monarchs to ourselves

88th entry for the Colonel´s Scrapbook
Birthdates for January 24:
0076 Publius A Hadrianus 14th Roman Emperor (117-138)m the lover of Antinoo, animal assassin through his circus shows, oppressor of the Jews 1705 Farinelli "Carlo Broschi" Andria Italy, castrato, favorite of King Philip V, whose melancholy his voice drove away1712 Frederick II (the Great), king of Prussia (1740-86), the perfect man, great historian,soldier,philosopher…too bad he left no issue 1732 Pierre de Beaumarchais France, playwright (Barber of Seville), a man of great wit 1746 Gustav III king during Swedish Enlightenment (1771-92) Gustav was assassinated by a conspiracy of noblemen.Gustav III was a benefactor of arts and literature

Deaths on January 24:
0041 Caligula [G C Germanicus], Roman emperor (37-41), assassinated at 28 ,he got stabbed in the balls,and he was the guy who named his horse Incitatus consul of Rome0661 Ali ibn Abu Talib kalief of Islam (656-61), murdered, was the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who ruled over the Rashidun empire from 656 to 661
events

1328 King Edward III of England marries Philippa of Hainault, but in her old age he would yank her jewels away to have them worn by his mistress
1568 In the Netherlands, Duke of Alva declares William of Orange an outlaw, because for Spaniards back then being a patriot was a sin

THE PRIVATE KING WE HAVE

One of the men I have most admired in history is Frederick II of Prussia, the Great, the enlightened despot, my Fritz. Once he told his friend Voltaire that we all had a king navigating inside our bloodstream, and that once or twice in life the ordinary man or woman were liable to feel the weight of this kingship. After many quarrels between monarch and French writer, after time has not totally faded the memory of those deeds left behind by this extraordinary king, I tend to agree with Fritz. His kingship went unhampered until he died, but before that he had lots of ways to show what stuff he was made of.
I sit alone at my PC, where I should always be left alone as a matter of elementary decency and respect for the privacy I am entitled to as a living creature, and meditate over my kingship. I remember another sovereign, Louis XIV th of France, who managed to keep his sense of monarchy even when surrounded by courtiers and cronies who would pester him even when he was grunting at the chaise perceé. Hoe many papers can you sign when you are having trouble relieving yourself? How valid is it when someone says he is going to the place where the king goes alone? The toilet? Was Louis ever alone there? Is kingship a trap like any other, stifling like marriage when your body doesn´t seem to get rid of the hormonal Alzheimer and continues feeling after you should be decorously indifferent? Is it like being a pillar of society, a stout matron who shouldn´t be wearing miniskirts after she removes her work clothes? Is it like a ball and chain similar to the married name, furthermore stifling when you have become famous under the husband´s name, the scar on the Miura bull ´s shoulder pr haunch? Atrocious, dearest reader, the Miura bull goes to the bullfight where it shall die with that mark, drowning in his own blood while only one person in the crowd-me-cheered when the bull drove his horn into the matador´s ass and nearly sodomized him in public. Silently my husband´s cat comes in to this room where I write to you, and he passes his tail over my legs. He doesn´t poke his head into the PC as others do. He sits amiably next to me and he starts washing, grooming, cosseting himself. He is a sovereign unto himself. Is he also seeking refuge from the loud invasion of cheap ranchera music that invades the living room, violating our exquisite taste for Vivaldi and Shankar? Kingship has often been raped and mutilated, in everyday ways and greater ones too. Remember the iron hot rod pushed into King Edward II of England´s ass? Or the imprisonment of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine? Or poor widowed and white-haired Sha Jehan imprisoned in the Red Fortress by his son Aurangzeb? Kingship has its own inbuilt trappings. Being a public figure runs the same way. It is a cage. No way out, not being able to fart silently while walking on the street even though gases may be killing you.
Kingship is funny. It teaches you to play god until you become addicted to the practice, unless you are wise enough to stop the jump midway. It is a mortal jump. Sometimes you are already mid air when you realize there is the abyss that pride always lays at your feet for it to swallow you alive. No net below, you kill yourself instantly. Overbearing helps you jump over the cliff. The blows and bruises I have gotten over time have shown me you can never be too stubborn. There are never higher walls than when you build them around yourself, and the first thing you must know is that if you built them from inside out it will be worse. We often paint ourselves into the corner, and we don´t always have the wings to fly way above our footprints of mistakes.
Kingship is not for everyone, which is perhaps a rather harsh thing to say. Kingship is not the same as the condition that leads someone to be a tyrant. Being a dictator is the utmost vulgarity that can exist. Nicaraguan men have a strong proclivity for this, although they would rather die than confess to it. They still mistake kingship for dictatorship. It is throwing the soup into their wife´s face because they wanted a masculine meal with lots of cholesterol and animal death in it, a meal “fit for an engineer” as rudely expressed by my stupid maternal uncles to my weary grandmother when once she had the temerity to serve delicious spaghetti. It is imposing rules with no sense in them, or trying to control the economics of a household even when they are not the main breadwinner. Not kingship, sir, only dictatorship, and we all know how dictators end up, pathetic shadows like the sad finale of Fidel Castro or Nicolas Ceaucescu, echoes of their worst times shitting into a colostomic bag. Only kingship can dignify most decisions, dictatorship alone demeans us.
Kingship is rising above our nimious details of everything suffering, shedding the old dry skin of past complexes, dusting your mind freely without being able to run scared from your own mistakes. Kingship gives a crown to our most minimal intentions,a nd puts us apart from all the miseries we have as a natural burden. Kingship is not god given,we snatch it from kismet´s hands and wear it as a crown.If the crown has thorns, well, it is up to us to goldplate them.

