wolves off the Bois de Boulogne, was unable to govern. So the people of Paris just had the bright idea of storming that old medieval fortress called The Bastille. Constant oppression brings out rebellion. I wish more spouses read the history of the French Revolution! With all the storming of the Bastille, which was by the way lacking its most picturesque prisoner(the Marquis de Sade had already been moved away elsewhere, he had been held there through the infamous letters de cachet that could be bought to glue your enemies to a prison without any trial),came the greatest social movement of the Century of Enlightment. The French revolution would bring along the Declaration of the Rights of Man(what about women, folks?), and the idealistic concept of Libertè, Egalitè and Fraternitè. Concepts that man has never been able to carry out into reality, just like Marx`s perfect communism because we are weak, warped and just too plain selfish.
When France almost took Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar from her unstable throne, sent her to die in exile in Algeria after she was nicknamed the Ugly Monkey in Paris, were they being fraternal to her? Francois Mitterand certainly treated the Nazis with lots of fraternitè when he formed part of the Government of Vichy during the German occupation of France during World war II, but he had no libertè in mind for the Algerians, who were massacred during their struggle for independence. The fact that he is already dead doesn`t make me regret that I refused to shake his hand when he was on political campaign trying to get votes in 1981. I never shake hands with war criminals, or people who hates Jews or guys that coin up phrases that are so pejorative as pied noir. He was left standing there with his hand extended, looking like the idiot he really was. I voted for George Marchais, who sometimes was a bit like a buffoon, but then…all men are women `s buffoons at some time in their life. Or all thoughout it.
Some people ask me why I am so critical of France`s foreign policy. You can love yet criticize. How to explain what I felt when they meddled in Chad or what they did to Vietnam before it became independent through the struggles of that great poet and chef Ho Chi Mihn? But I have always been critical of all the follies that men have harboured in their everyday run through life. On a day like today, also, but in 1969 I remember my grandmother panicking after I came back from the music conservatory, carrying my Andalusian guitar. “Dearest baby, there will be war. The Salvadorean guanacos (sobriquet for Salvadoreans) and the Catrachos(nickname for the Honduranians) are throwing balls of shit at each other. Let`s hope they don`t splatter us.” Imagining myself splattered like a Dalmatian dog, I just laughed. This 5 day conflict would be known as the Soccer War, and the consequences went far beyond a match played in the Soccer Cup between El Salvador and Honduras. It would also be known as the 100 hour war, because it was brief.The tensions between the two nations were reflected by rioting at a match between them; but the war was not caused by a football game, as has been popularly reported internationally. The war was caused by political differences between Hondurans and Salvadorans, including immigration from El Salvador to Honduras. Most believe the name is derived from the rioting at the football match immediately preceding the war, others that it refers to the sensationalist way in which international journalists overlapped war reporting with rioting from a series of football matches.
History is simply a continuity of all the follies men and women have produced. Nothing can change it, while us as participants or simple onlookers may be shocked or amused by those who in the name of three things as sacred as liberty, fraternity and equality just made a whole messy mudpot out of their lowly instincts.

Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies

18th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

Born on July 13th

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


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

Events

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

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

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

Patriots

17th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
July 12th

Born on a day like today:
100 -BC- Julius Caesar Roman dictator,general and historian, one of the most famous bisexuals in history, lover of Cleopatra Filopator VII, pleasure boy of King Nicomedes of Bythinia and inamorato of Vercingètorix, who after being brought to Rome as a trophy of the conquest of Gallia, never wished to bed Julius. I hate this bastard-Glad he got killed in such a noisy way. He deserved a few more stabs.

1817 Henry David Thoreau Concord Mass, naturalist/author/pacifist,author of Walden who said “The squirrel that you kill as a joke dies seriously.”
1854 George Eastman Waterville NY, invented Kodak camera, what would I,former cover girl,, have done without his cam?
1884 Amadeo Modigliani Italy, Jewish painter/sculptor (Reclining Nude),made ladies with swan necks and was a great womanizer
1904 Pablo Neruda Chile, born as Ricardo Neftali Reyes Basoalto. poet (Residence on Earth-Nobel 1971)”I love it when you`re silent, because it seems like a kiss closes your mouth.” Teacher Gabriela Mistral(also poet and Nobel prize winner) considered him her star pupil.
events
1290 Jews are expelled from England by order of King Edward I Longshanks, who swindled all their properties.1543 England's King Henry VIII weds Catherine Parr (6th & last wife)who was in love with another guy and twice a widow
1191 The armies of the Third Crusade (1189-92), led by England's nasty and cruel bigoted King Richard ('TheLionhearted' although he ran scared from his wife Berengaria on their wedding night), captured the Syrian seaport of Acre. He loved wading through puddles of Maronite blood.

