2.23 am

At this time of the night (2.30 am in Madrid), I finally decide to sit down and obey my duty of communicating with you... Whoever you might be, likely no more than an extension of my yearnings. A deep mantle of drowsiness warms the early hours of the early, very early dawn... Stillness and silence, mystery and confidenciality.

Am tired and need to rest. Want to do it. A woman is in my mind, and I recall J.R.J. verses, somehow related to her... Let me recite them, savour them, quick, short verses turned into an infinity of pleasure and time, and let me go to bed and rest, in love and delight.

"Al amanecer,
el mundo me besa
en tu boca, mujer".

Good night, God might bless you.

Appraisal of motherhood

This is what I jot down during my London-Madrid flight today, in a piece of paper... .

***

The counter-balance force that keeps the crazy, centrifugal world in place is motherhood, i.e. women, by being true mothers, hold sense in all the rest´s blowing minds. The examples are too many and spread in all directions and cultural xxxxx (here I can´t read what I wrote). I like recalling, for instance, the genuine sense of Barry´s Peter Pan, now celebrating the 100th aniversary of its publication in a novel-form. Captain Hook says, abated, to his thugs and crooks: "guys, guys, give me a listen: we have a problem_ the kids got a mother themselves¨. Indeed, Wendy had just literally flown into Neverland, gotten back to life in spite of Wendy´s tricks to murder her, and set a warm and cozy home for Peter Pan and the rest.

On the other hand, the lost-boys were children who fell off their perambulators and got themselves motherless. Peter Pan himself refuses to come back to London with Wendy because he does not want to have a mother. The whole story (the fairy tale and the periodic, yearly visits of Peter Pan) is transmitted from generation to generation from mother to daughter.

Again, the examples are too many -it is certainly shocking to learn that after 5 years of imprisonment by the Turks, being Spain in bankruptcy, Cervantes was actually bailed out by Trinity friars and his mother, who paid the ransom- but, albeit being too many, still, modern, western societies, all of them much too alike, despise motherhood in blunt terms.

A Catholic priest told me once: "A de-christianized world will follow to de-christianized mothers". His prophecy might just be heavily in course.

Alas, indeed, it is a toil of considerable proportions being a mother. It must sprang from the deepers of a woman´s clean nature. (xxxxxxx Here I am to look for the saying of a mother in Shakespeare´s All´s well that ends well which, of course, I don´t have it with me now), the sentence that resounded in The Shakespearian Globe last day, and that I watched in the heavenly company of M.

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The Bible of the King James

I got myself today a copy of the 1611 edition of the King James Bible; it is not at all special, you can find it among the published for the occasion of the 400th anniversary.

To tell you the truth, I bought it because of the poetry. It is wonderful! Back in Alabama, reviewing a big, hard-covered book of American poetry, I came across with the comparison of one Psalm from the King James Bible to another contemporary translation. I was agog, I was aghast!

Don't remember which psalm was it, but listen to this. It is part of Psalm 22:

(4) Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliuer them.
(6) But I am a worme, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

(11) Be not farre from me, for trouble is neere; for there is none to helpe.

(13) They gaped upon me with their mouthes, as a rauening and a roaring lyon.
(14) I am powred out like water, and all my bones are out of ioynt: my heart is like waxe, it is melted in the middest of my bowels.
(15) My strength is dried up like a potsheard: and my tongue cleaueth to my iawes; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
(16) For dogges haue compassed me: the assembley of the wicked haue inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feete.

(19) But be not thou farre from mee, O Lord; O my strength, hast thee to helpe me.

Oh, man... Let us pray.

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Digression on religion and the source of happiness

Surprisingly enough, I have not felt the urgency of a search for an alternative religion for the last 12 or 14 years. Indeed, there are few key points I have so clear in my mind and bones, that I don't need to look further. It might not last forever but, who is to last forever, people ask.

My religious beliefs are deeply rooted in the Christian tradition and, although I reckon they are to some extend customized or tailored to fit my needs and for the sake of  my peace of mind, I maintain myself faithful to the core of essential doctrine. On another hand, even though I have the looks of a conservative person -cliche-type definition-, I am considered and considered myself neatly unorthodox. I like being this way and feel pride of this collection of clear ideas -likely, a set of rare crystalline ideas, in the midst of my jungle of doubts.

But, I insist, for the last years I needed not to look into different directions or get serious in the quest of run-aways. Any religion stated as a run-away is a mistake. The world can be shit, but we shall not hide from it- if a religion teaches you that, to wait simply for something else, this religion is a huge stupidity and a mistake. Why? Because, a religion, by definition, takes pride of the human condition and relates it to an upper plane, a transcendental one. The most important side of a religion (for Catholicism for sure) is the human part. And to become renegades of our condition on Earth is not human. Buddhism, for instance... Ludwig von Mises in his great, human work, Human Action, excludes the Buddhist from the core of his lemmas for being a group acting unnaturally, against the tendency of individual humans. Buddhism wants to get rid of suffering... Yea, well, yea, suffering is "the center of the world", all is suffering, dukkha!, bla, bla, but the whole thing consists of finding a way to eliminate suffering. Foolish task! Come on! What is life but suffering? What are our human hearts incline to but to suffering? You will get that by renegading from human conditions, by making monsters. How come, if not? Christian tradition, on the contrary, makes a sacred prayer out of suffering, accepts it and elevates it to the climax of redemption in the symbol of the Cross... God himself suffers and dies. How much human suffering must be!

Yea, I think, in most cases, people need escapes. This weekend, I've read in The Independent magazine (I think) a reportage about the proliferation of spiritual churches, of Christian inspiration, in the City of London, specially designed for employees of banks, insurance or any finance companies, who take a leave at lunch time to search for a piece of peace, away from their routines. That is, they look for escapes.

I never needed this, and always relinquished this sort of relief. The Cross must be sanctified, the human suffering praised, and here you can make shallow interpretations, but I am talking deep shit, you know? I am not talking about flagellation (to which, unfortunately, simplifications and distortions have led to for centuries... Well, it is not that simple, I guess) but I am talking about the human fact that men and women suffer for infinite reasons, sometimes without a reason. That's our condition.

Nevertheless, the feelings of unhappy workers are familiar to me- Just look around in the tube or in the streets how untidy, unnaturally many folks wear their suits; their ties are a horrible mess; the pants were worn one day after another; the shoes need a good, tender, mother hand. And pint after pint, evening after evening, the indisposition to work, the magnitude of the toil grows bigger, hardly disguised by a good shower or a cup of coffee, and the holly golightly rumpus of the tube in the morning and the clip-clap of the shoes on the pavement of its stations.

You can choose to continue and to find mighty justifications. I think that is a mistake. Life's made to be lived. Your work is part of your life. Get the guts and do what you want! If you don't, at the end of the day, you find yourself running away in different directions, energy is wasting and sinking through a constellation of weakenings and insecurities; you may be tempted by evils, you may not, but I guarantee you, you will be unsatisfied and no guru, nor any doctrine would get you in the groove.

Much more must be said... Much more... It is not all so straightforward and pompous, you know?

