Real frogs in imaginary ponds

36th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
August 10th,2008
Birthdates which occurred on your SELECTED date of August 10:
1810 Camilio Benso di Cavour Italy, PM ,unifier of Italy along with Guiseppe Garibaldi1865 Alexander Glazunov St Petersburg Russia, composer (Chopiniana),laziest among composers,never produce The Firebird for Diaghilev,so Igor Stravinsky became famous and not him
1912 Jorge Amado Brazilian novelist,author of Doña Flor and her Two Husbands.Outspoken, a communist,cat lover,the perfect guy
Events
1519 Magellan's 5 ship set sail to circumnavigate the Earth,unknowing he would never return,the religious bigot would get snacked upon in Mactam by the natives
1792 Mobs in Paris attack the palace of Louis XVI, who was just a flabby,impotent pathetic cuckolded husband of Marie Antoinette
1831 Former slave Nat Turner led violent insurrection against slavery…it was about time
1866 Transatlantic cable laid - Former President of the US Buchanan communicates over it to Queen Victoria of England,what a chat those two prudes must have had
August 11th
1952 Hussein proclaimed king of Jordan,he was a good king although his taste in women is rather,um,improvable

THE MOON`S LIEUTENANT

Last Saturday,on my way home from the job,the taxi that brought me passed through the huge neighbourhood of San Judas, in the southwestern corner of Managua. The taxi slowly got into the neighbourhood, ready to drop its first passenger, a pregnant girl. I was going home early,the sun was still warm and I traced my thoughts back to 1986.
That was a very accidented year for me. During that violent year, there was a fast pace to the war, I had broken my column while in action, and my two wrists had been reconstructed after I had an accident driving an IFA truck. I wasn`t sure I wanted to go into an arranged marriage with a constant philanderer 4 years my junior and I was very busy with the newly created engineering machines battalions, composed mostly of reserve recruits from the six major construction companies from our capital city. To sum it up, I was in a period of turmoil,I didn`t belong to myself. One day my boss told me he would momentarily pull me out ,for two weeks to be exact, from the engineering project and I would have to serve another battalion from the reserve instead, because he didn`t want hassles with the battalion commander who had protested over my lack of attention. I didn`t dare to question what he was doing, but he must have sensed I had some sort of qualms, because he mentioned that the commander of this battalion was a very peculiar yet brave person who had also been in several battles, and despite my misgivings I should support him in everything he asked from me. The people that I usually worked with were unhappy, but they understood orders were orders and it was after all, only for a fortnight.
The house where the physical installations of the battalion was located at the end of San Judas. It was a two-story house made of wood,painted in white. A shiver of something akin to fright ran down my recently broken spine. I really couldn`t explain why I felt so unquiet,edgy. I came in,the door was open. On the first floor was an enormous bathroom,with a tub, old Victorian-style tub. There was someone in the tub. I decided to be discreet and sat on a stool to wait for someone to come to the main office. A few moments later I heard footsteps walking towards me. I stood up to greet the man in charge of the battalion. The sensation of fright grew to fear.There was something eerie,unnatural about this young man.Pale as ivory,with matted red hair and the strangest black eyes I have ever seen, he was tall and slim and the veins could be seen through his pale skin. I had the impression he had no blood in his body. He gave me a sarcastic welcome,”So finally the general`s high and mighty translator comes down into the world. How many languages do you speak,dolly?”
If there is one thing I hate is being called dolly,or dear or honey. Miguel was starting off on the wrong foot. We were not going to get along,I knew it in my broken bones. A sexist,of course,and someone who would resent my origins. I hated him on sight.Sometimes in the army you have to work with people with whom you have no affinity. Nevertheless you must work with them. Orders are meant to be followed. We sat down to plan our task at hand. He had no idea how to do what he was demanded to do by plan. And beneath the strong smell of his cheap skin bracer I could smell something else,like a faint odor of formaldehyde. Sweet and nauseating at the same time. Would I have to be working with that odor all the time? This wasn`t going to work properly!
Miguel was coarse,ill-mannered and knew nothing about planning anything. I had to put my ideas in such a way so he believed they had come from his own slow,clumsy mind. He had the habit of walking barefoot around the house, so I never knew where he was and he would approach me from behind without making any noise. It was like working with a ghost. A nasty ghost. Once I saw him talking animatedly on the phone. Then I came in and he slammed the phone down. Then a sly smile lit up his face.”Regards from your fiancé,dolly.”
I was flabbergasted.He had told my boyfriend I wasn`t there. He wasn`t allowing me any contact with anybody. Enraged, I just stomped out of the room and left the place. Taking a taxi, I went home. My mom wasn`t there. I felt safe, but I needed to talk to someone.dad at the office,mom out on business. I found the gentle old gardener weeding some rosebeds.
He smiled with his usual warm greeting,and asked me what was wrong. He always read me so perfectly. I told him what had happened and he paled visibly. His craggy old face wore a grim look. He put down his implements and got up. He looked worried. He asked me how I had gotten assigned to work with the people from that particular battalion, and inquired about details of the house where it was. When I described everything, he gasped. He was really alarming me. He looked scared. He told me a strange urban legend about that house.
Last year a promising young lieutenant had been chosen for a mission, and he had gone. He had made a deal with the moon to come back no matter what. He did return, in a plastic bag. Then everyone in San Judas said that a strange ghost lived in the battalion house and it came out on moonlit nights to walk in the garden,or peek over the balcony. Strange grey moths would fly over the balcony and descend on his bare feet.
I was scared now. Believe me I was beginning to wonder if I was losing my mind. I paid a visit to the old files of a local newspaper. I had gotten the approximate date of the death in combat of Miguel Urrutia. I started searching. Until I found the newspaper. There it was.The picture of Miguel Urrutia,and the obituary.Dead at 26 in La Penca,southern border of Nicaragua.1985.It was him. Not much was said,only he had fallen in combat.Who could give me some more information? Yes!I had overheard a conversation between him and Armando.When he said I wasn`t there.
For the first time in our accidented courtship,I looked forward to seeing Armando again. Not a bad chap, but hopelessly immature,filthy rich,handsome and hare-brained. He came back that weekend and he was so happy to see me again. I had not returned to the battalion`s house in San Judas. When we were having lunch together, I asked him how had he found out that I was on loan over at Miguel Urrutia`s military unit. His face went white.
“Darling kitten, you cannot be at the military unit where Miguel Urrutia was.he died over a year ago in La Penca. I called at your headquarters and your boss said you were on leave.You were sick, so he let you go for 2 weeks before you return to your engineering machines unit. Is something wrong?”he asked me.
I told him the whole story. For the first time in my life since we met as children in the American Nicaraguan School I saw his impeccable face frown with worry. He never worried about anything because he had everything. Or so he supposed. He asked me to take him to the place where I was working. We got into his jeep and I told him the address. The queer thing was that we tried to find it but there was an empty lot where the house had been. It didn`t make sense. When we asked the neighbors,they all said the house didn`t exist, or that there was the devil living in it and promptly crossed themselves. Armando then took me to my military unit and my boss asked me if I felt better. I said he had sent me to assist the unit where Miguel Urrutia was. Armando and my boss exchanged worried glances. My boss told me to go back home and rest,I was surely exhausted. I retorted that he had sent me in first place, but he said I was terribly confused. I felt stupid.
Optical illusion? Lunacy? What was wrong with me? I went back home feeling humiliated and sick.But the following week, I returned to my job and got back to giving my engineering unit their prioritary attention. But I didn`t feel the same. I had crying bouts when nobody could see me. I was so terribly frightened. I feared for my sanity.
I felt worse on moonlit nights.I had to sleep with my nightlamp on because the sheer and ghostly shade of the moonlight was enough to frighten me. My black Manx cat Charles II
Never left my side. He was skittish too,as if something would sprout a black hand out of nowhere and grab both of us. As Mary Shelley,authoress of Frankenstein,once said, our fears will continue visiting us despite everything,change of mood, time passing…whatever.
This story has no ending, folks.I didn`t marry Armando. I never knew what produced such a strange phenomenon. I could never find the house in San Judas. I never gave any specialized attention to any military unit that wasn`t the one composed of my safe,gentle engineers, architects and builders, all those bricklayers and crane operators, some of whom had known me since infancy, They realized something had been terribly wrong with me.
I remitted my own case into a file titled Unfinished Business,and I wondered why I put it there.
Did I know, and please tell me, you my most beloved of readers, that one Saturday when I would already be a married matron, going home early from my job, I would pass there by accident and see the house where the moon`s dead lieutenant refused to loosen his grip on life? I almost stopped the car and got off. That almost made the big difference. But the shiver down my long-broken spine held me back. What if I entered that house and never got out again to give you this spooky story in which real frogs croak in the shadowy imaginary black pond of my worst nightmares?