1843 Mormon church founder Joseph Smith announced that a divine revelation had been given him sanctioning polygamy among his newly-organized religious followers, who were delighted for having a chance to enjoy authorized lechery.

Patriots

I am a patriot. Well, that is old news for you, I guess, because you knew it from the first day we met. The incandescent, fiercely possessive, unreasonable even, everbinding love that I harbour for my country has no measure, as my ancestor Jean Aleixandre de Normandie understood when he told his king and lover that the measurement of his love for him was to love him beyond measure. The same happens with me and my Nicaragua. So it is not to be a surprise that my heroes have always been people who were so in love with their countries that they left everything behind to fight for freedom. Maybe the one to blame for this passion that I feel for freedom fighters and nationalists was my own dad. He worshipped the teenaged Avernian general who almost defeated Julius Caesar when Julius, being a mature general, went to conquer Gallia Vercingètorix was more loved by my dad than the colourful Joan of Arc, perhaps because my father thought she had been some kind of religious cuckoo, and he, being an atheist, had no patience with religious obsessions or stuff like that. But he brought from France a little plexiglass statue of his hero, and you could fit a candle inside the transparent figure. He put it on my night table and told me that Vercingètorix would be like a guardian angel for me. Having no Shaddai or Adonai to pray to, my father had a strong faith in Vercingètorix. I learned to love the rebellious, often rash, decidedly bold young warrior who almost defeated Julius Caesar, heard my father say that he had sacrificed himself by surrendering to Julius so the Roman legions wouldn`t continue killing the Avernian tribe, and had ridden up to Julius` tent to offer himself and surrender. Julius had instantly fallen in love with the beautiful teenager and taken him and Vercingètorix`s horse Addi as war trophies to Rome. Once there, Julius constantly harassed his prisoner sexually. Until one day Julius lost his patience , took Vercingètorix out on a procession and had him executed in public. Legend has it that Julius had an expert scalp the dead Vercingètorix, keeping the hero`s long blond tresses. Julius kept the scalp and hair as a macabre wig, and he would lock himself up, wear the wig on his now almost bald pate and play with himself remembering the guy who never wished to sleep with him. Vercingètorix was dead before his 22d year of life. The habit grew in me. Just before I entered a test or went to a track meet, I would invoke the Avernian`s name in French. It worked. I guarantee you it did.
Another of my favourite childhood heroes was the aboriginal chieftain Diriangèn, also because of family reasons. My mom descended from him. He had fought the Spanish conquerors, but had ended at the bottom of an abyss after he threw himself there with his body on fire. I don`t know if his already somewhat diluted blood in my veins called for him, but I was always a feisty little brat who always refused to obey. Even now, at age 48, Diriangèn stubborn pride wells up in me when I am facing any kind of situation in which I might lose face, and I attack first as a wounded mountain lion, but then again, dearest reader, you already know that. You had a taste of it today, didn`t you, most faithful of readers? The Code of Bushido applied to aboriginal skin, rather dead with my honor intact than alive without it. Flee if you might cry or lose control. Almost did. A hero `s code.
And these codes can make life so bitter, so difficult, so full of explanations about having worn a mascara on your lashes that you are allergic to, in case there has been a tear spillover. Worse, when nobody is asking you and you feel so ashamed and guilty of having your feelings untie their knot and come out screaming. It takes so much self control to be a hero.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, after I have had my daily quota of nightmares-because I have two every night, there is a tear in my psyche that my gentle shrink could never mend-my thoughts go to Willy. William Wallace, much better in real history than the grotesque personage played by dwarf Mel Gibson in the blockbuster but garbagey Braveheart. Willy, who was tall and strapping and redhaired and never knew anyone named Murron, nor married any gal because he was wed to Scotland. Marion Braidfute`s lover, who never married her but made her a baby girl. The guy who showed Robert the Bruce where to find his balls and guts to fight for Scotland after Willy was betrayed by a thief, taken to jail and executed by Edward I Longshanks. Willy was bound to lose his guts and balls when they were torn out of him in public execution in August 1305. What did he think while he was tied to the execution table, stripped naked, ready to die for his beliefs?
Would I have left aside this body so full of inner scars, latent pains that never quite bloom, the origin of the most beautiful woman in the world(my daughter), with still unsagging breasts, enormous ass that refuses to droop, weightlifter`s ruins of muscles, and the strangest color of eyes anyone has seen, would I give it up for my homeland? Would I sacrifice it in the altar of patriotism? Is my admiration for heroes like William Wallace only skin-deep? Or my devotion to Tipoo Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who was the last to resist the invasion of British devils to India, dying in 1799,where will it take me?
Once I wrote a short story about a military officer who dies fighting for our San Juan River, which is so beautiful and useful that the cowardly Costa Ricans want to take it away from us. It is a romance between the colonel and her river, Juan, who is the most perfect male for her, so perfect that she gives her life for him. I dream of being that kind of patriot. I want my heart to be thrown into the San Juan River once I die. And my ashes spread from a helicopter over the Range of the Maribios-the volcanic chain of Nicaragua.
Patriotism for me has always meant a love greater than that we have for our own bones and flesh, compared only to the attachment a lioness has for her cub. Your homeland is your mother and child all in one. This was what made a difference for patriots like Vlad III Tepes Dracul and his nephew-in-law King Stefan Cel Mare III of Moldavia, driving the Ottomans out of their territory-or Duchess Anne of Bretagne making her utmost effort to keep her peninsula out of the reach of France, although at the end she failed, specially after having married one king of France after the other for political reasons.
The lessons taught to us by patriots and heroes are never to be forgotten. They are useful in every walk of life to show us how capable we are of great deeds. They show us how great we can be, and how much sacrifice we must go through to reach our highest goals and those of our people. It is also a class in itself of how to hold back tears, overcome weaknesses and how to master fear as a trainer must keep control over his lion. In that sense, our heroes and patriots will always be the candle of light inside the plexiglass figure that we are as fighters for our self-determination. Nothing can change that, even if we have to walk around wounded with our hearts dripping joy in our own hands.