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I don't have sex anymore

Read last days a couple of briefs to two interesting women: one, a short Q&A-interview to Marianne Faithful in The Guardian; the other, something about something, don't remember where, with Shirley Maclaine as subordinate topic. The latter made the statement of having had sex with three different people in the same day; the former, far from being that frivolous and 15 years younger, declared: "Oh, I don't have sex anymore. I've given up".

I liked the image of Marianne emerging from the interview. She is 63 and is releasing her 23rd album. If she could start again, she would not use drugs... (Brings Johnny Cash's song to memory: "if I could start again, I will find a way"). She was happiest before being discovered; she attempted suicide in Australia by overdose of sleeping pills when she was 21 (six days unconscious). And the best kiss was the first, the one this wonderful guy named Ray gave to her when she was 14. She is frank: the single thing that would improve life quality is more money. Can anyone argue this?.. And most important, to the questions where you would like to live and where you would most like to be now?, she answers, I live where I want, I am where I want to be now.

Any lessons behind?

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Serendipity

Has it ever happen to you to be completely unaware of a situation or a fact and, all of sudden, become aware of it twice or several times in a very short frame of time in very different manners?

It has to me. Years ago, I used to collect these kind of situations as they happened and I was surprised at the variety and frequency of their occurrence. I've terminally misplaced the list so I cannot check it out again and so I am afraid I can't update any feeling about it. It used to be my serendipity list. Now, I know that the word "serendipity" does not reflect what I meant and it was used incorrectly.

To give an example of what I mean I can tell you this story. Until now, I did not know that across from one of the buildings of UCL in Bloomsbury, you can find the University of London's Institute of Education. I was coming along with some friends few days ago, almost scouring the area in search for a place to have a drink. Indeed, the evening was sunny and wanted a taste of late bright, orange light. You know how crowded this town can get as this is a very popular activity; however, finally, we ended up in a a wooden table with two benches at the yard of the Institute of Education.

Today, The Times brings in front page the death of 15 year-old, Issy Clara Reilly, during a party with friends, in the house of the daddy of one of them, Brian Dodgeon, 60, employed at the Institute of Education since 1998. The allegations of Dodgeon's arrest are "possession of drugs and child abandonment", according to Scotland Yard. Apparently, the man had weed, LSD, ketamine and ecstasy in a room of his house in North Kensington; at some point in the night (the ambulance arrived at 4 am, so it was not a coke-popcorn type of meeting), the boys felt certain urgency of trying some of the things daddy has, and at the end of the day -though it is said to be still a mysterious case-, one girl was dead.

Well, the story tempts out many juicy bites for further exploration, but I am not make say much about it today. It is a cocktail of a Bristol graduate with a brilliant CV living in a majestic area of London, former social worker and some sort of adviser for the National Council for One Parent Family and, now, a fellow researcher in Education, including tasks on the National Child Development Study and a bunch of naughty kids, likely from rich families, ransacking for drugs at high hours into the night, apparently alone in a four-bedroom house. Far away from being an odd combination of absurdities, unfortunately we should be used to the deadly combination of high-education and obscene money, if we just are for it. Traffic, the movie, comes to my mind: the High Commissioner against the terrible Drug State of Affairs in the US-Mexican border gets himself the fight at home with a teenager daughter addicted to crack.

My list contained about 30 episodes of stories previously-ignored that later burst out into the scene of my conscienceless, like this learning of the Institute of Education.

(By the way, I've just seen a photograph of Michael Douglas taking his daughter Carys to a basketball game or something in Hello! His pants fit too long, the colors of shirt and jersey don't get along well, and I say, why? Do the handsome characters leave such a meagre, crumbling impression in an actor?... Perhaps, the battle for survival is ferocious at this moment).

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Seinfeld in London

On July, 2 Seinfeld will be in London, performing at the O2 Arena, the only one show. Apparently, the tickets were sold out quickly after the "box office" was opened. I must say that am not unenthusiastic to make any judgement on Seinfeld: I am a great fan. Some of my friends can tell you how much I bring out situations from Seinfeld stand-up comedy and show when talking or chatting about everything. Most of the times, they come just naturally handy. Seinfeld is the life as it is. I discovered the show sometime in 2003 when Fox, channel 4, was airing two chapters a day in the States, Monday thro Friday, from 10 to 11 pm. After it, it came Malcolm in the Middle. My friend M. was depressed and homesick most of the days, but from 10 to 11, oh, boy!, I have never heard a human being howling and laughing like him. And me too.

Seinfeld is the greatest show ever, a miracle of TV production, a conjuration of the planets, one in a million chances.

And this is what Seinfeld, the man, has to say about his up-coming performance in London and the Royal Wedding. I am certainly surprised at the acid level of his comments, potentially offensive. I guess that is called sharp mordacity. And the effect that the polishing of the years of work in challenging and cruel environments (amid the millions in your pocket) operates in you. I don't know. You might remember that six or seven weeks ago I posted my comments about the William Ramsay dinner at UCL and that I refused to attend it, even after buying my ticket. I was looking for the exact words to express my feelings at the time and I am not sure that I got them. Jerry is lending me a hand now: the English play the game of dressing, the game of pretend... I think this is a plain fact.

And that's it! Enough for today. Last night I did not post and today I can't stop. Oh, what is this?... You can see I have nothing better to do... Remember the "parking garage" episode, when Jerry, Kramer, Elaine and George get lost in the garage of the shopping mall and can't find the car? The episode begins with this words of Jerry: "why do I have the feeling that everybody else is doing something better than me on Saturday afternoon?".

Here it is a universal feeling... .

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The 100 of The Times

One by one, precisely in a week in which I find myself entangled in feelings of inadequacy, I have looked at the photographs and little descriptions of the 100 most-influential of 2011 according to The Times magazine. With only a few exceptions, the list is a collection of obscenely rich people; that is, a list of capital-ist, most of them Americans. And thus, I come to think that after too much trouble, too many gruesome experiments of social engineering and a great deal of failed utopias, influence is just a one-variable dependent parameter of money. The seasoning has got its own momentum of fashion (oriental and Arabic trends plus medical health and human-tragedy humanitarianism), but the roasting remains as our grandmas used to serve it.

In addition, this is the list for 2011, a quite ephemeral crown of dust in the wind. Also, I don't understand the claims of some about the expansion of democracy or the transition to the real democracy by means of facebook, twiter or Internet as a whole. Indeed, it looks to me only as the spread of plutocracy. The heroes of the anonymous, you and me, remain unimportant, albeit fighting all through their daily, unique lives.

As far as I can see -as today, the sunny afternoon of the Holy Saturday- the most influential man of all the times has been Jesus, the Christ. He got nothing, a very unimportant person in his time, a sole local pimple to Roman authorities, someone who was born poor and lived and died poor and abandoned in a gutter of the Empire and, who, still, had a message to convey: the Kingdom will be built on the disposed stones, i.e., you and me, and many others a thousand times more disposed of.