Our everyday angels

35 th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
August 9th
born
1776 Amedeo Avogadro Turin Italy, 6.022 x 10 ^ 23 (Avogadro's Law), I had some of the worst migraines in life due to this chap and his blessed law
1896 Jean Piaget Switzerland, pioneer developmental psychologist/zoologist, some people say he finished screwing up our minds 1896 Leonide Massine choreographer (Diaghilev Ballet Russe 1914-20)one of the greatest choreographers of history, impressing in The 3Cornered Hat
1902 Zino Francescatti Marseilles France, violinist (NY Phil-1939),this guy could charm lions into eating vegetable soup with his playing
Deaths which occurred on August 09:
1896 Otto Liilenthal killed during a glider test,we owe him the helicopter, he just went splat on the ground but since he had no exoskeleton like arthropods do,he did sound splat
1969 Sharon Tate actress, killed by Charles Manson's gang, poor girl was pregnant,they didn`t even take that into consideration

Events
378 Battle of Adrianople, Visigoth Calvary defeats Roman Army, what a mess.That is how the world ends,not with a bang but with a whimper said TS Eliot and with that whimper the Roman Empire started hiding its head like an ostrich 480 -BC- Persia defeats Spartan king Leonidas at Thermopylae, the things we do in the name of heroism
1778 Capt James Cook passes through Bering Strait ,should have stayed there.Little did he know that less than one year later he was bound to be eaten for unch by the natives of Hawaii on Valentine`s Day1786 1st ascent of Mt Blanc, how many people had scraped their asses raw before?
1854 Henry David Thoreau publishes "Walden", one of the books everyone should read
Japan 1945: Nagasaki receives US`s second gift of a bomb, Hiroshima had been destroyed three days before
CATS
On a day like today my cat Nagasaki was born,and he took his name to honor all those lovely cats who had died along with their humans when the United States threw the second bomb over Japan. Through the years that have passed since I lost him, I can never forget his bright green eyes that saw through me into a soul I didn`t know and still don`t have any idea that I have inside. It`s curious how you choose to remember the things that you hold as true about things,people or animals that have been so important in your life. Life is as you remember it, not as it was, says Colombian writer Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez in his autobiographical work Live to Tell. I shall never forget my faithful Nagasaki waiting for me under the front porch until I came home from the job. Then,waving his fluffy grey tail, he would escort me into the house. Cats! Oh cats! I have always thought that if god existed,he should be a cat. Only a cat spells perfection.Cat is poetry and prose all wrapped into paws,whiskers and fur. Like French composer Claude Debussy, I cannot live without cats.
I have been blessed from infancy by the presence of cats. I was a sorry sight when I was finally born after the doctor almost killed me extracting me out of mom with forceps at the premature age of six months and 3 weeks ofpregnancy. I was expected to die. Canned into an incubator for one month, for days I was touch and go. When finally extracted from the incubator and taken home by my parents(who might have wondered what they did wrong the night they made me, because I was so ugly and small), I had the best welcome committee I could ever hope for: a round, fat,hairy Persian cat named Morpheus(after the god of sleep) loudly purred and accepted without qualms. As soon as I was put into the crib, in went Morpheus to warm me up.My living pillow. Could there be any stronger bond than that? He was my first nanny. Perhaps the only one to be considered as such. It was a blind(he must have been somewhat short-sighted not to notice what an ugly little leprechaun I was), passionate and everlasting bond. Mutual adoration. Morpheus was there when the fat baby I was finally took the first steps. If he laughed at my stumbling steps or sound landings on my fat ass, he was discreet enough to do his laughing beyond my earshot. He applied that powerful axiom mentioned by the great bard Jean Aleixandre de Normandie,”If your cat falls out of a tree or ridicules himself in public in any way whatsoever, make sure you laugh at him but far away from him.” Morpheus had time for ridicule and for love ,too.When I was two and a half years old, he paid a courteous visit to an orange Abyssinian queen who lived close to us, and as a result of this, he sired three lovely kittens. The grateful partner of the mother cat gave us the pick of the litter, and that way Morpheus had his daughter Eleanor of Aquitaine come to live with us when she was finally weaned. Mind you, we never called her by her standard name, it was only something that went on her vet`s control card. Deliciously auburn, we named her Torta or cake. That name was to remain with her forever.
Somewhere between my first steps, my music listening sessions with Morpheo and his daughter next to me on the sofa, but before getting smacked in the most useless and expensive school of Nicaragua, Morpheo`s health started to fail. During a rainy season, he almost drowned when he had been out and the heavy currents rolling down the gutter almost took him to Lake Managua,where the sewers unwisely empty. He was fetched by an anxious neighbour who knew how beloved the cat was. Cold after cold ruined his health and one day, his daughter, my mom and I had the sad occasion of burying him under a fig tree with full military honors, Chopin`s Funeral March playing on our stereo, and I howling like a speeding ambulance. For months,every time it rained I would hear Morpheo meowing in the rain.I guess he came from Nevermore to remind me he was guarding over me. I was the only one at school who had the dubious distinction of having a black cat as a guardian angel, devil custodian or both. I sought refuge in my redhaired Torta and I sure did find it. Whoever tells you that you can replace one pet with another is undoubtedly stupid, because Morpheo still lives in my heart and mind, unsusbstituted by none of the many cats who have owned me. Torta and I became true comrades as only two females can, understanding each other with something akin to sixth sense.
She was my unconditional accomplice. My mom, always frightened because I had been born premature, always worried and fretted over my health. My doctor had recommended that she give me an awfully oily and foul-smelling tonic called Scott Cod Liver Oil Emulsion, never will forget the illustration on the bottle with a guy carrying a huge cod over his back. I hated it when my mom would call me in her drill sergeant`s voice,with a huge spoon ready to fed me the ugly potion. Torta would watch the whole ceremony, commiserating with me and probably envying that I got to drink liquid fish and she wanted some for herself. So when I tricked my dad into ordering my mom to trust me,that I would take the medicine by myself without any prodding, Torta reaped the benefits of my deceit. My mom saw the level of the liquid in the bottle go down,so she assumed I drank my everyday dose. The reality was that I would take half a cup of cooked rice, or freshly baked bread, dip the thing in cod liver oil, and feed it to the overjoyed cat. This ploy wasn`t known by my mother until once,during a heated row I had with her at age 25, I finally confessed that Torta had swallowed all the cod liver oil meant for me. She said that no wonder the cat was so fat and healthy.
Torta was an essentially mischievous grande dame. Conscious of her great beauty, she loved to pose. I would study with her draped over my belly. Her genius for pranks knew no limits. She shared my same taste for classical music but neither of us were Beatlemaniacs.
Butter was great,chocolate was wonderful and pork was a no-no. She used to sleep on my bed, or behind the toilet in my bathroom. The whole bathroom was carpeted, and the toilet top had a carpet-like fake fur covering,which made my bathroom look like one you could find in an expensive Parisian brothel. Usually the lid of the toilet remained closed,so Torta could sleep on this as if on a platform. My sister carelessly left the lid open one morning and suddenly, my cat, used to the lid being always closed,didn`t check,took a mortal leap and landed splashing into the blue water of the impeccable toilet. She was struggling not to drown, so I pulled her out and was about to towel-dry her when she just shook me off and now dove under my bed. She spent the whole day mulling over her shame,and I was about to pull her out by the tail to get her to the vet when my dad explained to me about the cat`s sense of pride.Although not as big as lions, they had an ego the same size. At 7 pm the lady meow finally felt her stomach on fire,and swallowing her pride,now totally dry, she went to the kitchen to wolf down her food. It was not the only time her mischief landed her into a disastrous fix.
My dad had brought an old cuckoo clock from his native Normandie. He cherished the old thing . But Torta had declared war on it. It was the enemy. It had to die. She hated the birdie that came out emitting a musically silly cuckoo. Torta planned her attack carefully. Not even Hannibal the Carthaginian,combined with Queen Nzingha of Ndong and Matamba and Araucano chieftain Lautaro could have been more strategically clever. She observed the little birdie for hours,days,and weeks. Finally she calculated from which easy chair would the attack be more exact and one morning,when the birdie came i¡out it was his swan song. The enormous structure of flesh,bone,fat and hair that was my lovely cat flew through the air,pounced on the birdie and fell to the floor with a loud crash,grabbing the birdie in her mouth. The clock immediately followed after. Torta inmediatelyu got up and started slapping the birdie on the floor, while the clock`s mechanism got stuck and a series of hysterical cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo continued loudly sounding. This brought my parents to the living room while Torta insisted on slapping the dead birdie. The pieces from this wreckage were promptly carried away by my mother while my father just glared at my cat.
The satisfaction on Torta`s face was so real that my poor dad had no choice but to laugh raucuously.He picked her up,kissed her soundly on her forehead and said,”A great markscat,truly a sniper.” The clock got repaired, but the cuckoo was gone forever.It would be a very precise clock for more years, but Torta had made her kill. She got to keep the dead birdie as a trophy,and she often played with its painted wooden corpse.
Torta enjoyed a great longevity,bearing only two kittens. She died of old age in 1976 whn I was a teenager. I wore black for her for one full month. She was buried in our back yard with military honors like her father, and with the beautiful Emperor waltz by Johann Strauss playing from our record player as a farewell. She had always loved waltzes.
After Torta, many cats have honoured me with their presence. I have been owned by some of the most beautiful and charming creatures that nature has laid to walk on earth. Bcause you don`t own cats,they own you in body and soul and breath. You are their loving servants. You call them,they take the message and call you back if they feel it is fit to do so.
But when a cat gives you its heart, the gates to heaven are freely opened. No friendship, human or otherwise,will ever compare to the infinite sweetness a cat can add to your life.
Although I know there is no afterlife when we die, I wouldn`t mind to be proven wrong, and my ideal paradise would consist of a long valley filled with all the cats I have ever loved,waiting for me, with my adored Antonio Vivaldi conducting an orchestra made up of cats. All my cats will have arrived by means of a rainbow bridge,and we would eternally be together,romping and playing and listening to classical music.
Erica JOng in a poem once said thyat all the dogs who had ever loved her carry her coffin.I love dogs,my I must have been the Egyptian goddess Bakst sometime ago.Cats are really the angels that life intended us to have all along, and those who don`t realize this will reincarnate in mice and be chased by an angry mischievous cat like any of the beauties that have made me their ever willing slave forever.