On Daríos birthdate

87th entry to the Colonel´s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on January 18:
1641 François Michel le Tellier French statesman (Marquis de Louvois) was the French Secretary of State for War for a significant part of the reign of Louis XIV. Louvois and his father, Michel le Tellier, would increase the French Army to 400,000 , an army that would fight four wars between 1667 and 1713.Classy warmonger-wasn´t he?1795 Anna Paulowna Romanova daughter of czar Paul I really as useless as her dad
1841 Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier France, composer (Le Roi Malgré Lui,España Rhapsody)pre impressionist composer
1867 Rubén Darío national poet (Nicaragua),born on an oxcart befote arriving at Metapa, now named alter him Ciudad Darío
events
1486 King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, together they would manufacture Henry VIII
1535 Francisco Pizarro founds Lima Peru, he was the guy who got Atahualpa killed
1644 Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston reported America's 1st UFO sighting, at least they didn´t believe it was Jesus landing with buckles
1943 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto begin resistance of Nazis, was about time

WRITER´S DAY

As sweat pours down my back like the rapids of the San Juan River-I am not allowed to use fan anymore in my writing room, words shall pour out in sweat because being a writer shall be hard work-I sit down to write this entry about the difficult path a writer follows. It is January 18th, and our national poet Rubén Darío made his entry into this world on a day like today. He was born on a oxcart, and legend has it that his parents were having one of their usual quarrels when sir hit the lady on the belly and hurried Felix Ruben García Sarmiento into this valley of tears before it was his time. Of course, later on it was said that he had been born in an old adobe corner in Metapa, the first city where Rosa Sarmiento-his mom-stopped after delivering him. Not convenient to mention those sordid details about an author coming from such a dysfunctional family. White wash everything, dearest reader, don´t mention sexual transgressions or divorces, it gives a bad read! Rosa disappeared from Rubén´s life while he was a toddler, and someone saw fit to blacken her name by saying she had eloped with another guy and left the future bard with some relatives in León. Whatever was, had to be,and our Rubén signing himself as Darío,ended up being the Prince of Castilian Letters, showing the Spaniards that an indigenous man with slack black hair can master their perfect language better than they ever did. Father of modernism, the mediocre Costaricans have tried to usurp his birthplace, and Chile and Argentina -where he lived during his youth and published his first works-also love to lay claim to him. Excellence always brings those claims, along with the green snake of envy.
I know what the green snake of envy,with its tongue of ignorance, wreaks. It is the same element that makes a husband prefer a well done steak over a new short story, and if the short story is good he will call you a pervert- It is the young woman who inherits the writer´s streak from the oppressed mother but is too comfortable to fight alongside. She wants to keep the optical illusion of a perfect home intact, although her dysfunctional family is a walking bomb prone to explode at any minute. No wonder SylviaPlath stuck her head into the oven. She spent so much time smiling cheese. But gas is too expensive to be wasted on suicide and I have never believed doing myself in will benefit me, so that is ruled out. Young talents. So wrapped up in their own perfume. So much to learn. It is so difficult to compete sometimes, specially when one is not sure if one will fulfill the promises that the fairy godmother of talent may have made. Poor comparison, but remember the Dream Weaver by Gary Wright?Bloom for one single spring, reminds kismet. It can happen to anyone.
Does walking home with a medal or a trophy compensate for the perils of a writer´s endeavours? Praise is a soft glove, over a wooden hand or iron fist. I don´t want praise. I only wish for a respect of my individuality, whatever makes me myself and not another figure in a uniform or with a degree hanging over her desk. Speaking on the phone a moment ago with my good friend, novelist Ricardo Pasos Marciaq, he tells me he had almost forgotten it was our day. In a country like ours where people don´t read and those who do only learn the newspapers in chips by heart in order to further their own lowly interests, the criminals of the story are us the writers. Hated at home for not being in the kitchen serving food to the family, viewed as freaks by our own children who think it would be more useful for mommy to be out at charity meetings, or seen as freaks on a leash by people who don´t want to shed their ignorance, writers in Nicaragua are a class apart. Pasos tells me his super blockbuster The Brothel of the Pedrarias is already into its ninth edition, I rejoice. I have caused scandal with these entries of this book, I know I could even go to jail for some of the things I say. If I were Islamic, I could even be repudiated for my views, or lapidated in Saudi Arabia.
Writing can be more complicated than the worst high risk pregnancy. But I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. I have been censored at a cheap lampoon by a directress who hated me writing about the cross dressers of history because in her family she has a lesbian and a gay sibling. I have nothing against people with different sexual choices, it is just that she still has double standards. I quit over three years ago, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have been denied access to information by government sources, my internet has been clipped off, my yahoo and hotmail messengers wrenched out of my PC by a rabid consort(who has never written a single piece of literature in his life and probably won´t even do so), my mailboxes opened, every bit of correspondence read. I have endured, but not without a black sediment of spite. You are reading part of it. But it is the sediment, not the essence.
The essence is like the product of our small Mariola bee, which produces the sweetest and most golden honey of all. I am the real alchemist to change the rubble of everyday life into the gold we so cherish, golden words. Not magic, simply the act of creation.
I wrestle with demons or angels, but come out battle scarred and happy. The writer is not married to anyone, although once I made the mistake-a big one- of using my married name to earn fame. Writers are also people with feelings, something forgotten by many. Writer´s Day sees me without gift or congratulations from the people who by kin are closest to me, with whom I live under the same roof. It happened the same for my birthday last October. But rather giftless than receiving charity, no candy in jail.
I remember Charlotte Bronte writing Jayne Eyre, with her stern husband resenting every moment she wasn´t taking care of him. Do you wonder how she could have died in pregnancy? Or Agatha Christie, with her envious husband who loved to humiliate her in public.
Being a woman writer seems to bring out the executioner in the men who share our lives. We have something they may want yet are unable to possess. Minds should not fit into pretty bodies, they may think. Or into any kind of body who should have yielded babies and not short stories.
Loud, we are scandalous by nature, women writers. My consort for over 21 years standing shooes me away as a tse tse fly, afraid I will infect his brain with who knows what while he memorizes the newspapers and has wet dreams of becoming a judge before he is finished with law school.. He wants a yielding body and total service. Every piece I write should carry a dedication to him, even when he hasn´t earned it. He is by default the muse, can´t have his dark wifey bearing literary children to others. Keeping dog so it barks for others, no way-He has to eat all the profits of my work. He pokes his nose over my shoulder to see what I am writing, because he was never educated to respect anybody ´s privacy.
I know that women will be reading this and realizing that their cases may be clones of mine. Today I have been bold enough, brazen would men say, to admit that this scrapbook was not incubated in marriage. I have taken locks from your hair and made them into quills to write this. I have come out of the closet and I have kissed and told. It has been as daring as having my own child for and to myself, although that kid and I now have to admit that being someone´s ancestor doesn´t guarantee we will like each other, get along or agree on anything. There is no Spanish Inquisition-officially- so I don´t go to the stake. Physically. I am already being roasted in many people´s opinions, and that gives me a sense of satisfaction. Will I be the one here to put the bell around the angry cat? Too bad my cat Diriangen died yesterday and as a faithful companion of my efforts at the PC, he would applaud if he could read.
A hale mind has always brought upon desires to squelch it by those who cannot even think on their own. Envy is the tribute that the mediocre pay the genius, said Oscar Wilde. I didn´t even get a cheap pen for my day from the person who has most benefited from having a scholarly writer at home. But life always has the bad habit of kicking later on, when one reaps the rewards of exactly that which has been sown by us.