Out of the list of The Times, checked out in 5 minutes, only this lady (below) has been influential to me, I mean, to a certain part of my anatomy. Perhaps, perhaps, one form of tragedy in our world is the substitution of influential people by mediatic, ephemeral animals, money makers. And this is a too cruel form of self-mutilation, if you think about that, because what is it to remain? What or Who is there to offer us some relieve from the Emptiness and Dictatorship of the Instant? Will it be true in the end that we are no more than tiny pieces of conscience in a vast, infinite, careless Universe?

                                          Blake Lively, a gossip girl.

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Noontides of the heart

The flattering comments I've read this morning from Franz Beckenbauer towards Raul Gonzalez (former R. Madrid player, now in Shalke), filled me with enthusiasm. I was not much of a fan of Raul's style ten years ago, when the whole world was in ecstasy about him; to me, Raul was clumsy, used only one leg and was too much sickle and simple, no elegance whatsoever. As the years passed I kept this opinion, but I recognized that his achievements are just too great to be the output of chance. He was and he is a great, successful player and a very profitable asset for any team.

But what gained me for Raul's cause has been his genuine courage once everybody lost faith on him. Ten years ago, Coca-Cola could've make a commercial showing a empty glass of coke half buried in the scorching sands of any desert and a child, in the middle of nowhere, wearing a T-shirt with a big number 7 in the back and Raul's name above it, kicking the glass. Few years later, he had being disposed of as an old, useless cloth. Raul, as a true Spaniard -who play for Spain because he is a Spaniard and not merely because he likes playing like others-, he failed to build international respect for the Spanish National Team and, right after being despised and forsaken, other people did it. Someone who is able to keep going, to overcome such nastiness, and have never a bad word, nor a bad gesture and, now, draws the praise of a man like Beckenbauer, it is, it must be someone with a tremendous courage and a titanic heart.

And so, I was very glad to hear about it this morning... Raul epitomizes the continuous battle of life, the genuine toils of the true hero. He is, certainly, a model... And he is the future of Real Madrid, by the way...

**

When having dinner tonight, feeling a little lonely and bored and depressed, something made me notice that these exact feelings were shared by some else. It is not that we shall rejoice in a sort of delightful touch that those terrible feelings frequently convey along -Dostoevsky talks about it in Notes from the Underworld-, but we shall rebel against them.

I looked for nice words to embrace ourselves and all I could find was a big "FUCK YOU", screamed from North to South, East to West and this nice, very, very nice Hardy's poem. Hope it helps:

I LOOK into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, “Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!”

 

For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.

 

But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

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Out of place

After 5 beers of Amber -Spanish beer, Zaragoza- I don't know what to say tonight. I am glad Madrid beat Barcelona, that's all.

My struggle with the basics of Continuum Mechanics goes on. A few days ago I mentioned the "point-transformation" as a starting base. I know now that the approach belongs to a field called topology and that it is a re-discovered philosophy of physics in the last decades. It is so nice... Hard, but nice. I am getting heavy -if I were a Portuguese woman, I would say, I am getting gravida-; am getting loaded with ideas and pushing against all mathematical limitations. Things I must've done years ago, but there's no point in blaming no one, not even myself: circulation integrals must exist in approaching reality. You spend years gravitating around a single problem until you finally find the way to land it off; upon such moment, you muttered, oh, my God, what was I doing before?

That's life.

Too hard work ahead, perhaps extemporaneous, untimely. People of my age get important, have kids and throw bbqs in their nice gardens.

That's my fight: entirely on my own, in a basement, away from sunny days.

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The red lips of miss A.

When I was 11, London was a sequence of vignettes in a textbook, a collection of drawings of double-deckers and police caps, a mantra: Oxford, Trafalgar and Piccadilly Circus, a delightful vibration in the red lips of Miss A. London was gentle and mysterious, more alive in fiction than in reality. The country was a doodle of a handful of arrows over the head of William the Conqueror. Again, gentle and magic, like a Harry Potter stuff before Harry Potter. The landladies were fat and quite smokers, Mary was gorgeous and the main character of the course, a guy, a total failure. English was a set of dreadful drills and the audition of the forecast, the very top of the test. There was a dozen ways for naming the rain; Shakespeare was a man strangled in a neck clothe, always holding a quill pen, always bald, always wearing a goatee. The time was said in sharps and o'clocks; the verbs, eat-ate-eaten. Pronunciation, a deep impossibility. The whole language of songs and streets bore little resemblance with the studied lessons.

What I now see daily used to belong to a distant realm, to an unreachable, mysterious land. London boiled in my imagination and so far and unapproachable it looked like that I was content with contemplating it sparkling through the glass, as the thoughts were not indeed mine or could not ever be seized or fastened.

I don't know why from time to time I come to think about this. I guess I miss things being this way. I wish I could relish again the mystery of those virginal days, only for a quick second. (That should be plainly enough, in the same way you don't need more than that to gather a score of memories from the wake of a smell). If you look straight into the eyes of life, and you are in the proper mood, you shall not find more than a pair of black, tiny pin-heads (shark's eyes), full of delusion.

Cultural aristocracy

I get so anxious in the perspective of attending cultural events, such as musicals, concerts or dramas. That's why I harly go to them. Well, I explain; I don't go not because I can't stand the feeling of anxiety -which, of course, I can-, but because I dislike deeply the stressful process of learning about the events and then purchase the tickets on time. I'm such a useless fellow for some things, but my underskin fears are, on one hand, that the good things are always booked and, on the other, that there is always someone who says "oh, that's too expensive! You could have got them for 10 bucks, my friend X got them for 5, you should talk to him"... Oh, X., f**, my ass... .

                                         Lawrence Olivier, a definition of a handsome man.

My ideal mate would be someone who comforts me in a hug when I arrive home and say "my darling, I have booked special tickets in the third row of the Albert Hall to see Lawrence Olivier when he was 25, especially resucitated this week for the occasion. The Queen of Saba and the young Princess of Samarkanda will come along with us and at the end of the show, they will pay their respects to you, and tell you how wonderful you are and how poorly chances life is giving you. You don't have to worry about anything. Just meet me here at 7.15; we will close our eyes and snap our fingers and we shall be there, bright and splendorous, ready for the show".

I mean, I would go more to these events if such a thing like a cultural aristocracy existed.

But, alas! It must exist! I contemplated in the Evening Standard today -by the way, el rotativo explicitly supports "no" in the May 5th referendum- a photograph of four people from last night, sometime, somewhere in glamorous London. Some poetry reading of Byron and... who was the other?... Don't remember. In the photograph, David Gilmour, the Pinkfloidite, father of a rebellious, anti-system hooligan facing criminal offenses and his wife, along with another man -a photographer, entitled to cover the royal William-and-Kate wedding- and his wife. A glamorous drink in someone's hand. And I thought: "Jesus! That's what I call cultural aristocracy". The class struggle is still to blossom in this zoo.