The child in me

34th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
August 7th

Births:

1870 19 kittens born to Tarawood Antigone (4 still born) ,as Abe Lincoln said,”No matter how much cats fight,there will always be lots of kittens.”
1876 Mata Hari dancer/courtesan/spy (WW I)born as Gertrude Margarett Zelle, was stupid enough to believe in Vadim de Masslof`s love chants
Died
1941 Rabindranath Tagore, Noble Prize 1913, greatest Indian poet, have always had a crush on him
0117 Death of Marcus Trajan, 65, Roman emperor from A.D. 98-117. His attitude toward Christianity gradually changed from toleration to persecution. It was during Trajan's rule that Apostolic Father Ignatius of Antioch was martyred. Maybe he had a foreshadowing of how evil religion could be

Events
1620 Kepler's mother arrested for witchcraft, showing how ignorant the Inquisitors were 1782 George Washington creates Order of the Purple Heart, while chewing on a feather with his wooden teeth
1819 Battle of Boyac ; Bol¡var defeats Spanish in Colombia, but he always thought that Central Americans should be bartered for freedom1820 1st potatoes planted in Hawaii , potatoes are from America originally
1409 The Council of Pisa closed. Convened to end the Great Schism (1378-1417) caused by two rival popes, the Council in fact elected a third pope, Alexander V (afterwards regarded as an antipope). How holy can a church be if they have always been quarrelling?

August 8th
born
1879 Emiliano Zapata Mexican revolutionary, peasant leader, nice mustache1884 Sara Teasdale US, poet (1st Pulitzer Prize-1918-"Love Songs"),not fit for diabetics,oversweet

Events
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for exile on St Helena,it was about time someone put this nasty dwarf where he wouldn`t bother anyone
1844 Brigham Young chosen Mormon Church head following Joseph Smith death(lynched) and would be on his way to getting his when his 27th wife Eliza Anne Webb would give him a sound lesson


"Leave just a bit of myself with me so I can call you my everything.”Rabindranath Tagore
"Why did the flower wither and kilt?It did because I hugged her too strongly against my heart,that is why.” Rabindranath Tagore