Boxing Destiny

Entry 16 for The Colonel`s Scrapbook
July 11:born
1274 Robert the Bruce Scotland, King (1328-1329)after William Wallace showed him with his own example where to find his balls
1767 John Quincy Adams Braintree, Mass, 6th Pres (D) (1825-1829),son of the second US president
1920 Yul Brynner actor (King & I, 10 Commandments,Taras Bulba) what a sexy bald pate!

Died

1937 George Gershwin composer (American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue), dies at 38 of a brain tumour

1533 Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry VIII because he set aside Catherine of Aragon to marry the already pregnant Anne Boleyn(she was expecting a true jewel, Elizabeth)
1740 Jews are expelled from Little Russia by order of Czarina Anne, who did not do anything better than play with her dwarves and get fat as a pig

Dreadful news
1798 US Marine Corps created by an act of Congress, and the big stick gets stiff, Poor intervened countries, destined to put up with The Few, The Proud(and I would add the Nasty). If Augusto Calderon Sandino would have known that his struggle was predestined for him exactly 100 years before he came out of Margarita`s ravaged belly.

Kismet

Have you asked yourself the question that if you were not you who would you be, or would you be at all? If your parents hadn`t met, would you exist? Fate.Destiny.Kismet.Karma. The Inevitable. Today you, my dear reader, asked a question and said you were afraid of the future. To which I answer, who isn`t? Kismet, which is my favourite word for destiny, a few weeks ago, asked you to be online and ask me the first question that we have shared. In a long row of so many, up to a point that we don`t remember how many questions we have asked each other. I had no idea you existed and I was well in the void bubble of gentle emptiness in which I gravitated until then. I think I mentioned it before, when the American pop singer Barry Manilow said in a song “you remind me I live in a shell, safe from the past and doing okay but not very well.” Who told me to answer to you? What motivated me to do so? What if I had shut myself in and said I didn`t want anything new? What if,what if…
People, IF is a very big word in any language. Historian that I am, I often ask myself what IF….look at all the brouhaha made by the fatso King Henry VIII of England. If he wouldn`t have been infatuated with Anne Boleyn, would he have broken off from Rome and created the Anglican church? Would such a crown jewel of a woman as Elizabeth Tudor have been born for the best of England? If Anne Boleyn hadn`t found her womanizer of a husband with Jayne Seymour sitting on his lap, would she have miscarried the boy that would have been the king of England? What if Peter Ilitch Tchaikovsky,Russiàs foremost composer, hadn`t broken up with Nadezhda von Meck, his patroness, would he have drunk the glass of unboiled water at the time that cholera was sweeping through his city? He had never met her,they only corresponded, which shows us that you can meet the most important person in your life through writing or chat…But getting back to Tchaikovsky,what other beautiful music would he have composed? No, I don`t forgive this sublimest of gays for depriving me and so many fans of other works that surely died with him, it wasn`t fair! How could he have produced masterworks such as 1812 Overture, Eugene Oneguin, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet and then just leave us? He had no right! Geniuses don`t belong to themselves, they owe everything they produce to all of us who adore them,as bearded Dmitri Mendeleiev knew. Tired, sweaty, he went to sleep and dreamt the periodic table and this workaholic, as soon as he woke up, put all he had seen in his dream on paper. If I only did that more often I would have more short stories based on my nightmares, but the other dreams belong only to the dark side of my skin`s moon. And you should know exactly what I am talking about. Many elements were to be discovered after Mendeleiev left this world and was buried after one of the longest funeral processions ever seen in history. But the guy who would complete his work, young Henry Moseley was also destined to leave an interrogation over his name when he had the bad sense of exchanging his lab jacket for a soldier`s uniform, and died in battle during World War I. Tough luck for the periodic table, which by now I remember it by heart in four languages.