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"Biff" Johnson

The Guardian magazine brought a reportage on Boris Johnson, mayor of London, this weekend and for me, a utter ignoramus, it has been a stunner. What a character! Ha, ha, ha. It seems like from time to time and from place to place a politician -who is not a politician- shows himself as a naughty boy, a life-liver, and charismatic, comendiantic clown. That is Boris Johnson or at least, that is Boris Johnson's image as emerges from the interview and portrait of Simon Hattenstone this weekend. C. tells me that everybody hates him, but is it true? I had a good time having my coffee, eating my Benedict Royale eggs and reading this story on Saturday morning. A total healer.

Watch this! Yea, it is the mayor! And now, find the 5 differences between these two photographs:

                                             Boris Johnson

                                          Biff Tannen   

I must say that I've tried the Boris bike today -whether is Boris' or Ken's it is irrelevant here- and after 1 minute, a car passed me by and splashed water from a puddle. How come?? Where the hell did this puddle come from? It's been dry and sunny this weekend. Nice. It must've been a bug in the matrix. Oh, the town's been marathonianly colorful today, an explosion of live and youth.

Perhaps, characters like Boris or his public image -his face and dishevelled hair, his affairs, his "white" lies, his ambition, his eccentric behaviors, his funny comments and out-of-the-blue speeches- reminds us of something that we tend to forget quite frequently: that life has not necessarily to be that serious to be fully lived.

In Trafalgar Square, a million people in high-definition telemascope swarms joyfully in a thousand of groups. A man is singing and playing this, one of the beauties of this world.

Before the ordeal

A couple of hours before the first encounter Madrid-Barcelona, Barcelona-Madrid, I fancy speculating about the importance of the games to come. In about a month they will have to meet on the pitch battle four or five times, won't they?

At this time, the political consequences that a sweeping victory of Barcelona might have I don't think will be significant, apart from being another drop in the ocean. Much has changed in the last 15 years and the battle front has not being the football team but, perhaps, a celebrating resort for the nationalist, mainly in the last 3.

The real problem I fancy to think about is for Real Madrid. Do they realize that a possible shoo-in set of victories for Barcelona (let's say an accumulated 12-3) might caused irreversible damaged to the institution and the business? Well, I don't know, I guess we will have to step back and watch. It is a pretty hot ball dangling there for the club. Time to set aside the ego and be smart, boys, plainly... You too, Mourinho.

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The onset of mortality

Today it has been one of those days when you have a chance to set battle against mediocrity: there are some brilliant people out there... Some bold people. And so much to learn from them.

So the Company shows up today to see how things are going. A whole meeting talking about shear stresses, waves, instabilities and the onset of drop formation. At the end, I stepped outside the meeting room to download some material for the visitor, L., and when I came back, I catch the ending of a sentence L. is saying: "(...) and when I came back, she was under water"... . Well, the man is about 50, her fiancee (met her 2 years ago) died in mysterious circumstances drowned, 2 months ago. I was shocked! I would not say the guy was undergoing such circumstances, I just could not say that from what I saw today... The guy was under a terrible strain but, still, you could not see it. And he talks about that!

Two features I praise much about Americans: their disposition to a new beginning always and, second, that they never take life for granted. It is smart, it is impressive, don't you think?

I have seen so many Americans behaving like that.I remember a 60-year old single mother from Athens, Alabama, or around, working at the back of a packaging line telling the story of how her son got shot last night. And she was then, working there, in that awful place!

L. keeps talking: "(...) Oh, you are getting older... You feel something different... . When you are young, you don't worry about mortality". Is that right, L.? And what is the mechanism that drives the onset of mortality in us, the path towards the winding road down, down, down?

**

So much to learn... Today, I felt that perhaps I talk too much... I should shut-up and listen a little... And wonder, double-sensed.

Vostok 1

Perhaps you might find this interesting. Two million downloads in 48 hours, I read. 43 years after his death, Yuri has fans and friends around the world; did not know that... I mean, that that much. My father was 14 and heard him talking about Yuri Gagarin when I was a kid; my aunt was not even 30; my grandmother, 57, seven younger than my mother now! Sounds kind of stupid, but when you do these calculations and match them with 1961, a so-closed date, I feel dizzy and worry. The life of the elders is not that that long.

Yuri took his 108 space-walk when he was only 27. His hagiography can be found here... And much more.
Castro was already there, I mean, here... Maybe he was already there, here when the skies and the seas had not been separated yet... With the beard and all, is he God?

Come on, take your leave, take your glory and your Vostok with you and leave!

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Representative societies and individuals

It was yesterday or the day before: the Evening Standard brought in headlines some bad news for the nurses out of the Government health's reforms. Today, the news is "96% of nurses says minister must go". And I say, is this news? Eloquently, as Nicole Kidman in that commercial, what would you expect? The big piece of news would be precisely the opposite: 96% of nurses agree with the cuts.

It is the same story as ever: a portrait of flawed democracy. Our political universe is an arm-wrestle between groups, in selfish quest for isolated benefits; the individual -the only reason for democracy to exist- is a subordinate caught in the middle. The miraculous piece of news is how societies can still prosper.

**

Down the same old path -wrong- of thinking follows the opinion of Mathew d'Ancona, on account of the PM's comments on Monday when Cameron visited Oxford: "I saw figures the other day that showed that only one black person went to Oxford last year. I think that is disgraceful, we have got to do better than that". It is true that the statement stinks to political convenience (there are some local or Parliamentary elections on May 5th, aren't there?), but I can't see at first sight why this fact can be disgraceful. It will be certainly outrageous, possibly illegal, and against the Human Rights if a line one single black student were denied admission to Oxford after meeting requirements and standards. But, is that the case? And, anyhow, it would be as much outrageous in every case, regardless the skin color of the boy, either black, yellow or green.

Why is it so hard to find someone asking a simple question: why? Why are there so few black students in Oxford? And from there, go discuss and talk. Seriously. Cliches stinks. Mediocrity. Bullshit! It seems to me that that fact is the reflection of something more profound that needs to be unrooted. By imposing variety, I expect segregation and discrimination to grow, rather than the opposite.

Don't you think so? Well, it is clear to me. Listen. Apart from the fire in cold winter nights, the old humans learned that the warmth of social affinity is a precious gift to survive in this, sometimes, not very hospitable world. They learned soon: pares cum paribus facillime congregantur. My place at UCL is in the office with a group of boys and girls who have formed a to-a-certain-extend closed group. Why? They live among themselves at work; some are more open than others, but the general behaviour is to operate as a group. It is the same in your office, in your place of work, isn't it? If you stay in the South of the States for some time, you will notice how very scarcely white and black people share normal social activities, such as going out for dinner or a drink, form mixed groups of friends or establish a relationship. Philis Chesler denounced the tendency of women to operate as a group and to quench (extirpate) any other individualist female that might crash the ceiling conspicuously. (She said: that is the reason why becoming an independent woman, mainly in the Islamic countries, is doubled a deed -No doubt in my mind that the state of servitude in which women are in countries submissive to Islam is supported by women. That I say.). Again, why?