I still would

86th entry to the Colonel´s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on January 12:
1483 Hendrik van Nassau-Dillenburg en Dietz Governor/Viceroy of Holland , how much did he really rule?1562 Charles Emanuel I the great, Duke of Savoy,let´s take the word he was great
1729 Lazzaro Spallanzani Modena Italy, physiologistmpriest,father of artificial insemination,my idol
1751 Ferdinand I king of Sicily & Naples, poor crowned head
1808 Paul "the Great" Taglioni Vienna, ballet choreographer,the best thing he did was father María,who invented toe dancing 1810 Ferdinand II king of Sicily, so much hassle

Deaths which occurred on January 12:1517 Vasco Núñez de Balboa Spanish conquistador/admiral, beheaded at 41 afyer he called the Pacific Ocean “el Mar del Sur”, his last name is remembered in Panamanian currency1519 Maximilian I of Hapsburg, dies, he was a real strong guy who could lift a horse
events
1684 French king Louis XIV marries Madame Maintenon, his solidité who make him revoke the Edict Nantes, the prudish bitch who never became queen, morganatic wife
1755 Tsarina Elisabeth establishes 1st Russian University, of course it had to be a woman to treasure learning

Drops and toys
The crystal drop comes down from the bottle into the translucent tube, down,into me. For one moment it is not my body, it is not the serum I must take to get rid of this hemorrhagic flu which marked the beginning of this year. Scientific curiosity nestling into me, or seeping from my pores? Today it is a year since I broke the two malleoli on either side of my ankle. But Lazaro Spallanzanni, the most useful priest I have ever heard of, was born on a day like today. Here he has me, sweating, thinking of him and the cat he loved, Romeo Amore-given to him by the Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg-and how his friendship with this Manx cat brought him to become the father of modern artificial insemination. Father.Pretre Lazaro, father of no children of his own because the silly dogma of his church demands celibacy(did he really follow it…let me laugh) but such a prolific dad of meteorology, gastroenterology, meteorology and vulcanology, and indirectly of the radar because he discovered how bats fly… I look at my almost imperceptibly twisted left ankle and a wide smile spreads over my face. The music to Father Antonio and his altar boy Andres by Ruben Blades keeps me company. Like the Salvadorean prelate Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated by shitty rightwingers, Lazaro was a useful priest. Not being Catholic nor believer of any faith, I would have felt comfortable having either one-Romero or Spallanzanni hear confession from me. Even if I had to blush. At 49 can I still blush..?
At any age, everything, including 49,blushes come handy. I guess even animals blush. When my cats fall out of a tree or turn around at the wrong time, I try not to laugh in front of them. Cats have as many imaginary drops and toys as I had when growing up. One of the greatest drops I saw was protagonized by my russet Torta. I shared a bedroom as a kid,and it had a bathroom incorporated. I usually cleaned the toilet, but one day my sister miraculously did so. She neglected to shut down the lid. Torta,accustomed to my thoroughness, assumed the lid was shut. She used to nestle there on the fake fur that covered the lid. So Torta made a pirouette in the air and fell headfirst into the blue water of the soapy toilet. I don’t think she broke anything by falling so violently in an Esther Williams fashion into the perfumed water of the bowl, but her ego was very warped. I helped her out of the toilet and let her on the rug, so she quickly crawled under my bed without even looking at me, so ashamed she was. She spent the whole day there, not even coming to eat (and she was a glutton, mind you my dearest of all readers).Her stomach churning with starvation urged her out of there around 8 pm. Torta would be prone to lots of accidents further on because she usually had a bad sense for calculating the risks involved in all her pranks. Some years later she decreed, as the queen of the house that she was, that the cuckoo clock my dad had so lovingly brought from Normandie, was doomed to die. The birdie must perish in her claws.
The clock was made of old polished wood, was very precise and every hour a blue and yellow birdie with a stupid face came out to sing cuckoo. For weeks, Torta chose to sleep on the sofa in the living room where the cuckoo was. Usually she slept on my bed. But she needed to collect intelligentsia about the ways and habits of the hated cuckoo. He was to die. One day my cat must have consulted some kind of feline oracle, for she decided it was her D Day. She had a flair for drama. She chose to let my dad know how much she hated Norman cuckoo clocks, so at the precise hour that he was leaving for work, after having lunched and napped, when it was 2 pm she jumped from the corner table, so she flew. It was like watching a stingray float gracefully in shallow waters. She caught the silly birdie in her mouth and wrapped her four paws around the clock. Cat and clock fell down to the living room Persian carpet, and once there, Torta wrenched the birdie off and proceeded to slap it mercilessly against the floor, meowing loudly in victory. She was heaving audibly, with a demonic glint in her green eyes. It was the look of an orgasmic woman, dearest heart. My father was speechless, my mother came out of the kitchen, her face covered with ghastly flour, like a phantom, for she had dropped the sack of flour when she heard the crashing noise. I came from my room to find my cat rolling in delight on the floor with her trophy. My father was the first to lets out hysterical peals of laughter, even though he cherished the clock beyond doubt. He picked up the remains of the clock but left Torta to enjoy the birdie while tears of laughter streamed down our cheeks. The clock was fixed at an exaggerated sum but the birdie was kept by Torta among her toys and when she died,it was buried along with her with military honors.
What would Lazaro Spallanzanni have thought of Torta? He was so in love with his own Manx given by his friend and protector. Romeo Amore would be put to copulate and when he was about to spurt, Lazaro would put a small cup under him to collect his seed. Poor guy, coitus interruptus. But thanks to him today couples who can´t have kids the normal way can still become parents. Romeo survived his associate by 5 years, and Lazaro died in 1799,the same year the Brits would slay the Tiger of Mysore Tipoo Sultan of India.
In my sick bed I always bring Lazaro to my side.I have his same curiosity,only I was not brave enough as an adolescent to continue on in science. Winning 5 science fairs was enough, even if one of my master projects-based on the small book of gardening by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror-got me in trouble with the damned teacher staff at the expensive American Nicaraguan School where I had the disgrace to attend high school. I was playing god and ended up not believing in god. I never forgave. Nor forgot, not even in my bed convalescing from a hemorrhagic flu, remembering the silly way I broke my malleolli one year ago.
Still saying if I had to do it all over again, having the same toys and drops. I would do it again.