If. You can ask, IF destiny had some use for us why the hell did it permit you to be born in a country so far away from mine? Okay, but I can retort, if there was no use for an encounter that can change our lives, rip the fragile cobweb of our everyday worries, and bring us together in a cosmic collision, why in heaven `s name did you ever approach me? Had nothing better to do that day? Aw, come in. This is an argument that not even the best prosecutor can beat. If kismet wanted so many things from us, why did it choose toplay chess with our senses, drive angry horses of eagerness, and leave us stranded in the middle to nowhere and everywhere? Was I Firousi, the cat that Richard the Lionhearted gave to Sultan Saladdin as a farewell gift, and you the Seljuk sultan himself? Or were you Sennemoot, the favourite slave and advisor of Pharaoh Hatshepsut and I the ruler herself? Can there be an explanation for all this exquisite mess? I could say you were Sha Jahan and I Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Mughal monarch created the Taj Mahal, but that is too much on the beaten path and I have no stomach for romantic nonsense, specially after having fired with a tank and hit right on the dot as when I was 15 years younger than now My body has exquisitely shaken with the oscillation of the M60 machine gun and I have felt the warmth of my country`s soil seeping into my premenopausic bones who still remember what war felt like. A sudden and warm rush of maternal love has surged through my sallow skin, lying on the ground and shooting, knowing that if anyone would ever dare to try and nab away my San Juan River I would gladly die in combat fighting for our sovereignty.
A patriot will always be in heat for his or her homeland, make no mistake about it. Kismet may have chosen at random to let me be born prematurely in the dynasty of Diriangèn blended with that one of Peter the Severe, but the passion I feel for my country is no accident or whim. Bless kismet that I was born in this country, because it is the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Even if that means I have no wings to fly to you, or no magic carpet to take me faster.
The future doesn`t belong to anyone until you lay claim to it. You do this by learning to fly even if no net is under you, even if you believe you are acting like a moonstruck kid, risking all you have. Kismet hasn`t dictated its last sentence in your case unless you want to help with the drafting of it. It is easy to say that because Newton discovered that an object lying still will continue there motionless, unless propelled by an outward force, we must let life do whatever it wants to because we are nobody to stop it. Very easy but it is a failure of an argument. Sorry, choose another one that makes more sense. I I were`t myself, I wouldn`t be here writing this entry into my scrapbook. The scrapbook itself couldn`t have been written by no one else except myself, with my hazel eyes and broken bones and thirst for life.
If I didn`t exist, you wouldn`t be so full of doubts, fears, even misgivings. Right? Of course, dear reader, you know I am right. Can we let love, opportunities, desires, pass by us in an endless marching masquerade, perhaps to the rhythm of a marching band conducted by the maestro John Philip Sousa-the March King- while birds mourn in their trees the fact that we are so cowardly? So when we shall be old, with our grandkids sitting at our feet, we must find a way to excuse ourselves from their recriminations, try to let them know in peaceful tones that once we had the chance to live intensely, to grab love by the tail as one plays with an Angora cat, that our face in the mirror seemed so different and so much ourselves at the same time, but we thought we were being stupid or rash and we rooted our feet to the ground, thought that a close encounter with infatuation was too dangerous, and now with our white hair and wrinkles and back pain we realize what kind of idiots we were to deny ourselves the fulfilment of a dream. We will have to apologize for our fear, for our inertia, for the victory of sensibility and pragmatism over the stars in our eyes. We will have to apologize for not having the guts or the balls to live a dream and make it a reality.
They , our descendants, will probably just say we were wise, but we will cringe inside and berate ourselves for having been a simple toy in the hands of doubt, a flying colourful kite in the winds of destiny, the last flicker in the monitor of hope. The word IF will remain in our memory forever, we will hate Robert Frost`s The Road Not Taken poem,because we were too afraid to leave the ground and steps into the heavens of bliss.