Being an individualist and defend the right and necessity to become one is not a very popular subject, but it holds to me a key point in the development of societies. D'Ancona mentions Ayn Rand. He labels her as a "right-wing intellectual". Obviously, he does not know what he is talking about. But beyond these considerations, I wish to point out that individualism is one of the bravest conquests of humans, a unique escape from primitivism. I am not saying that humans must reject assemblies, millenarian social or religious structures. They all are needed; even irrationalism is fundamental. All are elements as old as our nature, conform our essence, as a matter of fact, and thus will prevail against all odds and catastrophes. All I am saying is that a human life must be free and encouraged to be fulfilled, on one's
behalf and responsibility, independently on race, history, sex or occupation. And, for that, my friend, you will have to stand on your own.

I said it before and I say it now: a nurse is a person who works as a nurse; a black student is a person who happens to be black and study at the present time. The quality person confers each of them the rights to do with their lives what they please.

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Dust and weed

Today, April 12, it is a day for Space celebrations. 50 years downstream it looks like a true miracle for the layman; the achievements done in the name of political -and not so much political- wars were all the great, no doubt the human mind was overstretched. Now the findings and goals reached during those years are sitting collecting dust -like the computers in the nuclear shelter at the end of Terminator 3- and memories do not shine.

**

On April 12, 1933 my aunt C. was born. An authoritative woman, remained single her whole life. As time passed by, the last years have seen her deteriorate, a mental fade-out. She might be in a similar groove as the one her older brother trailed upon until his death, the same one fate could be saving for me. I used to be her favourite. I used to join her and her sister, M.C. for dinner on Sundays, with more zeal and faithfulness than a priest to the Holy Mass, a bunch of years ago already: "How do you find the flounder?... It's and splendid one. It cost me 650 pesetas (about 4 euros)". Laziness and evil are taken over, as the weeds in a forsaken garden: today my call half bother her, half make her indifferent.

This is getting too personal, I guess. Publish it, quick! Or I'll erase it.
Well, have nothing to spare. My Self belongs to Him.

The city of M

About a month ago or perhaps sometime more, I imagined the story of a working man who arrives home from a hard-work day in the factory and get himself ready to catch a train and find his love, meet his lover. I did it thinking of a true working man or about 50 -let's call him H.- who I met in the antibiotics factory in Aranjuez; and I did it not because he is in distant love with a lover, not quite that; simply because someone else -let's call him, J.- explained to me why H. was always in working dress, unshaven -but tidy-: "it is because he comes to the factory to work; when he finishes, he goes home, get a shower and shaves his face. My father, rip, used to do the same". On the other hand, the image of a man traveling to meet the person he loves is an old leit-motiv, immensely beautiful, though. I was particularly thinking of Benito P. Galdos' character Gabriel de Araceli, from Cadiz who, right before the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, works for a newspaper printer in Madrid. His love, Isabel, Isabelita, lives precisely in Ontigona, outside Aranjuez, about 30 miles South Madrid. Gabriel finishes work on Saturday evening, gets himself ready and travels by cart, pulled by animals, perhaps oxes, all through the night, to spend the Sunday with Isabel, and come back at night to start again the whole week... Immensely tender and sweet, don't you think?

That is what happened to me yesterday... So now you know why I did not showed up. The day was not that, that hard, not at all, but I rushed home, got a shower watching the tip-tapping evening rain through the window and catch the bus, the tube and later the train after the rain, in an immensely beautiful sunset. I was probably the only man happy in the train, packed with employees, business men and engaged girls on their way home to Totemham Hale, Cheshunt or farther into the Northeast to Anglia... . Upon arriving to my destination I walked the town in a progressively colder dusk to hold a piece of Eternity; each second of that walk was one extra beat of life for the heart.

(...)

Very early in the morning, the day was a gorgeous awakening and the trip back quite pleasant. Oh, "the World is full of magic", says the Water Genie to Haroun Khalifa in Rushdie's story -my friend V. explained to me how apples, bananas and tomatoes silently pilfer the surrounding substances and keep maturing after they have been picked-, and you can sniff that magic in the 5-minute walk between Liverpool Station and Moorgate: never, ever, such an inexpressive tidal of human faces have made a man merrier.

Yesterday, I was in the best place on Earth and got there by a magic path. I just think everyman's planet should be composed of places like that... And only that.

Don't you think it would be very, very nice?

The case of the painting nun

In the month of February, 400.000 euros were abducted from a Cister convent -Santa Lucia- habitated by nearly 20 nuns, somewhere between Madrid and Barcelona. The story is fantastic and, at the time, made me think of adventures, stories and movies. What a story. When answering the question "how come 400.000 euros are in custody by nuns of enclosed life?", one runs into the name of one of them, a hiper-realism painter, Isabel Guerra. Although her name was totally unknown to me, her trajectory was wide known in high-class circles, plus the Catholic spheres from bishops to the Pope. Guerra's paintings, although not very appreciated by some artists -I must say that, being an ignoramus, I like them-, cost between 10.000 and 20.000 euros.

Of course, it is a good opportunity to slander the Church and some has taken it. Scam is obvious. But it is so obvious, not only in Art Business, but everywhere, that only the simple is to be shocked or pretend to be because of it.

There are two quite interesting facts, completely missed by the chronicles, to which I would like to point out here:

First: The nun says that, when painting, she is in search of "Beauty, Light, Goodness, Truth; Beauty in  capital letters, from where Beauty exudes among us. Each painting has its own history, its life and I pour my whole heart in each one of them". You might believe that or not, but it is clear that rich people do. When dealing with money, you can become suspicious of everything; some people is willing to offer a blank check to the nun for one of her paintings. Rich people like it and trust it. Oh, it is some serious shit when talking about money, someone trusts.

Second: It might not be quite as I imagine, but can you think of a clearer form of rejection for money to have such a sum of money in a moneybox? I mean, would you not try to produce something with it? Someone would try to steal it, I can see that, but most of the nuns would not. Current families are broken to pieces when spoken about inheritances, for far less money than that, and here you have a handful of nuns living with no worries for an extraordinary sum of money underneath their pillows.

Guerra, I've read, broke her relationship with Sokoa (a posh Gallery in Madrid) in 2004 and has selling her paintings directly. Why?.... Well, I am sure there is more than meet the eye.

Here in London, at the entrance of St Martin-in-the-Fields, a placard manifests, amongst several statements, that the church, with all the program of concerts and exhibitions, is run as a business. A business! I find it quite interesting and quite agreeable. Well, why not? Let people earn their money, be financially self-dependent. Now, once they get their own money, keep it clear, mark it with fire: it is their money.

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A diary entry

Definitely, hate the tube, bus and trains late at night. It is a desperate sight of souls searching-without-finding, quite disturbing. Almost in front of me a girl collapsed in Victoria and that put me somewhat off: an inanimate, frozen water-fall of yellow threads overflowing the ground, oh, God, such a frightening, dreadful view.

Back home, Bertie had a friend in the living-room and I have him told not to do so, a ginger cat. I stretched my legs in the couch and fell asleep and the animal as well... 8 millions of visitors a year, I heard, and if I had to draw the point of Brighton on the UK map, I would not know! Ha, ha, I am such an ignoramus... Well, of course, I just looked at it: Brighton is a bright spot located on the boundary of the land and the sea, in the normal direction to London. Today, more than ever, I guess, a beautiful, fresh day of spring, sunny, sunny, sunny.