The Firefly

85th entry to the Colonel´s Scrapbook
December 30th
Birthdates which occurred on December 30:
0039 Titus 10th Roman emperor (79-81), conqueror of Jerusalem, the darling of Rpme,the guy who finished the Colosseum and wasnt allowed to marry his Jewish Berenice
1851 Asa Griggs Candler developed Coca-Cola originally as medicine
1865 Rudyard Kipling Bombay, author (Jungle Book, Gunga Din,Kim-Nobel 1907)what a wild imagination he had 1867 Simon Guggenheim philanthropist (died aboard the Titanic)patron of the arts
1904 Dmitri B Kabalevsky St Petersburg Russia, composer (In the Fire,The Comedians)I adore him for the incredible Galop in his Suite called The comedians
deaths
1931 Tyrone Power Sr actor (Big Trial, Test of Donald Norton), dies at 62, he was Erroly Flynn´s darling
1916 Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is assassinated by gay Prince Felix Yussoupov, Russia´s greatest love machine, his penis is now in a museum in Saint Petersburg

The fly

Her original nickname, as soon as the test arrived with a positive result,was the Egg. My grandmother,still alive, said that even though I could feel the certainty it was a girl,what would happen if it turned out to be a male? So my only offspring´s first nickname was the Egg and I was finally going to lay one,like a good hen that could be repudiated, thrown into the soup of male spite if I didn´t produce the heir. After six months of anguish,waiting for my belly to yield, I was pregnant. We all marry for the wrong reasons,dearest reader.Even the illusion of love is a wrong reason because nothing is forever. Let alone that everyone throws you into the marriage ringside with your mouth protector in bad conditions, your socks poorly rolled and the mitts not correctly placed. It will be a championship fight.One of you will end up in knockout.Or both.But only us women get knocked up. Curious that I should use that expression, when the real reason why I was married was to have a child. Funny that a medic called Lombardo Martinez, more a connoisseur of the arts than a real gynecologist,told me I was irreversibly sterile after sticking his hand up my privates without any lube nor mittens nor anything. He sent me home in tears and I landed in my already crippled grandmother´s lap,who laughed so hard she pissed in her wheelchair. Nobody had been barren in the family.
Patience, she recommended, and get that husband into bed more often,she preached,but not during Holy Week or you will end up stuck like dogs she admonished me. She was a fervent Catholic, and even though she knew I had been born a Jewess and was a practical atheist,even dared to suggest we please her Jesus by marrying in the Catholic faith. Desperate to get with child, I admit I would have eaten chicken shit if that would do the trick for begetting a baby. Since church was slightly less unsavory than eating any kind of dung, a simple white cotton and satin dress was procured for me and a stylish snow shirt called guayabera for my spouse, and a revolutionary priest called Jose Arias caldera married us in his church. My spouse had undergone a makeshift naptismal ceremony in Saint Anne´s church(the favorite worship place for the narcs here) and gotten his hair wet with Yuri Gagarin´s name. The nest man and godmother were chosen by a lesbian pair of relatives and I feel that ceremony never had any validity.It was on April 9th and on April 11th, after two weeks of thermometers to measure my ovulation my baby was ordered on a rickety bed with some enthusiasm but nothing else to season it. I knew I was into the pregnancy bit finally and that it would be a girl. I started counting the days and when I finally got my positive gravindex test I finally felt complete. Fortunately I had no nausea or any other bothersome symptoms that expecting women have. I didn´t even show much at the beginning. Most women dream of having a baby for and by a certain man that drives them crazy with love,lust or whatever you wish to call it. In my case, I raved over having a baby to see how well I could breed,to show off my pedigree, to pour into one new version all my rich heritage.
The father, if we dare to be honest,is mostly a mere accessory.In the case of lust or obsession being present, a momentary and fleeting satisfaction. Supreme act of narcissism?Probably, my spouse still throws that in my face and says I am worse tham Kim Il Sung of North Korea or Khadaffy of Lybia, personality cult. But no personality cult cam exist if the person really doesn’t have outstanding characteristics, and that is what has made my Fly what she is.
I started calling her fly when she finally began to walk and would fly or run into anything in her way or out of it.
Fly was extraordinary from her bellyhood. No nausea or vomiting for her mom, no pain, only sleepiness and excessive hunger. No wonder she had to be shooed out of me at 8 months because she gained too much weight inside. I drank almost a gallon of pink grapefruit,sour orange juice and coconut drink to evict her, and I paid through the nose.
39 hours of pain but natural birth, even though it was a dry birth.She came into the world at 230 am on December 16th,1988, 92 years after the mad pseudo monk Rasputin plunged into the river in Moscow,poisoned,bleeding from the bullets that Prince Yussoupov´s cronies had gotten into him,and already missing his crown jewels of his groin. At the moment of my labor pains I called my dad, never the man who had gotten me pregnant. The hatred was too big,and no matter how many women say they don’t hate their partner at that moment I will not believe it.It was sheer,bublling and radiant loathing. Almost eleven pounds, my baby had a full crown of dark hair and came out almost purplish in shade. When the obstetrician threw her over my belly,all the air was knocked out.
25 stitches were given to close the episiotomy.To be honest,I never felt anything when I was being cut to let the Fly out. Hours later my parents tried to bribe a doctor to let them take her to replace me at their home, but somehow the medic said no. Today I am glad they were never able to take her, because if they had been able to abduct her, nine months later they would have taken her to Miami on that fateful SAHSA plane which collapsed in Honduras,the plane crash in which they died.
20 years after giving birth to my only child, pristinely legitimate, incredibly beautiful and awesomely smart, I cannot say I have been a model mother.I haven´t given her enough time due to my difficult job, but I have tried to set an example of hard work and honesty for her. The good thing is that somehow she and I can never be really rid of each other, and the bond we have is as inevitable as nationality or the heart pumping blood until we die. Mother hood for me has been the most exciting of my creative processes, and having a genius is something that never lets you rest for a second. It converts you into a shark,always swimming in life to keep yourself astride.
This entry is not meant to be an apology or a sugary literary piece. Being a mother makes me feel superior to men because I could make life and they can only participate,sorry, in the most ephemeral of ways. More tha a housefly to land on cakes, she has been the Firefly which guide the best of historian´s paces through the night forest of every day.