The child in me is rejoicing. No sir, I am not pregnant, with a baby turning somersaults of glee inside me. I have always carried a child all the time, the kid I was, the one who sat hours on end listening to classical music while her cat also became a melomaniac feline,too. I have just finished listening to the symphonic tale Peter and the Wolf by Ukrainian composer and pianist Sergei Prokofiev, yes you are right, the same one who died of chagrin after Joseph Stalin and the Central Committee of the Communist Party decreed that his music was decadent, too cerebral and with westernizing tendencies unfit for the lofty proletariat of Russia. He had no choice but to bow out gracelessly with an embolia. But Sergei left us with so many beautiful masterworks, and Peter and the Wolf immediately flies me on wings of song, as Jewish Mendelssohn would sing, to my childhood. Classical music and the poetry of Bengal bard Rabindranath Tagore have that almost magical power. We all have a child inside and whoever tries to deny that is a fool and will only end up hurting himself. Peter and the Wolf has always had the power to take me back to when I was happy and undocumented, to paraphrase another favourite author Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez, also Nobel.prize winner.
It is so easy to forget being a child amidst our everyday chores or sudden leaves on missions that were not written on my work plan sheet that dozes its unquiet slumber in the pocket of my jacket, smack over my heart. The stress of our globalized times –although we have been globalized for long ages but we prefer to save this candy for the century we live in now-doesn`t allow us But once in a while someone falls off the navy yacht on which we are aboard and gets fished out by the silk net and the moment has a levity of its own. The formalities are broken, a smile gallops fast into a peal of laughter,and although the crow`s feet at my eye`s corner comes out, there it is. That is the sensation I get while whistling Peter and the Wolf, although it may bring me memories of a friend who was my dear boss, but who died in 2001 and is no longer here to call me with the theme from Peter. May Lorenzo, my former boss at the classical radio where I worked for years, be having a nice conversation with Sergei Prokofiev over a good shot of vodka.
The child in us is determined by how much freedom of movement or speech we get. As adults, we are expected to fulfil our promises, do our duty and always be in charge. The stability of a family falls on the woman`s shoulders, so we get to disguise the kid we have in us as much as it`s possible. Because there will always be something that only mom can do, or a favour only the wife can do for the guy. I chose two quotes from Tagore to start this entry, and they weren`t chosen by accident. When somebody affirms,declares,states,vos,etc. that he is in love with you,dearest reader among all, he wants to swallow you whole, with the child inside. He may even perform a routine abortion on that permanent embryo of glee that we all have inside,and his scalpel or curette of vacuum instrument may be repression,callousness, or jealousy. When Tagore says that he needs his lover to leave him a bit of himself so he can call her his everything it means no smothering, no asphyxia, no strangling the couple to be under the ball of your foot gasping for breath. The child by existing in ourselves doesn`t mean we have a proclivity towards unfaithfulness or that we are some kind of jaded pervert. Not every secret we harbour has a sex symbol in it.So what Tagore says about not smothering the flower by crushing it against your heart is valid too.
The child we were will be with us all our life, whether we like it or not. It will poke his little face out when we least expect it. Look at Mao Tse Tung showing his lack of underwear to several diplomats when it was so hot in China that flies would drop dead from the sweltering heat while in flight in midair. Or Nikita Krushchev pounding his meaty fist on the podium during one general assembly with his Central Committee because they refused to listen. He bawled like a baby ,but surely got their attention. Or King Stefan Cel Mare,the great Moldavian fighter against the Turks, picking his nose inpublic in the middle of a Sunday sermon in church, while his third wife Maria Voichita blushed furiously at what her spouse was doing. The child in us refreshes any moment we are in, particularly when we are feeling mousy and tired and bored by it all. It makes us wonder what would happen if we let out the child to play with the people who are with us at that moment.
Tagore accompanied me since I was 5.I learned to read at age 3,like my compatriot bard Ruben Dario. A reading child doesn`t mean he will never play,he will play as an adult.Take my word for it. It only takes time to realize how much we were missing out on when we refused to join the game. Sooner or later, whatever we decide to play-even something as macabre as playing god-we will join in. Laughter in the classroom has proven to be one of the best learning methods, because not only the teacher brings her own child in but all the students rescue theirs from oblivion. And as we know,children always learn faster. Perhaps because they are never afraid of making mistakes, and even when they fall they pick themselves up faster than we do.As adults,we have a sense of ridicule and many times that is what prevents us from learning properly, or assimilating our own mistakes to draw a lesson from them.
I work at keeping my child alive inside me. Even in my tragic situations, I can laugh at my own shortcomings,pains and disappointments. That is the best balm to heal all wounds,because you know that even a child with a scraped knee or bloody nose, always returns to the playground. And sporting the best smile he or she can give.

Made in USA but never maid in USA

August 5th,and 6th 33rd entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

died
1962 Marilyn Monroe found dead of apparent self-inflicted drug overdose, Kennedys suspected of having suicided her to keep her mouth shut.How could the prettiest blondie in the world die like that?I still miss her!

events
1772 1st partition of Poland, between Austria, Prussia & Russia, is that why gringos call Polish people the Dumb Poles?
1926 Houdini stays in a coffin under water for 1« hrs, wish I could do that when a lewd man is chasing me
1936 At Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens wins his 3rd Olympic medal, showing nasty Adolf that blacks are definitely THE superior race

Aug.6th
Born
1697 Charles VII Holy Roman emperor (1742-45), best thing he did was support Antonio Vivaldi and father empress Ma.Theresa 1809 Alfred Lord Tennyson poet laureate of England ,queen Vicky loved him sooooooo1861 Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt 2nd wife of Theodore Roosevelt, she had patience 1868 Paul Claudel France, diplomat/poet (L'Otage-1909) how ashamed was he when his sister the sculptress Camille went bananas after tolerating so much torture from her lover Rodin?1881 Sir Alexander Fleming cashed in on penicillin (Nobel 1954)and thanks to him, not even Churchill died of a flu

Died
1978 Pope Paul VI dies of heart attack at summer residence at 80,after having spent more time on a plane than on his seat at Saint Peter`s
1945 Hiroshima atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima by "Enola Gay"puiloted by assassin Tibbets,this was terrorism performed by the government of Harry Truman