I was to find the sea alone, as a lover meets a lover, alone. The place was crazy though, asphyxiated with population, a colorful stream of sun glasses, short dresses, bags and children from train to beach. In the evening, people cover themselves in disguises of sin and attraction, you know the type, and I am starting to be indifferent to it, although I disapprove. I am having a nice pint of Harveys bitter with my friend D., outside (it was good until it was cold), and this man falls once and falls almost twice as walking out the steps of the bar. In the morning and afternoon was possible to meet some solitude, however. The solitude of the sea and its salty fragrance. I enjoyed quite a lot. I wanted to remember a thousand verses of sea, but unfortunately, my memory is too lousy:

"En ti estás todo, mar, y sin embargo,
¡qué sin ti estás, qué solo,
qué lejos, siempre, de ti mismo!

Abierto en mil heridas, cada instante,
cual mi frente,
tus olas van, como mis pensamientos,
y vienen, van y vienen,
besándose, apartándose,
en un eterno conocerse,
mar, y desconocerse.

Eres tú, y no lo sabes,
tu corazón te late y no lo siente...
¡Qué plenitud de soledad, mar sólo!"

(Juan Ramón Jiménez)

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Heroes and pretenders

When learning a language, there are different levels of accomplishment or different goals to achieve. The last step, most difficult, is to communicate in that language, i.e. be able to speak and understand in a conversation. However, below that level, there are simpler aims. For example, how about learning a language just to be able to read it? Speaking French, German or Chinese will demand a tremendous amount of time and dedication; reading French, German or Chinese, well... It is easier and it is even accessible to shy and troubled people.

If I had continued that 15-minute, daily self-instruction in Arabic I started about this time of the year in 2005, when living at Colonial Grand, Huntsville, Alabama, I would probably be able to read this now. But I did not, and all I can do is to comment on the photographs and read what others say about it.

Al-Qaeda has released a new publication, a 31-page magazine for women: Al-Shamikha: "The Majestic Woman". The affected West calls it Al-Qaeda Cosmo but, in fact, its lay-out is plain, austere and boring. Looks to me like the booklets old women read in Catholic parishes. Nevertheless, the combination of photos constitutes an oxymoron, if I can say so: a flower on left page, a tank on the right; a flower on the right, a machine gun on the left. In addition, a box full of jewelry and a couple of rich guys next to a shiny, red sports-car. Some "puritans" around here should find it offensive to women, I guess. The contents I am restricted to judge from third sources: take a look here, here and here, etc, etc, etc.

Come on! You feminist! What do you have to say about it? "Marrying a jihadist", "Sharia applies to you", "Your house is your kingdom", Meeting with a jihad wife". What do you have to say? Nothing? No guts? Do you condole? Or is it simply not your call?

Much is to say about this, but I want to go in a different direction tonight. As you can see, some people pretend to be heroes fighting the war that has been already fought -and won, to a certain extend. Some other never thought of themselves as different from the rest nor tried any reformation of the world. They wanted to run their lives, minding their own business. However, at a certain point, the circumstances, most of the times a terrible tragedy, wreaked permanent havoc in their hearts and pull them into motion; assisted by an unbearable and mysterious driver, they were forced to transform themselves and speak up. Like the prophet Jeremiah, perhaps they suffer in the silence of the night:

"O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.
For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily.
Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay". (Jr, 20, 7-9)

Once again, the demonstration to be taken place in Madrid tomorrow, at 5pm, from Glorieta de Bilbao, is one of the marvellous things happening around us and to be proud of. There you shall find the Heroes Paul Johnson forgot in his work, the truly ones. Hundreds of thousand of normal Spaniards demonstrating in central Madrid in absence of police, supporting and warming up terrorism victims, dragging out the shame of evil.

Hey World! Watch and Learn:
The Heroes of Our Life.
The Freedom of Our Dreams.

You, who think you are the center of the world.

Watch and Learn.

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Local News

When you are to write about a piece of news or an opinion, you tend to think globally. I mean, the hot discussions on politics among common people are almost 100% about global topics. However, news and news journalist should forget about general pictures and focus on the real important aspect: extract information by asking questions. This is what guarantees our right to be informed. And it applies chiefly to local news, the ugly sister of the hot "global".

Tonight, I read a couple of pieces of news in the Evening Standard, tremendously flawed from a journalist point of view, in my opinion. The first is the front-page coverage of the Court investigation of the dead of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, during the G20 protests in April 2009 (the chronicle is by Paul Cheston). It is the crystalline example of a very poor job. In the best of the case, it looks like the guy showed up in Court, sat down, jot down a few notes and then, copied them as much as possible to fill space.

But the fundamental questions remain: 1) how a newspaper who supposedly is going home, not interested in the protests, ended up at the front line of the disturbs and gets hit? 2) how a man being hit with a baton in his legs and then pushed to the ground, after being helped by passers-by (?), walks 100 yards and then collapse to the ground and die shortly afterwards? 3) why a man, not interested in the protests, when asked if he needed an ambulance, answered: "No, they got me, the f***ers got me"?

If you are a news writer and you don't address and solve these questions, tell me, what use are you of?

The second piece of news, as much confusing and mediocre as the previous one (again, it is mediocre because it only collects in a chaotic way the general, available, official, opened knowledge -or no-knowledge- with no inquires, no worries, no purpose), is the sad finding of the body of Yen Zhen Anthony Soh in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. He was only a boy, 18, first-year Mechanical Engineering student in the Imperial College. Actually, about a week and a half, an email in my UCL box told about the missing boy and asked us to provide any information we could have.

You can ask "what is that you know about journalism?" I know nothing. I just like talking and have an opinion. If I am wrong I will be happy to think of an alternative manner.

I don't know. The world needs people who are not only concern with doing their jobs, not even doing their jobs well, but getting involved and passionated... And hurt. Truth and virtue deserve it.

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Beatrice...

Sometimes I remember the laughter of my friend E.S. And it is always connected to something. "Tito!, all girls will love you", and I was, imitating Michael Richards' Cosmo Kramer, "well, not necessarily". And E.S. was a burst of laugh. We once watched A Clockwork Orange -an already 40-year-old movie!- and he was amused by the British accent. There is this scene when Alex (I think his name was Alex) is brought back to home from the hospital -already turned into a monster- and his mum asked him: "Son, how are you, son? Would you like to have a cup of tea?". And here it came E.S.'s laughter: for a month he was making declamatory efforts: "Tito! Would you like a cup of tea, son?".

And I also remember him laughing whenever we watched Richard Pryor tapes. That man was the man, man. In a gag about the different attitudes of white and black, he was making remarks about the different walk styles. And E.S., a black, and a true friend, was a burst of energetic, vital laughter.