GUIlty of what?

December 28th 2008 63rd entry to the Colonel´s ScrapbooK
births
1855 Juan Zorrilla de San Martin Uruguay's diplomat/poet (Tabaré) 1856 [Thomas] Woodrow Wilson Staunton VA, (28 President-D-1913-21, Nobel 1919)
1872 Pio Baroja Y Nessa San Sebastian Spain, writer (Camino de Perfección)
1895 Auguste Lumiere twin brother of Louis who opened 1st commercial cinema 1895 Louis Lumiere twin brother of Auguste who opened 1st commercial cinema

Deaths which occurred on December 28:
1446 Clemens VIII [Aegyd Muñoz] Spanish anti-pope (1423-29), dies after being one of the most pragmatic chaps
1622 François de Sales French bishop of Genèva/writer/saint, dies at 55 1694 Queen Mary II of England dies after 5 years of rule, at 32, no wonder she died so soon,her husband William III was a living torture
1937 Maurice J Ravel Swiss/French composer (Bolero), dies in Paris at 62 after the surgeon couldn´t pick out a brain tumour
1947 Victor Emmanuel III king of Italy (1900-46)/Ethiopia, dies at 78, how was he bold enough to claim ownership over Ethiopia?

Events
1836 Spain recognizes independence of México
Catholic church commemorates another anniversary of the Massacre of the Innocents when King Herod tried to find baby Jesus

TODAY´S INNOCENTS AND CULPRITS

It was kind of eerie tat last night, remembering it was the first anniversary of the magnicide against Mrs. Benazhir Bhutto, one of the women I have most admired in history, I went to sleep in a state of shock over the genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. I dreamt of Benazhir inevitably, and no matter what you or anyone tell me she did when alive, I cannot get her out of my mind or evict her from my feelings. It goes beyond simple descriptions and sensations, as happens with my wave of shame that the Israeli government can kill women and kids. Those are the things precisely that sometimes make me feel red faced over having been born a Jewess. Judaism is never that, Zionism is in the bad sense of the word. But it is curious how we play on the chessboard of guilts or innocences. When we become as mean and cruel as those who hurt us, we are playing smack into their bloody hands, dearest reader. When we accuse blameless people, people who care and feel as hurt as anyone else affected by the deed itself, and we take out our frustrations and rages on them, we are being as criminal as those who killed ,raped or insulted.
A slap across one´s face hurts more when you are not to blame for anything, but it will hurt more for the conscience-if the slapper has it-later on. When a Tang dynasty vase is broken, no matter how precious it was or how well glued back together it gets, it will never be the same.
Many people assume you are guilty of something unless you go out of your way to demonstrate that you are innocent. Prejudices, ignorance and her son bigotry play a huge role in that. The more uncivilized a mind is, the largest the threshold it has for harboring hatreds and cruelties. Discrimination is based on stupidity, that is for sure. That is why the bigoted person, in a fit of irrational rage, only strikes out against the first thing that happens to fly, crawl or walk by. It is shapeless, indomitable and leaves a trail of broken shards that can shred to bit anything that walks on it. Tears are not balms to heal the scars, which may bleed for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, for small wounds, cat´s saliva works better, it is a secret I whisper here.
Wars, skirmishes, invasions. What an agitated story each country has, well, some more than others. History wouldn’t be history without them, but have you ever realized how many valuable lives all these conflicts ended? Not only human lives. How many animals perished there? They are never mentioned among missing, casualties, losses. As Leonardo Da Vinci said, ”Life, whether it is a baby or a kitten, is precious always.” Only a few of us historians pick those stories in which animals are included. It is like with religions. Have you noticed that none of them speak about the well being of animals? At most, they are mentioned in passing. Nothing else. Once in a while you find someone wonderful like Mohammed, loving his cat so much that he tore the sleeve off his robe so his cat wouldn ´t be disturbed, or Thomas Aquinas mentioning that on Judgement Day we, who believe ourselves to be stronger now, simply will be judged by the animals. Being a historian sometimes can be as disappointing as being a doctor, trying to win over a patient when death finally nabs him and takes him. No matter how many wars we count there will always be some updating needed! No eternal peace reaches us until that day when our ashes get thrown into the San Juan River we loved so much. And then, no guarantee of that anyways. Who has ever been certified to have come back from the Great Beyond to leave any testimony of what goes on over there? War casualties leave enormous holes in the texture of our lives. All those innocent victims torn to pieces in Israel, or anywhere else, will always be testimony of humanunkind´s humongous cruelty, which comes from its enormous stupidity. The slap I got from whom I thought to be my Arab friend still hurts. But his hand, and his remorse, will pain him more.