when the match of love ignites all

15th entry to the Colonel’s Scrapbook

Born on the 9th of july

1819 Elias Howe ,was born in Spencer, Massachussetts, he invented sewing machine
1879 Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna, Italy, the greatest composer of instrumental music after Vivaldi among all Italian musicians (Pines of Rome)
1929 Hassan II came to this world, he was king of Morocco (crowned in 1961)

Things like these happened today

1540 England's King Henry VIII 6 month marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled.”Oh,God,I will die if I have to bed that carthorse,”wailed the monarch upon seeing her. After they were unwed, they became great chums.1595 Johannes Kepler inscribes geometric solid construction of universe

10th of July,
born
1509 John Calvin Protestant religious reformer/theologian,really taight people how to work hard too
1835 Henryk Wieniawski Lubin Poland, violinist/composer (Souvenir de Moscou), music not fit for diabetics, too sweet, makes my teeth jump and my skin crawl. 1856 Nikola Tesla physicist, developed alternating current while Edison ranted and raved killing thousands of animals to prove his direct current was a hit
1871 Marcel Proust France, novelist (Remembrance of Things Past),smarmy olg gossip who loved to torture mice

Dead
1559 King Henri II Valois of France, after 10 day agony because his head was neatly skewered while jousting. Pitiful sight, he yelled for his mistress but his wife shut her out, his heir had infected ears, and he looked like hell. You wouldn’t have wanted to see his infected head right after demolishing a 5-course dinner.