**

I have found interesting all the entries in my Longman Activator about the word "walk". I would like to drop a couple of examples here, as I might memorize as I type them and perhaps I can practice a little tomorrow, before I forget...:

To walk slowly in a relaxed way
Stroll: to walk in a slow and relaxed way, especially for pleasure.
Amble: to walk in a slow and relaxed way, especially when you are going a short distance or not going anywhere in particular.
Saunter: to walk in a slow and lazy way, often when you should be hurrying to do something.

To walk slowly because you are tired
Trudge/Plod: to walk slowly and with heavy steps, especially because you are tired, it is difficult to walk, or you don't want to go somewhere.
Traipse: to walk a long way, especially when you are looking for something or visiting different places, so that you become tired.

To walk slowly because you are in pain or weak
Hobble: to walk with difficulty because it is painful for you to walk.
Limp: to walk with difficulty because you hurt one of your legs.
Shuffle: to walk slowly and noisily, without your feet off the ground properly.
Shamble: to walk slowly and rather awkwardly, bending forward  in a tired or lazy way.

Example: Last night I strolled the open space, its tranquility and white beauty; my heart, relaxed, ambled along, at ease. Down on Earth, I imagined gentiles and men of action sauntering, women plodding their lives in silence, old men trudging scared to death, and the disposessed traipsing the gutters of the world in the hope of bumping into an opportunity. But up there, grace was with me, and peace was in plenitude. No more hobbling; no more limping. The normal throbs of the heart were away; instead, a clear and pure beat, the only shuffling was that of the interestelar wind. I only wished for any men on Earth to come up for a second and shamble down on Earth and pray with me.

Do you still think I should have showed up?... No, I don't think so.

A practice on the days of a week

Last week, I heard that a new stage -or perhaps it was an old one remodelled- has just been opened to public in Madrid, in Prosperidad, and the premier is a series of comic plays (sainetes) by Alvarez Quintero brothers.

The production of this couple, today well-forgotten and underrated, is prolific and terrific (their Complete Works amount over 40 volumes), tremendously popular. Their works were translated into dozens of languages and staged everywhere, I heard. I guess that such entrepreneurs or any of the type could lift up the stage and cinema production in Spain today: a production mainly national liked it by people... A good start to make money. Well, it's true, this business in on TV, but at the expense of art. It is pure crap and people don't like it that much. You go home and what do you do, here and in Sebastopol? Well, watch TV.

My point of discussion is that commercial activities help creating art; conversely, art must be sold, as opposed as what it is normally understood. Why not? It is a beautiful challenge, double-bladed, to conquer the consumer and to find ways to show your art through conventional paths that everybody can appreciate and not just hate. It is an utterly stupidity to ask people to behave as you wish. Well, people is people, and the mission of the artist is not to change the world, but to CREATE art. I am scared of artists with a self-superimposed conscience of changing the world.

**

In a great deal I am in debt to Alvarez Quintero brothers, long back the times we were doing Puebla de las Mujeres and El Genio Alegre. I remember those days with gratitude. The human group was unsurpassed; the human experience, indelible. You know, I was the youngest in the group and the average of the rest was about 30 years my senior! Each show was heart-panicking, as people keep changing lines, swapping paragraphs or even streams of action: X enters in 3 pages in advance and speaks the dialogue 2 pages ahead. It was a healthy, invigorating craziness! Will never forget a couple of performances on Sunday evening in windy, dusty villages outside Salamanca, on 3ft-times-3ft stages and bare curtains for everything -door gate, bathroom, etc.- of Miguel Mihura's Melocoton en Almibar. Years later, I learned that this is exactly what theatre is about and how actors and comics should be made.

I was going to say: if I could rewind my life back, I will certainly change the tape, but it stinks... It sound terrible... Anyhow, I would not mind to go back and try harder that road.

**

In Puebla de las Mujeres, a bored and boring village in Andalucia, women are gossiping -or making up, getting things all tied up and entangled- about the fictitious romance between one of them and a young lawyer who arrived from the big city to do some errands. But women, as well as men, abide by the social conventions. All are gathered but for a moment, none of them are to talk about it, and thus do chit-chat conversation. One is: "what day is it today?"; "I don't know, what day is today?"; "Today is Thursday"; "Ah, yes, yesterday was Wednesday"; "So, today it is Thursday".

Out of the embarrassing sitcom that Miley Cyrus is turning her life into, the last episode is about the veiled messaged she conveyed to new stars, Rebecca Black and Justin Bieber. For the sake of curiosity, I have listened to Rebecca's Friday song. Everything I have written above has come to my mind after watching the lyrics: "Yesterday was Thursday; Today it is Friday; We we we so excited; We so excited; We gonna have a ball today; Tomorrow is Saturday; Sunday comes afterwards (...)"... The whole video is horrible... Catchy, but pure vacuum, sweet to sickness, don't you think? Well, shear envy is worse, no doubt... And very tough to be redeemed from. Oh, God, have mercy on Miley.

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The tireless star of our fate

About a month ago or so, I got a mail in my UCL account with some demand for volunteers to accomplish a long and tedious task: wrap up the many thousand books of the UCL Special Collection for transport and permanent storage in Kent (somewhere in Kent, never payed attention).

I asked for an appointment and went to see how the job was like. I was taken into the vaults plenty of copies of very old, very interesting, mesmerizing-type volumes. Did I say anything about it here yet? I think so... A lady passed by the host and myself and exclaimed: "you are allowed to page the books up and down for only a couple of seconds_ then, go wrap them!". Yes, I remember I wrote about it here sometime ago. I could not find any time to do the job, though, so I dropped the intention. Never start it.

Well, today, I learned about this: one of the four copies of Humphry Davy's Essays on Heat, Light and the Combinations of Light (1799), just discovered at the UCL Special Collection. Apparently, this one was handed in to UCL in 1890 and until last week nobody knew where it had been placed.

I guess, the fate, as a tireless star illuminating my road, wanted this to happen, in the same way that you never shall find me in pictures or photographs. It came to me that, rather frequently, I am capable of testify "I was there", but never have anything to prove it.

Someone might like this: a constellation of tireless stars delineating our fate. Like the Heraclitus streams of clear water, our blood is and shall for ever be unchanged... In a life-long time, our blood, our-selves.

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The missing post

Yesterday, I did not post anything... No, I did not forget about it... No, I was not sick... No, nothing evil tortured me... And if I say that Internet connection failed again, I would be lying... .

**

Sometimes, I sneak a peak furtively to facebook, at late hours well into the night. No big interest, no particular interest, though.

Last Saturday, for some reason -well, I know the reason-, I could not sleep. And thus I roamed around facebook, almost prowling, and ended up looking at some of the profiles of people from the old times, I mean, real old times. For example, friends of my parents from the time that I was born and both couples used to live in a small village 2-km away from Portugal boundary, in the Spanish Extremadura region. Oh, boy, time has gone by! And it came to me that, in the same way I said a couple of days ago that Internet can be regarded as a time vehicle to travel into the past, I now say that facebook may operate just the opposite. Here, all of a sudden, you see some people you lost contact with a thousand years ago, showing up in facebook. The old friendship sometimes remains, deeply-entrenched; yep, certain friendships get trapped in the realm of time, and never move back nor forward. So one day you see them in facebook and it's like a dizzy jump over the precipice of history; to me, a wholly shivering experience, a flooding tenderness unabridged.