CRIMES MADE IN USA

I don`t know why the American dream has always had that dubious power of making me angry. Perhaps because it becomes a real nightmare that requires you to cut your hair and die it blond even if your beliefs originally forbade that, or you buy blue contact lenses to look more WASP. Or you start saying yeah and gonna and wanna coz everybody aint gonna stop ya from doing àt,yeah? Land of the free home of the brave. Francis Scott Key had the best of intentions when he wrote the Star Spangled Banner, forgetting that USA was born with the bloody stain of slavery. Anything goes, right? No, dearest reader. The USA I dream of doesn’t exist in reality, because it has practiced state terrorism on a day like today. It has never existed more than on paper, but so many people fall for the slogans and the propaganda and a fascination that can only be labelled as fatal attraction.
I will always mourn the death of Norma jean Baker, more known as the sexual bombon Marylin Monroe. I was only three when she died,and I will never believe the suicide version. She had the bad sense to fall in love with two very nasty males from the same politically climbing clan, and that did her in. It was best to shut her up, and boy, what a way to do it. The day the news came out in the newspapers, my matronly grandmother Mercedes was subreptitiously crying over the pantry in her kitchen. Mind you, my granny didn`t even cry when tear gas was thrown near her house during a political riot in the 60s. Hard stately matron in the old mold, you don`t make more women like her. She was embarrassed when I being the wee litltle fatso of a 3 year old devil rushed into the kitchen to ask for more ice cream…and found her sniffing. “Se muriò la chela màs Linda del mundo,”she sobbed. “The most beautiful blondie in the World has died.”Only a dirty American politician World commit a crime like that, to deprive us of the most beautiful woman Hollywood ever had, just to keep his dirty secrets safe. Those are crimes that can only be committed in USA by USA for nobody`s`benefit.
USA has a lot to answer for, in matter of crimes. You, my most cherished reader,know what I am talking about. A day like today the big plane Enola gay swooped down on Hiroshima,Japan,piloted by Tibbets and dropped the first bomb killing so many innocent people. A foreshadow of 9-11? In 1942 on Good Friday April 18th they had already sent 16 fighter planes to hunt down Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto over the Solomon Islands to make him pay for having planned the attack on Pearl Harbor a few months before. 16 planes for one single man, come on people!Out of proportion. The biggest coward always wears the biggest sword, said my ancestor Peter the Cruel of Portugal. So the bomb was dropped.People phad their bodies pulverized as they walked.How many cats died there?How many babies were unborn? How many people became mutants? Never to be forgiven. Never to be forgotten. I as a citizen of this world, as a pacifist,can never forgive nor forget. History cannot absolve that kind of capital sin. It is so easy to fight a war and bomb people who don not live in USA. After the US had its civil war,they have always taken their napalm and chewing gum elsewhere, never bother the good old hometown. It is easier to export war along with canned goods and cars.
But the worst crime the USA has committed is the way they slowly but never completely assimilate you when you have the bad idea to believe in American Dreams and they make you jump through a loop of fire, like a trained Bengal tiger. This simile is intentional,ladies and gentlemen. I recently had a shock to see how someone from a very rich and anciet culture, in his hurry to be a gringo, a yankee, forgot all his customs, his beautiful hair down to his knees, his turban and beliefs in order to become a dark and sad version of Jon Voight`s Midnight Cowboy. What happens to the values taught in the homeland when you get a visa, probably a scholarship and a residence? All forgotten in order to become a stud just because you are exotic, and when you go back home only on vacation because you cannot live anymore in “that pretty but third-world country” where you were born, you speak with the idiotic Um,Um that Americans sport in their speech due to lack of vocabulary? And they use this um,um even when speaking their native Spanish, Hindi or Korean. How can an Asian ever forget what happened in Japan? Or Vietnam? Time will never heal all wounds, whoever tells you that is a demagogue. Nothing mitigates old hurts, nothing prevents an old scar tissue to gape open suddenly and start bleeding all over again.
Those old slaps, scoldings and slights always come back. It is up to each person to digest his own bile. Then you remember and you don`t want to apply for a visa. You cringe every time you see someone wearing a t shirt with the bald eagle on it, and remember that Leonese poet Leonel Rugama said in one of his poems that “such a deed would humiliate the hen that the coat of arms boasts in the disguise of an eagle.”Mean,.right? What an ugly way to demean the big bird of prey, but the eagle has been attacking my country since so many years ago in any way possible.
As a patriot, I cannot imagine how someone can become fully assimilated in the USA. A chip off the old block that contains the personality must be missing or severely damaged. Can a dollar paycheck buy off your heritage, and you can assuage your qualms by saying that fat paycheck pays your airfare first class back to your backward country full of brown people, with your arms laden with gifts? Can a conscience, a national identity be dollarized? Can it lead you to say that what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was okay but that Pancho Villa was a bandit 300 per cent of the time?
I cannot imagine how in a country that says it supports something that doesn`t really exist in real practical life-democracy- crimes like those against Marylin Monroe, Malcolm X and terrorism of state like the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can exist. I know you are not shocked by what I am saying. I see you clearly nodding your head, and the hair you say you might lose soon is softly moving. Crimes exist in history which even the face of time cannot bear,hiding its blush of shame among old musty pages. The loss of lives, whether it be of the most beautiful blondie in the world, or of those thousands of innocents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will always be the gaping wound on the side of the world,and it shall never close no matter what we say.

the goblet of champagne

August 3rd,and 4th 32d entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

Born:
1811 Elisha Graves Otis inventor (safe elevator), too bad he couldn`t lift our spirits as well
1923 Anne Klein fashion designer (Anne Klein II) 1924 Leon Uris US, novelist (Exodus, QB VII)this guy jerked so many tears from me with his Works he should have his own swimming pool in heaven filled with them

Deaths which occurred on August 03:
1954 Colette France, novelist (Claudine, Chèri), dies at 81,an avid cat lover and one of the wisest women who ever lived, she believed cats spoke in French. Of course, both French and cats are perfect, like Colette.

On this day...
1492 Columbus sets sail from Palos, Spain for "Indies, to bring us disgrace ,syphillis and slavery to the “New World”, this bastard should have stayed at home plucking out his lice
1971 Paul McCartney announces the formation of his group Wings, band with which he would smack a few hits yet like Silly Love Songs.
August 4th
St Dominc`s Day, inquisitor who fought the Albigensians.
Birthdates which occurred on August 04:
1755 Nicolas-Jacque Conte inventor (modern pencil) 1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley England, romantic poet (Adonais)
1901 Louis Armstrong New Orleans, Jazz musician & bandleader, "Hello Dolly" - oldest musician in Billboard history to have a Number One song
Deaths which occurred on August 04:
1265 Simon de Montfort English baron, dies in battle 1526 Juan Sebastian ElCano Spanish explorer, dies
Events
1578 Battle of Alcazarquivir, Morrocans defeat Portugeese 1693 Dom Perignon invents champagne