LOVE MATCHES

Are marriages truly made in heaven, but the ground work has to be done here,or not? First of all you may wonder why I smacked on double date entry into one. Not my laziness, dearest heart. Go ask the Spaniards who run the robber company Union Fenosa in my backward but beautiful Nicaragua. They are always cutting off our energy supply but the bills they charge are as fat as if we had a 45 hours day and each second of this day we had energy. Spaniards continue to milk dry our American continent, and I mean American in the true sense of the word because from Patagonia onto Alaska we are all Americans although some people from USA self righteously believe only they have access to the American denomination. So here I am back with you, most cherished of readers, taking blood from my heart to use as ink. Because when I speak of love matches, matches also mean the ignition of a fire that sometimes cannot be quenched in a lifetime holding the beloved’s hand. I scoff at love stories because this is expected from me. But way inside I wish I knew one first-hand, and when I say firsthand I mean …happening to me.
Look at how many things in history may go right or wrong just because someone is in love with Mr.Right or Mr.Wrong. King Henry the Glutton,ooops,excuse me,Tudor,VIIIth, could not get himself to copulate with the ugliest woman on earth, who was Princess Anne of Cleves. He had expected to feel all the galloping passion he once brewed in his heart(or elsewhere lower I might say)for his previous Anne(Boleyn), but Anne of Cleves had bribed the court painter into making a favorable portrait of her so as to nab the womanizing English redbeard. No wonder when Henry when seeing his fourth bride almost tossed his cookies in disgust. The lady was outstandingly like a standing mare, ugly, pockmarked, ignorant and contrary. She was lucky not to have been beheaded by the sovereign, who had sent his once adored Anne Boleyn to death just because his passion was spent. Once rid of each other, after 6 months of ridiculous pretense, the king and his ex became fond drinking pals. Love was never there for anything else.
Kings usually have a hard time matching duty to their amorous impulses. Look at poor bigoted,bearded French king Henri II of Valois. After having been a hostage of the Spanish king Charles I because his father Francis I bought his freedom substituting Henri as a hostage, he was forced to wed a fat,ugly,dumpy, conniving and possessive sack of money from the Medici dynasty(which had never been royal but only moneyed through all the swindling done by their banks) when he had already given his heart to an older woman, the beautiful and married Diane de Poitiers. Just the sight of Catherine of Medici drove him screaming from the royal bedroom, and I cannot imagine how he got himself randy enough to sire almost a dozen kids on her. Diane de Poitiers, sure of the king’s love, would drag him to the bedroom where Catherine awaited, begging her lover to close his eyes and to think of her at the crucial moment so he would not be rendered dysfunctional. No wonder all the children born unto Henri by his wife were such a disappointment, weak,wobbly, with deformities, sickly or sterile. Sure dry humps and excuse me the term. So when King Henri II broke that last fatidic lance with Lord Montgomery while partying and jousting, just as the court astrologer Nostradamus, had predicted in a quartet from his Centuries, both Diane and his queen held their breath in fear. The lance went through his temple,skewering his head as neatly as a delicious kebab. Two criminals that awaited execution were sped into death and their heads cut off so the surgeon could study a way how to unskewer the monarch’s head while trying to keep him alive and thinking as well as he did before the accident(something which I closely question, he was a priggish and pompous cad). But we were far away from Sir Alexander Fleming looking at a suspicious black mold on his lab dish,so antibiotics weren’t even predicted by Nostradamus),and while he was still asking his wife to fetch him Diane de Poitiers for a last kiss, he just conked out, noisily vomited something blue and just bought the farm. So much love gone astray for Diane.
Love is grand but it complicates things. It can make you flee to Serbia on a fast train because you don’t want to shake its perfumed hand. It can blind you to the fact that some things don’t happen elsewhere than on movies or cheap soap operas. Lack of love makes the betrothed ask herself how is she going to convert her fiance, who was forced on her due to a marriage of convenience as Jews of the old school go about, to look like a prince when he is the exact carbon copy of a frog, even before the wedding night has taken place? Normally the princess falls in love with the Blue Prince, beds him panting with lust, but when she wakes up she finds a happy bullfrog croaking on the pillow next to her, right? Are there disenchantment-proof matches? Where did the acne-ridden,stocky little elf who was my first fiancé go? He gained more weight, became a cruel capitalist, a body merchant, and now complains his kids are a mess and his wife cannot make beef stroganoff in a kosher version. I never felt the pheromones that are still dormant in my body wake up and make a rebellion.