Sometimes, you don't know how little you know people until, at those late hours of the night, playing over and over the same song, you see pictures, photographs, comments... Memories spur... On a different thing, you also wonder why are these and these people not in facebook?... In which way are they different?... The foremost of all my re-births out of pain and dejection is the acknowledge of the difference.

**

I can tell more. I will post here -in the hope you forgive me for not showing up last night... No, it was not laziness, either-, I will post here, I say, two comments: one is about soccer -oh, my God!; another is about the important decision of Zapatero not going into re-election.

FIRST: It might sound preposterous that I recall here the comment of Steve Archibald in The Evening Standard in order to critize it. The guy has been living in Spain for the last 27 years and is a commentator for the FC Barcelona Television. But, judge by yourself: precisely the day after Real Madrid lost the game at home against Sporting (0-1) and practically said goodbye to this year's league, Archibald writes the following headline: "It's a real miracle what Jose [Mourinho] has done at Madrid". And sub-head it: "Mourinho radically transformed the club and created a team of fighters who may not play beautiful football but, like their manager, just don't know when to give up". Well, this is tacky, or naff -you say so, don't you? and fully stupid.

First, probably that virtue was in the Real Madrid before Mourinho; he might push it a little, I guess, if you say so, I'll take that, but it is just such a wide-spread virtue. Normally a winner team is like that, but what kind of miracle has Mourinho done when he got Madrid worst beaten in history this year against Barcelona (5-0)? I think it is just in fashion in Barcelona to say that Madrid never gives up... Well, Madrid gives up and do not play beautifully. Sorry, Mourinho... Now, what is Archibald really meaning or why is he saying this?... Everytime Britain and Portugal got together, Spain lost something.

SECOND: Zapatero's decision is not, from my point of view, out of good, but only a truly strategic movement of the Socialist party. Zapatero have nothing decided last week, much less half a year ago, as some people say. If any politician say so, well, he is just lying. They do it frequently, and with no regret. The gruesome and criminal findings last week about the secret and illegal arrangements between PSOE and ETA has sped out the whole thing, I believe.

Now, there is something crystal clear to me: PSOE will win again next year the General Elections. Zapatero's utterance of not stepping up for PM again is not as good as it looks like. Socialism will remain in power, ruining the country and betraying the nation. It is a bad piece of news for the ones who think that half the Socialist Government should be in jail and the other half in the High School. Zapatero will be benefited, I am sure. He has been toiling with serious familiar problems; he will get better -I hope so- and will be well-paid for his services to the party from now till the end of his days. He just paid the last one: comply with the strategy of leaving.

**

No, you are such a nuisance tonight... No, I am not getting tired of writing every day this. No, I won't tell you why I did not show up last night... But I will pray today, though, for all following the slippery slope. Yes, I shall have a glass of wine now and have a toast -yes, yes, no problem, with myself- a toast on behave of those in the slippery slope -or directly in the filty gutters of their soul's foldings- as to they be given one chance, at least one chance, to heal and recover, to live and meet braveness of heart! Salud!

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Finally, a starting point?

I must have been attempted the study of Continuum Mechanics and the equations of change a dozen times -as many as the average Spaniard has attempted the study of languages :). However, without the mathematics, the attempt is barren.

I think that a good starting point -at least, it seems to work for me- is the mathematics of the point transformation and the deformation tensor. A couple of solid, key ideas for each of them, and the land smooths out. All of them requires certain familiarity with vector calculus and geometry. There are several shortcuts to show the momentum equations of Navier-Stokes in a reasonable way avoiding the complexities of the pure mathematical thinking -i.e. the transformations indicated above. From my point of view, all of them are flawed and self-defeating. Math can't just be skip. I think Einstein said something like "things must not be made more complex than they are... Nor simpler".

The starting point is to consider a volume of matter, always consisting of the same particles. As time goes by, particles vary, change position and the volume itself gets deformed. However, the position of a given point in the fluid is related to its initial position by the means of a function. This is the key statement of the Fluid Dynamics and its foundations as a continuum.

This approach or philosophy contradicts the kinetic theory of gases -or contradicted it in the mid-19th century-, which focuses on molecular motion. If it is random, as assumed, it cannot exist any analytical mathematical function of the sort to connect one event at t=t and another at origins, t=0. However, if the volume is taken very small but large enough compared to the molecular scale, as to have average properties defined, the approach works. In fact, although molecules move at random, our physical experience shows that fluids also behave as a purposely bulk.

Given the concerns from the kinetic theory, I state that this is the reason for many molecular approaches to the problem done in the early years. And it is nice to show them in this context. Navier arrived to the same results as Stokes', but through molecular considerations (which did not stand the test of time, by the way).

You have to believe me... The whole thing takes on a different, more sensical appearance from this starting point. The subject is difficult but, through this approach, many of its parts are well-settled. It takes time and efforts to learn, assimilate and master them. If you don't apply yourself, you keep making new and challenging what is old knowledge.

Such efforts I poured today... I also enjoyed beer and people.

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Take a look, take a glance at this!

I've bumped onto a super-interesting visual document tonight -pray be the Internet- and could not wait to share it here -was going to say, spread it, hohohoho-. You might not realize the interest that such a document may have for the Spaniard citizen of today, for the curious and open minded. I dare say that no reality nor show of any kind in TV now would make mouths more wide-open than this. With all the candles and all, looks like a midnight summer's dream... Twelve minutes and a half of disclosed history at one click of your finger. Click, click... 1987.

The aesthetics are so different, tinctures and colors, ideas, life itself: vastly different. The style of the talkers then is noticeably mutated from the manner in which they speak today, although FJL retains the same facial gestures and essential similarities. However, his talking is swifter, expands in one direction, like something that was spoken two or three days back after thoroughly consideration and is now well-settled in the brains. The thinker of yesterday was as brilliant as he is today, but his thoughts look only purplish red, like the color of a young wine, having not, by then, undergone the savage hot-annealing treatment of time (the man was only 37). 

If you can read Spanish, read this. The writing today is excellent; the writer is a magnificent feature writer. Only two forces in Nature -the stream of times past and the red flames of fire- possess enough level of hypnosis as to get these kind of feelings sprout from the talented and the poet. Two or three days ago, I finished my daily comment saying "(...) I guess this is the meaning of time: a cloudy path fading out quite and swiftly, like the wake of a jet in the high sky". Nihil novum sub sole, but for the simple the very same faces of time look differently and anew. And so, that comment of mine is better said in Quevedo's words: "solo lo fugitivo permanece y dura", and who knows if that sentence is but a variation of an even older statement!

Perhaps, the time machine landed amongst us in the form of an Internet capsule and, on Friday night, sort of like Superman taking Lois Lane for a stroll around the skies, it is offering us the chance of visiting other ages on perspective. A elightening  flight in the solitude of a cup of coffee... And a whirlpool of thoughts.

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