The Quake

83rd entry to the Colonel´s Scrapboook
Birthdates which occurred on December 22:
1459 Djem Sultan son of Turkish sultan Mehmed II, poor chap,he stayed in Rome to avoid his brother Bayazid II but Pope Alexander V(Borgia)poisoned his pilaf and could never create havoc for his brother

1515 Mary of Lorraine France, pro-French Regent of Scotland, nasty mommy of Mary The Hot Queen of Sccots
1639 Jean-Baptiste Racine French dramatist (Andromaque, Phedra),loved to make people cry

1643 Rene-Robert Cavelier La Salle France, French explorer (Louisiana),named the southern part of USA after King Louis XIV but was destined to be killed by three of his own hired helpers
1819 George Eliot England, Victorian novelist (Adam Bede, Silas Marner)back then it was best for ladies to write under names with balls
Deaths which occurred on December 22:
1440 Bluebeard pirate, executed at last1603 Mehmed III sultan of Turkey (1595-1603), dies at 37, did his 16 brothers whom he killed await for him at hell´s gates?
1913 dies at age 69 emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia, negus negust,he defeated the Italians in the Battle of Adwa
Events
1894 Debussy's "Prélude à l'apres-midi d'un faune" premieres with great scandal because Nijinsky simulated masturbation onstage
1972 an awful earthquake shakes Managua, capital of Managua, somehow I survived it

THAT FATEFUL NIGHT

On December 22d,1972 hell came up to visit Managua. I was 13 years old, and it was not the first time that I came into contact with such a monstrous and Dionyssiac force of nature. A few years before, an earthquake had already hit the part of Managua called Centroamerica Colony. I had been visiting a classmate who had gotten her appendix removed, and she was so enthusiastic about having the teacher and several of her friends visit her that she got out of bed and ventured into the small living room of her house to have tea with us. Precisely on the pillow where her head had been before we came fell a huge block from the wall, something which would have certainly killed her. Our presence had saved her when she decided to get out of her bed. That had been in the sixties.
By 1972 I had grown very tall. The fact that I was into weightlifting had helped to develop my strength and stamina. Two important birthdays were in December, my sister´s on the 19th and my dad´s on the 21st. That year my mom had decided to throw a bash as there had never been one before,so she had stashed away goodies for around 200 people or more. The party was planned for the 23rd, because she and my dad would never miss the end of the year party thrown by the French Alliance in Managua. I remember that for the small dinner party she had for my dad´s birthday she had ordered me to make enormous bags of water to put to freeze for the upcoming celebrations. I had decided to disobey her and I put the bottles of soda into the freezer, planning to retrieve them before they burst. Somehow I forgot about them and 20 bottles of Coca cola exploded inside one of the fridges. I had to clean the glass and mess, almost cutting my fingers. That earned me a chastisement. I would be grounded and not allowed to go to the French Alliance party with the rest of the family. I would be left behind with my grandmother, who owned a huge house in the middle of downtown Managua. If I wished I could take my cat Torta in order to be in good company. So I did, knowing not even my dad would wheedle anything favorable for me beyond that.
It had been swelteringly hot for days before the earthquake. Our pets had been behaving strangely,particularly my Torta. A man even predicted that there could be any natural disaster. Others said they had seen like fireballs over Lake Xolotlán, the lake right next to our capital city. But many people were so busy partying and partying has been occupation number one in Nicaragua. It would prove fateful for many. My whole family paid not much attention to the heat and at 7 pm they went to the party,leaving me with my grandmother. At 8 my grandma,Torta and I had dinner along with a priest we used to call Padre Guaruso(The Drunken Father), a young Spanish priest who was assigned to the nearby Saint Anthony Basilica. We had a delicious brawl soup which made the priest sweat like a molten candle. After dessert of Three Milk Cake (called so because it contains evaporated milk, condensed milk and powdered milk among its ingredients), the priest went to the dormitory in the rear part of the church. My grandmother and I went to bed, and I was tucked in by my grandma along with my hairy cat. At 10:30 pm I was jolted out of bed by a strong tremor. The bedrooms were in the second floor, and the house had been built in the early forties. My grandma poked her head into my bedroom asking me if I was okay. She said she was a bit scared, so she asked Torta and I to join her in her enormous iron bed where she had manufactured my mom,four uncles and three aunts. We hoped everything would get normal again. Slowly the three of us dozed off.
We were violently awakened after midnight by two more quakes,this time much stronger.Ritcher 6.25. Felt on the second floor of a house, it was awful. The earth moaned like a hurt animal. Electricity went off, and debris from the walls fell all around us,making it difficult to walk. I remembered I had a small flashlight so I went to fetch it. My cat remained on the bed with my grandma. My mother´s mom had been a very grand lady who had never gone through hardships. It was difficult for her to walk on the torn bits of wall and ceiling on the floor. She demanded I bring her slippers. She said she wouldn´t walk barefoot. I knew that there was the risk that at any moment another shake could come and tear down the house. So I decided to lift her over my shoulders.She was a small chubby woman, so it wasn´t too much weight. My cat was also terrified, so she climbed on top pf my head as a Cossack hat and drove her nails into my scalp. The staircase had separated from the burnished wooden floor of the second story of the house. A huge gap almost 1 meter wide separated the staircase from the floor. So I geared myself for the jump with one person and one cat atop me. Somehow I made it even though I have always been lousy for long jump. The with the flashlight grasped between my teeth,I slowly went down the stairs. We finally crossed the huge dining room and went into the living room. Only one month ago my grandmother had changed the front door for a new one with the image of Diriangén in bas relief. It had cost her a small fortune. Now that door was stuck. We would have to tear it down to get out or the house could fall on us and bury us alive.
I decided to go to the backyard to get an iron pick in order to knock down the beautiful door. When I informed my grandma about my plans she burst into tears. Nevertheless that was the only way,so I proceeded to do what I still remember with disgust. It was the only way out. The splintered door fell away with a crunching noise and we were out on the sidewalk. All our neighbors were already out. We sat on the sidewalk in the dark, the dust making an eerie halo around us. To amuse my grandmother, I would shake Torta´s fur and tons of dust would emerge like a cloud. That finally got her laughing. By the time my parents and rest of the family finally came to see what had happened to us, we were chatting amiably and even making jokes. That is the Gueguense in us Nicaraguans, we are able to laugh in the middle of a great tragedy. It was the fact that I had been grounded that had saved my grandma´s life. If she had been alone,she would have died in the second floor unable to get down. Curiously, she had always criticized my dad for getting me involved in weightlifting because she always said it was not fit activity for “ladies of quality.” From the moment I picked her out of her bed, she never made any more disparaging comments about the sport and became my first fan. So when I started winning medals the first one to beam proudly was my grandma.
The huge town house my grandmother lived in and 7 more houses she had for rent in downtown Managua didn´t collapse, but were devoured when a huge fire came in from the San Miguel Market, 5 blocks away from the townhouse. My grandma had always refused to live with any of her married children, and now she had to move into my parents´house while she could solve her dwelling situation. For a proud lady, it was a low blow that destiny slammed into her solar plexus. A dusty kick in the ass,to be sure.
We never know how life chooses to teach us the hardest lessons, dearest reader, but life is sure one hell of a professor.
More than 50 thousand people among dead and missing.70 per cent of the downtown buildings in Managua collapsed. There was risk of epidemics due to the rotting corpses, some of which couldn´t be dug out despite the rescue teams we got from other countries. Help started to pour from everywhere, and the dictator Anastasio Somoza´s cronies stole it like crazy. Managua would never be the same. The Christmas celebration has been killed instantly. The cemeteries were full and new places where to bury the dead, sometimes in mass graves, had to be found. Whole families lay beneath the rubble. The scar on the Nicaraguan psyche would never heal, to the point that we now say “before the earthquake” or “after the earthquake” to pin time down. Of course, there had been another big earthquake in 1931, but the Quake is the one in 1972.
Ever since, I don´t fear tremors. My spouse may run out the shower only dressed in his shampoo suds without a towel, so afraid of tremors although he wasn´t in Managua when the Quake shook us.
Managua before the Quake was a small,compact,clean and safe city. Now it is a huge octopus with slums as tentacles, with a dead hole in the middle, and fear nestling among the cracks left by the fault that tore our lives apart in 1972. It is ugly,dusty and dangerous. The Quake not only gnarled the city apart, but marred the innocent bloom of the lifestyle we had, never to be naïve as the Managua before the Quake which I knew as a kid. Sometimes in my dreams, that compact Managua where I lived as a cosseted rich child comes back to greet me. It even sounds like Charlotte Bronte´s first lines of “last night I dreamt I went to Manderley.” Like my broken column, the Quake snaked along the fault it left on the city of Managua. It broke our lives into shattered glass shards through which we remember the Managua that will never be again.