My parents did know what a love match was. From that sunny afternoon when my mother was sighted by my redheaded dad, eating a sundae with three of her best girlfriends, wearing a pale lime voile dress and matching satin slippers, something happened there. While the alluring Juana ate her ice cream seated at a table with her lady friends, in the middle of San Antonio Park, only one block away from the regal townhouse where she lived in the center of Managua, Cupid was at work. My dad, whose first wife had died 10 months before he saw Juana, was just strolling his way through the park when he saw my future mom having a nice time. He used to mention that he started sweating at several pints per second, the area around his anal area went ice cold(sure symptom of the coup de foudre or love at first sight), his heart was dancing flamenco in his chest and his throat went drier than the Atacama and Sahara desert lumped together into one. He had no better thing to do than to start running towards the woman who provoked this violent reaction, and dove into the table as an expert swimmer diving into an Olympic swimming pool. He fell on top of the food-laden table, causing the ice cream to fall on my mom’s dress.Then immediately he grabbed her by the neck and yelled with his eyes popping out,”Don’t you move or go anywhere miss because you are going to be my wife until we die.” My mom’s friends fled screamiong, my mother somehow got free from his grip, and leaving her satin shoes behind, ran on stocking feet back to her house, where she nearly knocked the front door down in her attempt to save herself from the human octopus who was following her,screaming and gasping and blowing kisses at her. My grandmother happened to open the door and shut it quickly just on time for the man to stay outside.
The man was convulsively crying, jumping like a monkey and he asked to see once more the most beautiful creature, explaining he meant well and had only marriage and respect in mind. My grandmother, accustomed to be the beauty of the family and never having seen Juana as an alluring girl, said she promised nothing but she would have a talk with her daughter.
The following day my mom was ready to receive her suitor at 5 p.m. and the magic happened. She realized how nice the chap was, and they started a whirlwind romance. My dad had 8 children, not all of them living with him. He had sired 4 on his first wife, and an additional batch of four more on his three successive mistresses. He explained that his first wife and him had been married by arranged marriage.No love there. She had been tolerant to his three concubines. All his kids had his last name, and he looked after all of them, although the ones had by his mistresses lived elsewhere, one in Madagascar,another in Brazil and the twins in Miami. He had lost his first wife in an accident 10 months ago, when she and the eldest daughter had run into the back of a gas cistern in Granada. H e wanted immediate marriage. My mom said it wasn’t proper to marry like that, he had to respect the memory of his dead wife and kid, so after one year had passed since the tragedy, they would wed. And they did, with a huge church wedding because my mom was still a non-practicing Catholic, and a Jewish wedding because he was an atheist but had been born a Jew. My mom was afraid the chutzpah would fall on her head. Even the president of our country came to the wedding feast.
Did they live happily ever after? Probably. Whatever my dad saw in my mom, he never forgot about it for a single second. He was like the Skunk Pepe Le Pooh always hugging and crooning to my mom,who would be the accidented cat of the cartoon. I ended up being the favorite of all nine kids because I was Juana’s baby. They died together in a plane crash in Honduras in 1989.It was awful for me, but even that, meeting the dark camel of death, came as a joint activity for them as a couple. Love?If that wasn’t love who knows how the hell to call it.
Whatever it was, it fits the description of love match. Mad in heaven, or wherever,it worked. Now I only have to knock on wood in order for the genie in the bottle, or the light in my computer, or the silver bullet I keep in my Makarov pistol, to go on with the rest.