CONQUEST

The only thing I have gotten from the fact that the Spaniards came to kill, loot and contaminate my continent is that I speak the most perfect language in the world: Spanish. The story of conquest is always a sad one no matter how historians try to disguise it or make it look like a cartoon. Anger will continue to lurk anywhere and whether we admit it or not, we are affected by things that happened so many years ago. I have the great bliss of being able to confess that not a single drop of Spanish blood courses through my veins.
As a Jewess of Sephardic origins, the fact that this continent was ravaged by what Jewish money could buy still makes me wave angrily the tip of my purple lion`s tail.
Conquest. There was a movie made about it,and the best of it was the music by Vangelis and the lead role by French actor Gèrard Depardieu- The Conquest of Paradise 1992. But it fails to depict the brutal reality of how Jewish capital swindled off the hands of many Sephardites ended up being used for such an awful purpose.
It is a reality that the Spaniards have always loved having an easy life,and that is why the people from the Basque and Catalonian region would rather separate from Spain, because they are tired of having to feed a lot of lazy, party-circuit and illiterate bums. When the last prince of the Umayyad dynasty arrived worn and chased to form a new dynasty of his own in Spain, the Iberian peninsula would improve so much it was incredible. The Moors, as the Arabs were called back then, not only brought the kiss of civilization to this peninsula which had seen the marching elephants of the great Hannibal the Carthaginian in the prechristian era when he launched the 2d Punic War, but also the Jews were invited in by the enlightened Islamics.The combination of these two civilizations led to the flourishing epoch of the Arab occupation of Spain. Unfortunately, in the 15 th century a couple formed by two of the most bigoted monarchs came to power and intheir plan to unify Spain they decided to leave the Islamics and the Jews out of it. Well, not completely because they fell on their money and persecuted them with the Inquisition. Those who agreed to convert out of fear were to continue living under the shadow of Isabelle and her husband Ferdinand.
But the fortune which Isabella raised in order to finance the trips for an obscure,lice-infested navigator from Genoa who had already tried luck in Portugal before coming to Spain would be from all the Jewish families that the Crown had persecuted and confiscated.
The adventurous Genoan used all kinds of tricks to get the sex-starved sovereign to pay attention to him, and he had already sulked and raved when he was reached on the way to France by an emissary who promised him whatever he wished.
The process of evicting the Islamics and Jews from Spain had left hteir treasury sorely thin.
The fortunes of many non-christians were to be poured into the coffers of the Catholic Majesties, who knew that a wise investment would guarantee that Spain would continue being the kept woman of Europe. Isabella may have been lusting after Columbus, but that was only a bonus for this woman who never did anything without sheer cold calculations entering into the deal. The bantering dialogs between the Italian and the pre menopausic queen(played by Sigourney Weaver in the movie with Gerard Depardieu) only suggest what really went on between these two. Most historians tend to turn a blind eye on the relationship that went on a a strictly personal level between the prudish yet always horny Isabella of Castille and the navigator. Perhaps when Ferdinand heard about it after his wife`s death, that was one of the reasons why he refused to pay the debt he had with Columbus. Curiously, Isabella who hated the Jews so much is credited with having rolled in bed with one, since there are Jews in Columbus` family tree. There was no pawning of jewels in order to fund Columbus` trip. It was wiser to say that and children are bullshit-fed since their early school days that the generous queenie unselfishly gave up wearing her earrings in order to bring Christianity to the erring aborigines.
Columbus Day. Celebrated in USA as well as the rest of Latin America, it is one of the awfullest days that could have ever happened. In Nicaragua it is celebrated as Race Day.
Which race, the one they came to soil? Celebrate? Nothing to celebrate, everything to deplore. I loathed it every time I was forced to dress up in my Nicaraguan huipil and take some typical food on that day to school just because our Spanish teacher had set up some silly pageant for the benefit of a conquest that was just too much.
Sometimes I try to get into Columbus`shoes.
Hard job. I was not born a scoundrel, so it is difficult to imagine what Columbus felt like.It must have been a sight when his men were about to rebel against him, thinking they would never see land again. Legends holds it that he kissed the ground. Can greed make you do such a thing? Yes, that and more. Columbus was insatiably greedy. That would land him in chains, at his royal lover`s feet,and the same greed pushed him into the bad oversight of not noticing the delta of our San Juan River when in 1502 we Nicaraguans had the disgrace of being discovered by him. Columbus was bound to die unpaid for his services to the crown, because once his Isabella kicked the bucket, her widower Fernando chose to ignore him, make a ridicule by marrying the young Germaine de Foix and letting Columbus sink into obscurity and poverty. Columbus just served as a trap door of history for Spaniards to come and destroy our civilization. Mayans had had the best calendar but it was of no use when the invasion of whites came. Aztecs were as subservient as to feed Morcillo-Hernàn Cortez`s capricious horse-water fowl in oil and Malinche fell head over heels in love and served as his translatress. Not many men participated in the final downfall of the Inca empire while Atahualpa and his brother Huascar fought each other and later HUàscar`s head ended up as a drinking cup in his surviving brother`s kitchen. Why did we let all this happen?Look where we are now. The Spanish lust for gold would have a terrible result for the Portuguese bigot under the flag of Spain Ferdinand Magellan, because when he reached Mactam and tried to convert by word the natives over there, he was eaten by them and it was his second in command, Sebastiàn Elcano, by the way dead on a daylike today, who was destined to return with his hair standing on end to Spain, still having nightmares with what he saw over there in the North Pacific.
On a day like today the Catholic Church celebrates the Inquisitor Dominic of Guzman, who committed crimes against the Cathars in southern France, bestowing death and torture on them. This is the guy depicted in the minute image that every August 1st, the people of Managua bring in a noisy pagan procession from the Managua ridge,and it spends ten days in the capital in a church that has his name. On the 4th of August, he is pompously paraded around the central eastern district of the capital as if what he did to the Albigensians were something good. At least the nasty Simon de Montfort died after a stone struck him on a day like today, also attacking the Cathars. Dominic lived to tell the story of his attacks on these highly knowledgeable Christians who got massacred as part of the infamous Albigensian Crusade.
Despite everything the Spaniards did to us and continue trying to inflict upon us, bitterness can`t let us be stagnant. We cannot helpbut celebrate that on a day like today the monk Dom Perignon gave the world champagne, and with our goblet raised we can hail the man who gave us the pencil,and say like Louis SArmstrong sighed in a musica way,”What a wonderful world!”

Philippe

August 2d, 31st entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

1696 Mahmud I Ottoman sultan, fought Austrians & Russians 1754 Pierre Charles L'Enfant France, architect laid out Washington DC, which is why this place is so elegant