On my father´s birthday

Colonel´s entry for December 21st 2008

1117 Thomas Becket archbishop of Canterbury ,poor fellow,does being canonized by the Catholic Church erase the fact that you were hacked to ieces just because 4 courtiers wanted to brown-nose King Henry II?1537 Johan III king of Sweden (1569-92),despite having two wives he was Magnum when producing bastards with his mistress Karin HansDotter
1874 Juan Bautista Sacasa President of Nicaragua (1932-36) still not quite considered a good politician1879 Joseph Stalin [Dzoegashvili] Russian dictator; murdered 11,000,000, provoked his second wife´s suicide
Deaths which occurred on December 21:
0918 Conrad I Duke of Franconia/German King (911-918), dies after leaving his throne to King Henry the Fowler1375 Giovanni Boccaccio Italian poet (Vita di Dante, Decameron), dies after scanalizing prudes with his Decameron1429 Jacquemart de Bléharies Tournay "heretic", burned to death, when the church still battled ideas with cruelty
1945 George S Patton US general (Sicily/Normandy), dies in very suspicious car accident in Heidelberg at 60 , maybe it was the government who had no use for a hero1948 Seishiro Itagaki Japanese general/Minister of War, hanged for crimes of war…but isn’t all war itself a crime?
Events
1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock,shaking from a beer hangover(it was the only thing they could down on board during the trip)
1866 Cheyennes, Arapaho's, Sioux, Fetterman Massacre, as usual whites massacring Indians
1898 Scientists Pierre & Marie Curie discover radium, and both would get Nobel award but it was Marie who did the kitchen work