La jeune fille et la Mort

14 entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

Born on July 8th
1838 Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin ,German nobleman, was born. We remember this guy because he invented rigid dirigibles and many people still blame him for what happened to the Hindenburg. Tough luck 1839 John D Rockefeller was born with a silver spoon in his mouth this US capitalist; founded Standard Oil
1882 Percy Grainger Melbourne, Australia, was born the future composer/pianist/conductor (Hill Songs),boy was he a jaded guy
1918 Nelson Mandela was born in Transkei South Africa, destined to spend jailed a good portion of his life as a political activist.
And oh my god, what a mistake Truman made, in
1950 Gen Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief, UN forces in Korea, and this pompous general wanted to convert the Unforgotten War into World War III along with Chiang Kai Sheck. What a pair! Fortunately he got his jacket pulled before he could do more damage.

Death and the Maiden

My death, or my own shadow, lives over the top of my left shoulder and she is hazel-eyed, overbearing and witty like me. She reminds me I am hers every once and then every week.
I have met her so many times in the battlefield, but she just says hello from afar, meaning well. She knows sooner or later we will sleep in the same bed, although I find it impossible to imagine myself in a bed with another woman in it. I met her the day my mom fell off a rowdy stallion and I was born far ahead of time. Unceremoniously, suddenly, unexpectedly, she was there to greet me when the doctors pushed a forceps into my exhausted mom, but she must have seen me so ugly and frail that she was disappointed because she didn`t take me immediately. The obstetrician drove her away when he told my half dead mother that I was breathing. But she must have seen something attractive in the lousy scrap of humanity that I was that she stayed around to see me into the incubator, where I would stay for almost a month. She hovered over me, changed my diapers disguised as a nurse, and wept a small diamond tear when she saw me leave the hospital in my father`s arms, who had no more remedy than to take me home once I was discharged. He had gone through enough anguish to have me.
She refused to admit it, but she had fallen in love with me, just as you say I am driving you mad. My lady death followed me home, and she must have chuckled when she met my pillow, cat and first confidante, Morpheus, the huge black Persian with Angora cat who slept in my crib as my guaranteed warmer- Morpheus whispered that we were three in that crib, and three in any bed was already an orgy. But he learned to live with her until one day, after he had sired my next companion in claws, Torta, she lost her patience with him, got jealous and sent him packing beyond the Styx River without even paying the boatman. Morpheus died when I was already four years old, we buried him in the backyard beneath a cocoplum tree, his daughter the redhaired Torta and I giving him a military burial. I sang Gounod`s Soldiers Choir from Faust to him as a farewell dirge, I was already a total authority on classical music because my mom quieted me down with anything from Vivaldi to Varèse. I guess my shadow felt a bit guilty about having snatched my first cat so brusquely, but she never goes back on her words or deeds, so she stayed with me although I knew she was dying to say she was sorry.
She could not keep herself from nibbling at my fat toes. Shortly after she took my Morpheus, she inocculated me with smallpox. I was bathed in hot chamomile water, and I felt such a terrible urge to scratch my ugly pustules. My mom would tie my hands to the bedboard so I would avoid scratching when asleep. Somehow I avoided ending up with pockmarks in my skin. I was angry at her. I saw her sewing my small shroud by the window, and I told her to cut it out because I wouldn`t follow her. When she swatted me with what had to be my shroud, I saw she was crying. I felt I had been naughty and apologized, telling her she could take me. She gave me a strange look and said she would keep her candy for a rainy day. Then she flew out the window and I thought she had left me for good.
I missed her. Everyone must be aware that visible or invisible, our own death comes with us along from the moment a lovestruck sperm inmolates himself into the ovule, just like my ancestor Diriangèn jumped over the cliff with his body on fire, profoundly in love with his nation. I knew she couldn`t stay away so long from me, I knew myself to be alluring, irresistible, for her. She had to be infatuated, and you know exactly what that feels like, dearest of readers. She came back to me, arms full of the sunflowers with the blackest centers that I have ever seen, when I was over eight years old. She disguised herself as a medication shock caused by that quackiest of pediatricians in Nicaragua, the politician and self-called writer Fernando Silva, a polemic figure that gets guffaws and no respect from any sane person. I had a sore throat and my doctor Paul Cajina was out of town, so my mother had the dumb idea of taking me to Silva. He wrote like a physician and he treated like a bad writer, so I almost died due to his malpractice. Even though I feel like kicking his old arse every time I see him, I must thank him for having been a good instrument so I could call my lady death back to my side.
Do we know exactly when she is combing her hair like a Russalka on moonless nights in Slavic countries? Was she there when Ferdinand von Zeppelin created his to-be macabre flying hotdog? Did she receive Otto Lilienthal`s body in her lap when he had an accident, unknowing that history would recognize him as one of the greatest aviation pioneers? Did she kidnap Antoine de Saint Exupèry on that last and fateful flight from which he never returned? Is my shadow the same that snuffed out Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in Hungary when on military campaign, where he died as any common soldier at the age of 71? Can I call her then a psychopomp, that figure which escorts us into the Great Divide? Is she only mine, which arouses my fiercest possessive instincts? Did she force Percy Grainger to regret all the kinky things he had done before whisking him away?
My lady death was dressed in ether and orange blossoms when I nearly died in France due to a pneumonia. She was right beside my hospital bed, with the oxygen tent. When my uncle or Ali left me alone for brief moments, she would come and remind me she was the death figure in Schubert`s music Death and the Maiden. Sometimes I would hear her strumming a guitar. Flamenco music, or Tàrrega`s Arabic Caprice. How does it feel to have death serenade you? Was that an inkling that she wanted to take me there and then?


So far, my lay in waiting hasn`t dared to take me. Always with me during the birth of my child, she was aware she couldn`t leave my kid motherless. So she dried up my blood, helped sew me up, and dried my milk so my breasts wouldn`t sag. She chased me through all the combats I would be in, picked me up from the floor when I had my accident, and watched to see my iron corset would still be in place in my head while the physical one was being removed. I can`t complain about her, but still, I watch over my shoulder on moonlit nights when I think she has abandoned me. She lightly pulls at a strand of my hair and the following morning I know she was there, monitoring even my dreams when you come floating into my pores and stay in my bloodstream.
Going into posterity, people who read this will wonder if I was saying goodbye to olife when I wrote this. Funny, today that I have discovered that I have options, more than I thought possible, I felt it necessary to write something for her. She has been with me for 48 years, gotten imperceptible wrinkles around her eyes watching over me, and she has been the midwife of my labor pains as a writer. She has painted my hair in tigerstripes every time she sleeps next to me, and she has let me value life while she watches over my future grave.
I have learned to love her as my second skin, and she has grown more like me every day.
May the day come when I finally go with her forever whenever that may be, but not before I have slept in the same moon canopy as you to know that the only path to immortality can be forged only with love, dedication, and hope.