1884 Ròmulo Gallegos Venezuela, novelist (Doña Bàrbara, Pobre Negro,Canaima), president (1948)
1924 James Baldwin US writer (Another Country,If Beale Street could talk)
1654 Philippe D`Orleans II, regent of France after his uncle Louis XIVth died
Lhard worker, a womanizer and multitalented beauty of a man
Kicked the bucket
1923 Pres Harding dies at Palace Hotel, San Francisco, a purported heart attack but some said his wife poisoned him for having so many affaires1934 Paul Von Hindenburg dies at 86, Hitler takes over presidency, yuck
What happened?
1492 Jews are expelled from Spain by King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella, they had been notified 8 months before to get lost but without their money, which was used to pay the lice-infected Columbus to come to look for our riches in America
1776 Formal signing of the Declaration of Independence, before this date it was said that whoever signed would be accused of treason and everybody wet their pants in fright

Ton Petit Corbeau Noir
“I love it when you are silent, as if a kiss were sealing your lips,”said a verse by Chilean Nobel-Prize winner Pablo Neruda, and that was repeated to me by one of my prize students. I told him I was at that moment with my favorite Frenchman in my imagination, the Regent of France after King Louis XIV th had died, Philippe D`Orlèans, who was born a day like today. Philippe had been a patron opf the arts, a womanizer, excellent military and an atheist in times where anything could happen to you if you confessed something like that.
He was unorthodox to the point of laughter or fright or both, could compose, cook, dance,play tennis and write poetry. A Renaissance man who called the love of his life,Madame Therese de Parabère his small black raven ,”mon petit corbeau noir.” I was so obsessed by him that when I was a student in France I tried on his coat of mail and somehow I fit into it, but when I tried to get out of it something stuck around my hips and I couldn`t be rid of the thing until 1 hour later, when a specialist, bathed in his own sweat, finally plucked me out of the Regent`s metallic armour.
When he died at age 49 on December 2d, the duc d'Orléans' heart was taken to the Val de Grâce church in Paris and his body to Saint-Denis Basilica, (about 10 km north of Paris), the necropolis of the French kings and their family. The official funeral ceremony did not take place before February 12, 1724 and some people had the temerity to sing obscene lyrics allusive to his womanizing habits when the coffin passed by.The heart of the duc d'Orléans, Regent of France, is now at the Chapelle Royale de Dreux, the necropolis of all the members of the Orléans family, built in 1816 and finished during the reign of his great-great-grandson, Louis-Philippe, King of the French. I had been there at this church to take a bouquet of thirteen red roses for this man who has always had a particular hold over my heart. Which brings me to this idea: what questions could this very handsome and multitalented nephew of the Sun King would have asked in he came back from his death, maybe in the form of alien cat from Venus or the star Antares? How would he have observed our customs and rituals that make us acceptable in this world we insist on calling globalized, although we know the real globalization may have started ages before internet, when Alexander the Great went to fight King Poros of India or when Marco Polo brought the Chinese oranges with him coming back to Italy.
Take it for granted that only a crazy historian like me could answer his questions, taking off his wig because his own hair is much sexier…I love men with long hair, you know that. I want Philippe to sit next to me and call me his Petit Corbeau Noir. I have earned it.I wrote him a long tale some years ago, and I feel I have treated him well with my pen. I deserve to hear his questions. Let him land in my lap as a fat angora cat, if he wants.And let him stretch, meow loudly. Dig his nails into my knee. Before he starts wondering at our foibles and gadgets, and from his new point of view as a cat let him wonder why we humans are so crazy that we put the meat to dance in a microwave when we are defrosting it. I know I will find him ion top of my bed even though he now as a cat can criticize that we sleep on big bouncy tables and that instead of being on top of the tablecloth we nestle under a thing called blanket. He will not quite understand why us women spend so much money on loose powder to smoothen our faces, but we complain when the dust, which is also brown, coats our furnitures after a dust storm, making us scream at the maid like my father`s first wife used to do (even writing in her tentative ungrammatical Spanish AKI AY POLVO, LINPIARR, please here is some dust clean up) on the dirty surface of a mirror. As a sideral cat with one green eye and the other on as hazel as my own, Philippe wil question me why is it that men go nuts and chase the skimpiest-dressed sexy gal only to impose upon her nunnery garments and repression once they have nabbed her for keeps. He will say it is as absurd as buying a long blond wig just to cut it shorter, dye it in black and then wear it so.I can hear him chuckling, thinking that when we get married we are asked to be one sould divided in two bodies, and he laughs because it was not so wuith his awful cousin-wife with whom he had to sire 8 kids without loving her, and he may tell me that if a married couple is two people in one and two sould joined, why don`t they pour both bodies into a giant blender like the one I have in the kitchen and just grind the two people together? Because he wasn`t ever happy in his marriage, and neither quite with his main mistress, Ma.Therese ds Parabere, because one day it dawned upon him that she was having other gys too and he grabbed her by the neck and said it would be so easy to remove that charming little head from those white shoulders and his “petit corbeau noir” just fled in panic never to be seen again near him. Is that what love is about?Loving someone to pieces?
Love and war are akin to each other. In both,everything is valid. Philippe knew it,so he will ask me what the next big war will be about.Not land anymore.Over water.Apremonition of it came when Bayezid Yildrim I of the Ottoman Empire had his men dying of thirst in the Battle of Ankara just because he could not access the water,where Timurlenk`s elephants were drinking. And speaking of elephants, Philippe in cat form will ask me why humans are so mean, that they must involve horses, donkeys, dogs, pigeons and camels and elephants in war, to die with them. Philippe has an answer to each question, now that he has been dead for so long and reincarnated into this lazy cat I have here on my lap. He will tell me that no matter how much you love, it is useless and fun at the same time, dearest reader at times out of reach. War and love will be our constant curses, if we dare to call them like that. After World War II the United Nations was created to stop all wars, and they have been able to do nothing about it.It is when we have had more wars! Philippe would be laughing smack in their faces, the way I do when someone who has never seen me asks me to be a brood mare because women are only for that and I have the perfect genes to be the mom of his child, who will be born with a beard and turban like the cover of Khalil Gibran`s book The Prophet. Eugenics, for Marx`s sake please! Not even like that could we produce the human who refuses to go to war.
I ask Philippe to lower my lamp a bit. Was it a scorpion bite on my wrist that brought out again my shield and armour? I laugh at the idea, as you will too. But I have been thinking about Philippe D`Orlèans all day. I am his petit corbeau noir.The cat gets off my lap and like Silvio Rodrìguez`s lost Blue Unicorn, fades into the horizon of my slumber. Thoughts are a wisp of smoke from our life force.We have them,dream them, cry a bit over them if broken .And we move on.