THE PERFECT MAN

Incredible though it may sound, he did exist. Perhaps because he was perfect he accomplished the huge task of raising me. He was born in 1920 in Rouen , Normandie, in northern France, on a day like today. It is hard to remember him without missing him, for he has been physically dead since 1989. Unlike cats or deafs or boors, he always answered when called upon. Never left you talking to the hand nor picked up messages, dearest be.The magic of his presence was always his knack of being there, at the right spot on the right day at the right time. I honestly don´t understand how I have been able to live on without him since that fateful morning when the radio announced that the TAN SAHSA plane going from Managua to Miami had crashed into Cerro del Hule in Honduras. My mother and my dad were gone in one single stroke. The inevitable had happened. But it was precisely this strength he gave me that enabled me to continue my own path through life alone, and it is the band of fireflies emanating from his teachings what guides me and makes anything or anyone else completely superfluous to me. Yes, I can have company along life, but that is an accessory. Like Coco Chanel, also French, would say, ”The dress is the basic thing. Accesories come a lowly last second.” My father dressed me with his courage and invincibility. He is still the provider of my coat of mail, the sword of the samurai who secretly lives in me although many don´t even know the Code of Bushido exists. He was the Julius Caesar who has helped me cross the Rubicon of all the vicissitudes in my life, from broken bones to silence, from indifference to injustice, or whatever may have come along. “Nothing is worth your vexation, minou” was his favorite expression, and how right he was. Now, as the luminous shadow behind every single letter I write, from articles to fiction or this self same book, the real author and muse of my Dionysiac literary fertility is my father. I am the monster my father created in a Frankenstenian effort to make something out of the ordinary. “Pumpkin head,” he would say when he saw me studying late into the night, always avid to acquire more knowledge. That strange blob of pragmatism, atheism and laughter that I am is Bernard-made. From a trip to France that he made only taking my mom, he brought back a small statue made of see-through plexiglass. His hero, Vercingétorix, more beloved in France than the dumb Joan of Arc, because that guy being a teenager almost defeated the legions led by Julius Caesar. He put it on my night table. When I entered the military, he taught me to insert a candle inside it so it was lit from within. I knew he was an atheist, and I told him that lighting a candle with a saint substitute was like a syncretism of what the papists did.” No”, he said” .I believe in Vercingetorix as I also believe in you, and while the light is on, you will return safely from the green beyond.” As soon as I would leave on mission, he would rush to light the candle inside the hero. Somehow I always came back, in one piece, although I may be shot or broken. He would never pry for details, just waited until my mom had gone into the kitchen or early to bed, and the two war veterans we were could talk, man to man as one of my friends would say. All the traumas would come out, roll around dying gracefully inside a cup of tea, and evaporate like ghosts who desert us when the dawn comes in dancing. That was something only my dad could do. I fell in love with history through him, when he would not read stupidities like Cinderella or Snow White or any fairy tale princess yarns in which girlies marry princes only to live impossibly happy ever after. How he would laugh at sweet girl stories, saying that real life began with a wedding, not ended with one. He would only mention all he went through in his experiences in World War II. Nothing was left out, not even the sordid details. Perhaps that was the root for the habit of calling things by their real name, something that so irks bosses and men who unsuccessfully try to gain a hold over my heart or my hand or my bank account which I don´t have. I became the perfect candidate for historian because I was the daughter of living history.
No wonder all men still pale like faltering bad specters next to my dad´s figure. As the Italian singer Eros Ramazzotti gargled in one of his songs,”No puede haber, desgracia semejante, donde la encontraré”.There cannot be, so disgrace be, where will I find someone like you. I have given up long time ago. There can be nobody like Bernard. He was all the great men I have admired in history all crunched together into his former weightlifting frame, and by having had him as father I am convinced that god cannot exist because if he had been created by a god, the deity would have envied him too much. Imagine Oda Nobunaga and Patton,Vivaldi and Tipoo Sultan,Lautaro and Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, Ataturk and Jose Eca Maria de Queiroz , plus a dash of Lincoln and Osceola and Benito Juarez and King Henri IV all packed into a figure with red hair, freckles and green eyes? Too much competition for any mortal male, but that was him. No wonder I even gave up the search for any shadowy imitation of him, being realistic enough to know I will never find even a pale photocopy of him anywhere.”I know I ask perfection in a quite imperfect world, and I´m fool enough to think that ´s what I´ll find!” sang Karen carpenter in one of her hits. My mother was lucky enough to find him. That could be the story of my life until I realized that the perfect man would only be my dad.
I´m aware that my dad was a real titan, having to become a lion trainer in order to raise me properly. It was the only way out, and he coined the phrase “iron grip in a silken glove.” It worked. I am the living testimony of how much this worked, Frederick II of Prussia´s doctrine melded with Guillaume D´Aquitaine´s poetry. How did I get so lucky for kismet to give him to me as father, as the author of what I am now?
I was aware how loved my dad was not only by me when he died and his body was brought back to Managua from Honduras. The workers he had so benefited at the building materials factory where he had been a general manager cried as if their own mother had died. I still find people who worked for him that get cloudy eyes when they remember him. The respect and affection he got from his people would have made him a true statesman, but he chose to do his own in his own way without ever aspiring to anything else. His example still guides many, and his funny remarks still make him a most popularly quoted wit here in Nicaragua. It is the same man who decided to homage his newly born little brother Silvio in 1930 by parading his prize winning science project(a dreadful live cockroach farm) in front of his mom while she was breastfeeding wee Silvio. Years later it would be the same man who risked everything by smuggling the nazi officer Hans out of Auschwitz as a deaf mute until they reached Rouen, a way of thanking the German for having saved his life during his imprisonment. That is my Uncle Hans Schneider.Levallois who still lives in Paris and who almost had a heart attack when he heard my parents had died in the plane crash.
Bernard. Cachimba, Venancio. Who ripped away the door from his office when he became general manager so any worker could pass directly into his bureau and talk to him without formalities. The founder of the company store with permanent discounts, the workingmen´s league, and the leftist union in his factory. The man who played catcher in his baseball team made of workers, and the fan of the Boer Team in the national baseball league, the man who cried in public when his team lost while I nearly shat in my pants from shame at what he was doing. The chap who during a grand opening speech of General Anastasio Somoza, the dictator who owned Canal Cement Company(the parent company of the factory where my dad worked), let nature have his way and farted shamelessly while everybody laughed, excusing himself by saying that when Tsarina Catherine the Great had accused her dead husband of having died from a stick fart nobody had raised an eyebrow.
I mention him and he looms humongously like the Himalayas over India, casting his cool and comforting shadow over my life. I bask in the shade of his eternal protection, knowing that he is the deity other people say I should have. He was there when I learned to walk again, and he is there, everywhere, like his favorite singer Edith Piaf sand in her hit Tu Est Partout(You are everywhere).The fact that it is what would have been his 88th birthday is only an excuse to show him off to the world as only magnificent pride and unique love can do. Public words to convey a simple idea of the god I had living in my house, for the private Bernard only I had.