Fascination

30th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook

August 01:
Born10 -BC- Claudius 4th Roman emperor (41-54 AD) the best source for Etruscan history126 Publius Helvius Pertinax Roman emperor (193 AD,so brief the poor chap, reigning for three months after Commodus got drowned by an athlete in his pool, we hardly remember him s more than assassinated due to the avarice of soldiers
1779 Francis Scott Key composer (Star-Spangled Banner)lawyer,wanted to be a poet, but did he sing the anthem off key?
1818 Maria Mitchell 1st American woman astronomer on Nantucket Island 1819 Herman Melville US, author (Moby Dick, Billy Budd) one of the greatest American writers1889 Dr John F Mahoney developed pencillin treatment of syphilis
1936 Yves Saint-Laurent fashion designer (Opium, Obsesión)Algerian born
Events
1834 Slavery abolished in British empire, was it really?
1861 Brazil recognizes Confederacy, ooooops another faux pas from the colonial Braganzas who could never keep their boots out of the mud
1521 German reformer Martin Luther wrote in a letter: 'Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for He is victorious over sin, death, and the world.' Which explains the double nature of many preachers from Protestant churches, who believe their female flock should always be growing and multiplying thanks to the powers of their fertility and profligacy

AMID A SHAWL OF CLOUDS

The flight is ready. Everyone who has to be there goes on board vercingètorix 325, the helicopter assigned for this mission. WE are going to the land of two mountains, which is what Ometepe means in nahualt, our aboriginal language from long before the Spaniards came with their syphillis, religion, prudery and greed. It is a clear morning with no trace of rainclouds, blue-poster-perfect skies and gentle wind. Somehow the laptop incorporated here doesn`t seem to want anything to do with an internet connection and for the moment I am technically cut off from you. Technically only, my most faithful of all readers. How can I be cut off from my own thought which is to say the same?
Below us gapes Asese, the lake port at Granada. The islets are like a cluster of scattered emeralds and jades on the blue sapphire of Lake Cocibolca. Once upon a time it was the only freshwater body in the whole world where you could find sharks, who swam their way from the Caribbean Sea into the lake by means of the San Juan River. You can go there by ferry but we arrive by means of this helicopter, and there she is. I always think of the island as a woman. The two volcanoes,Concepciòn and Maderas,give this island its name.Land of two mountains. Maderas already holds a lagoon,and is considered dormant or extinct.
But Concepciòn hasn`t yet forgotten her temper tantrums. She is still a female to be reckoned with, who smokes her pipe once in a while and wears elegant shawls made of gossamer clouds to look even more beautiful.
I can`t take my eyes off her, and this takes me to think about what fascination can be.
Concepciòn is a common name mostly for girls in Nicaragua, and the apocopation of it is Concha, Conchita. I am in love with Conchita. I had passed by her on several occasions on visits to my lover, the San Juan River, way down south. But I had never stopped to greet her formally until now. She ouffs on her pipe ,another small cloud of ash. Yes, it is fascination. What are the formulae for this? How does the mechanics for coup de foudre function? If they do? I walk around dazed, wondering how I had missed so much beauty after 48 years of being in this world, in this real valley of tears but also of laughter.
How many people have had the perfect soulmate for their lives sitting right next to them and have died without realizing what it was all about? Or worse, realizing it was so until the other person has died?
The memory of Augusto comes back to me. Ouch, that hurt. A smiling gladiator`s kick in the stomach, a snatched bite from your back into the mouth of a cougar. Fortunately, memory`s lesions don`t bleed or we would all be wearing a permanent red fluid suit, if we only had as much blood as bigot Mel Gibson assumed poor Jesus had in order to make the flogging scene gory- perfect.
Augusto Gomez was the general manager of the still-state-owned ENITEL, the telephone and internet company of Nicaragua. Among the students that I had, one of his technicians was the best one, yet he would sometimes be absent. When I refused to replace a test for the guy, he asked if a letter of justification from his boss would ease things and jump over the boulder of my incredulity. I gave a half-hearted yes. The following day, he appeared not only with the leteer, but also with summons from his boss for me. Augusto wanted to meet me. Big deal.Why should I go to HIM, and not the other way around?Well, I told myself swallowing my lion`s pride, Mohammed-who was far wiser than myself-said that iof the mountain won`t come to you, you might as well start walking and get to the mountain yourself. So two days later, after I had fixed the appointment by phone, I arrived. He didn`t make me wait. This 60-ish man who looked like a swarthy version of the Japanese genius of the synthesizer Isao Tomita almost broke my bones in a bear hug and point-blank asked me about Charles de Gaulle, not the French dictator but my own beloved pet ocelot I had when I was an adolescent. He disarmed me. I told him the ocelot had been donated to the Juigalpa zoo because his hormones had gotten out of hand, an upon arriving at the zoo he had gotten randy with the two females in heat he found there, giving my parents and I the dubious benefit of watching a porn flick right there.He burst out laughing and said I hadn`t changed much, and explained he was one of the people who came on Thursday evenings to play chess with my dad and then commit unspeakable acts of piggery when my mom served his heavenly and abundant food.
WE talked about his underling and the solution was instantly given. Then he showed me something that soothed my ego: all the history articles I had published in a local newspaper were neatly bound in leather-covered tomes. The 5 books on history that I had already published and were being used as texts in schools and universities were there too. Several pictures of me that had been taken by diverse photographers including the peerless Franco Peñalba Cara were there. I swallowed hard. To top it off, this man made me an offer I couldn`t refuse,as Mario Puzo said through Don Corleone in The Godfather. He wanted me to make a website on history for his company. He would pay me well.
I was still in the stage in which I mistrusted computers intensely, surely because I could handle them even less than I can now(which isn`t much either). I had come to solve a problem with a student, not to get an offer I couldn`t refuse from a man who had obviously been hit by a thunderbolt upon seeing me. I replied that I would sleep on it.
I had sat in the back yard under the mango tree with my cat Ostoche and my turtle Torquemada after I came home from Augusto`s office. They seemed to be giving me the go-ahead.
Two days later the plan for the website La Historia Segùn Cecilia(History according to Cecilia)was being tailored. The fee I would get was spoken about,and a schedule to get working was fixed. Augusto got me the best web designers he had, arranged a desk for me on the second floor of the building where he was, and introduced me around to everyone.
The tall and ugly spokeswoman hated me at first sight. This tender feeling was reciprocal.
I started gathering all my articles and illustrations. But sometimes I worked more with Augusto himself than with the designers, because he insisted on doing the work himself. He confessed he had become an engineer to please his dad, that what he really had wanted to be was either historian or circus juggler.I have to admit that sometimes it made me so self-conscious working with a guy who never took his eyes off me. He was learning about history so rapidly. On one occasion, when I was very tired, he said I could leave the 500 illustrations there in a diskette and he would do the job of identifying the personalities. I thought he was just bragging and since men love to brag like peacocks, I let him be. So great was my surprise when I came back after the weekend and found all pictures neatly labelled. Correctly, except two pictures that were almost identical:King Edward VIII of England and the last tsar of Russia, the useless and stinky Nicholas II. Even I could have confused them, so great was the similarity. Working at such an accelerated pace, this webpage was launched in September before our national holidays. Once on the air, the summons from Augusto`s boss came. He wanted another website, this time only containing information, trivia, poems,biography and pictures of our national bard Rubèn Darìo, known internationally as the Prince of Castillian Letters. I started to sweat. I have always liked Darìo`s poetry, but messing around with a full site on him ws no joke. I had never labelled myself Darian, as do all those pseudointellectuals who want to live off Darìo by asking for donations to live well themselves, something our poet never did. Augusto and I would be working on that, and the webhosting would fall upon my lap. It was also an offer I couldn`t turn down.
Working again with Augusto was a merry-go-round of strange feelings, including moments of perfect understanding that accounted for bliss. Nothing to do with bed, people. I lost track of time and my birthday, October 4th,Animal`s Day came.I was so busy I had forgotten about it. When I came into what was my niche in the top floor, I almost had a heart attack. “Who died?” was the only thing I asked. Looked like a gangster`s funeral.
Augusto quickly explained that since he had not yet gotten around to asking me which were my favourite flowers, he made sure not to miss by buying all the flowers he could get…dandelions,gladioli,roses,wisterias,lilies,calas,orchids, chrysanthemums,daisies,violets and sunflowers. I was overwhelmed, blushing and laughing. Then someone came up with an enormous cake,ice cream and sodas to celebrate my birthday. At home, I had srill gotten nothing, not even a kiss. Fascination is the constant drop of water that falls on a stony heart and makes a small hole which may be getting warmer, and bigger and worst of all, tender.
What would become of me? I couldn`t sleep properly. The website on Rubèn Darìo was coming okay, more than okay. I wasn`t sure of what I wanted. I knew that sooner or later I would have to apply the same solution that poet Robert Frost did in his poem The Road not Taken. How to give up so much sweetness when you had never known it before?
The decision was taken out of my hands by kismet,fate. Kismet acted like a jealous woman who cannot tolerate to see anyone happy. Two weeks or so after my birthday, Augusto caught the flu. He didn`t think much of it. He didn`t even bother to take care of himself.
But on a Wednesday, he was taken to a hospital. He was running a high fever. I continued working on the website. Then, on Friday, I was asked by his secretary to please go and see him at the hospital. Back then I was teaching English on Friday evenings at a local private university, and that Friday I had a very important test with me students starting at 6 p.m. At 430 I went to the hospital and I was appalled to see him in bed, completely emaciated and looking 30 years older. He had an intravenous needle into the inside part of his elbow I sat next to his bed and we chatted about several ideas for the Rubèn Darìo Homepage. Then at 5¨30 I got up and said I had to get going because my students had a test. That did him in.
Weak as he was, he sat up in bed and accused me of being a cold intellectual machine who never had time for anything or anyone. He was so angry he threw the glass of water that was on top of his night table and nearly missed me, I was scared.I just told him I would come to see him again the following day after I finished teaching at 2 p,m. for the Saturday English courses. He told me not to bother because he would be dead by then.
The following day I was uneasy. During one of the breaks, my students said that while I was buying a soda at he cafeteria, an Oriental-looking man with glasses and wearing jeans and a plaid shirt came to look for me. He left after grumbling that I would never be there.
That was at eleven a.m. Later on, I had to stay over for a teacher`s seminar ,and it ended at 5 p.m.
I went straight home. On Sunday I had so many things to do that I forgot about Augusto. It wasn`t until I went to my office on Monday that life slapped me around. I hadn`t read the newspaper at home, but when I saw it, there it was on the first page. His picture, with an obituary, He had died on Saturday morning at 11 a.m. from hemorrhagic flu. I started howling like a shot wolf, long painful howls without tears. Sorry.folks,this Teeny Tune has no happy ending. I had to finish the Rubèn Darìo Homepage alone. Never in tears,because I have never had talent for tears. But it was a job well done. I refused to continue doing anything in Telematix Internet. It took a while to get my wages paid, but finally they did pay. I hate to confess that other friends would tell me,sigh with relief,you didn`t have to do anything. Don`t carry a coffin with your heart in it. I tried my best to forget but since I am a historian I couldn`t. Writing about it has not diminished the pain,regret and guilt I feel. Time hasn`t been able to close that soft spot I still have for the blind,overwhelming and overt fascination that this man had for me-it was beyond any crush. I tried exorcising the whole thing by writing my short story The Road Not Taken(Pìdele al tiempo que vuelva) and this entry into my Scrapbook. But this lesson that life taught me has perhaps given me a dose of humility, and the capacity to understand fascination. If I hadn`t gone through this experience, dearest reader, I wouldn`t be able to explain so many things. And I wouldn`t have fallen in love with this fascinating cone-shaped volcano who at any moment may burst into tears of lava, or choke up on her own ashes. I wouldn`t compare her to a beautiful indigenous princess wearing her shawl of clouds, wispy cirrus about her ashen shoulders.
Love never damages, people, although it may hurt more than an ingrown toenail. I was not only valued as a historian, feeling proud to belong to the same timeless guild as emperor Claudius, princess Anna Conmnena of Byziantium or proud Winston Churchill but also as the person who can shed crystal tears although nobody will catch me doing it if I can help it..