Those idiots in Brussels

M. mentioned today this episode from last night Jonathan Walkers' Newsnight between Peter Oborne and Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman of the EU who, in spite of his last name, is a Spaniard. The response of Walker was certainly very weak but the spokesman was unskilful. However, as far as I know, more immoral I found the "gift", out of the blue, Oborne gave to Sir Richard Lambert (ex Finantial Times guy): Guilty Men. Oborne is co-author of it and the pamphlet was just published last week, advertised by The Spectator. Therefore, that means unauthorized self-propaganda. Oborne is just an impolite man to be paid with the same coin. Probably -he looks like it, I see myself- he was drinking pints before the show. A weak man at the end: did you notice the nervous giggling after Walker's lukewarm ticking-off? Anyhow, too pretentious, don't you think? To talk about the problems of the world in 10 minutes?

All I can say is that I preferred the Prime News with Erica Hill, a tremendous hottie from Connecticut. Besides, I used to watched it after work, an invigorating exercise and a warm shower. I watched and watched while feeding myself. What else could I have asked for?

                                          Erica, after work. Oh, my, oh, my...

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Phosphorescence

There are few phenomena in Nature that reach their zenith a little while after the cause that motivates them has ceased. The thing is predictable and can be explained within the laws of Science beyond any reasonable doubt, but it retains a mystery of whimsical marvel. The vena contracta effect is one example. Another is, simply, the fact that the lower temperature in the day is recorded a little after sunrise, once the balance of heat in – heat out becomes positive.

Like those bones of the dead unearthed, like Nature, the past –our past- is phosphorescent: it shows the true light of events once it has become, indeed, past. Conserved in bits of memory, photographs and video clips show the genuine value of objects, people and experiences, as if the rust of time only grew and molded in our capricious minds. Frozen and fossilized, the past we today can see in faithful artifacts is beautiful and merciful.

The phosphorescence of time is not only a warm and humanizing feeling, a sort of self-respectful and indulgent sensation, but also it is a voyage of discovery. You see yourself from the outside, you see, indeed, yourself at a different time… It seems that our conscience and vital state is a matter of infinitesimal proportions, i.e., it lasts a tiny, super small, infinitesimal instant; after it, we are a different we, and we can look at ourselves from a different self.

Our memory goes on, moves along the thin rails of time and, therefore, gets facts distorted. It could not be other way: the memory of an infinitesimal transient being cannot but only long and dream the illusion that we do not change more than age or experience.   

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Rastiani

The declarations of Alessio Rastiani -a trader, broker or whatever in the London City- at BBC on Monday have traveled round the world in only a few hours: "I go to bed and dream of a recession like this (...); we don't care about it, we make money out of it (...); "the savings of people will vanish" and things of the sort.

It feels pity to me the reaction of the so-called social networks, twiters and facebooks and so: a character like Rastiani is not to be taken seriously. Even more, one tends to think that his presence is somehow orchestrated, planned by some hidden and dark force, opinion-maker. The email I got from J. -oh! quae te dementia cepit?- does not put things in perspective, nor express who this man is, nor even discloses his name, but launches the ball that every trader or broker or whatever shares the opinion of this imbecile. And thus, is there a better way to emphasize a specific cause of the crisis (namely, an agent of the system, being banks, brokers or rich, greed people) that to make up an idiot embracing lively what is only a doodle, what some people wish to believe? Most aggravating, this idiot will, in fact, make lots of money out of it.

In the Spanish TV, about 15 years ago there was this character, the Father Apeles, in quite a hot spot. He was a character born, created and developed by the media and for the media to scandalize in the name of the Church. Naturally, Catholics found him offensive; anti-catholics made him, on the contrary, a useful idiot. And lots of the frivolous got rich.

Rastiani is just an Apeles, a clown, a diabolic toy whose strings someone cunning and evil pulls.

Historically, there was an Apelles: the main painter and portraitist of Alexander the Great. I read that the Romans told the story of a painting (lost today) this man composed of Alexander in his majestic chariot pulling a chained prisoner: the prisoner was the War itself. No doubt, nevertheless, that the megalomania of these two morons match their ample stupidity and the vast immorality of whoever uses their utterances in his own benefit, partially, twisted, dishonestly.

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The nerd, the smart-ass and the tube

The nerds always woke up before the rest, and went away. A theory explains this behavior as a defence mechanism. On the opposite, the more confident guys (or girls) slept till they were dragged out the tent or their faces washed out in a violent splash of water. This feature of personality seems to be inherent and securely tattooed under the skin of the gens, and so it manifests itself at all ages and stages of the life of the individual.

As adults, the nerds could be those early workers who travel in the tube, silent as tombs, well-awaken but not joyful, while the others, the confident, drink the last minute of their sleep, hurry the preparations and roll down the ramp to the tube in herds caught up from a cram-full bus.

The atmosphere of the morning tube is unmistakable. The silence is powerful and envelops all travelers' senses, like a thick layer of dense smoke. It dumbs them, and it is noticeable well above the soporiferous rattling of the convoy. Inside the train, silence and sounds act with a tremendous sense of equanimity, along with news of the world, served like a flowing and gratuitous mana -Metro-: from it, everyone quenches his curiosity or fills an uncomfortable gap in time. In this way, the worker of the day, and the parent, lover or loner of the night re-affirms -oh, big necessity- he or she is still part of this planet.

All travelers reading from the same paper:
a moment of peace;
a piece of Unity in a broken-up Universe, scattered and kaleidoscopic.

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The smell of silence

"Don't you smell? This place has a peculiar odor". E. used to make this enduring remark. Now few years have gone by, and the statement keeps making perfect sense; afresh and anew, as always.

The building was a shelter for graduate students, not many, about 50. Corridors and halls, stairs and elevators, rooms and labs used to be empty, entirely empty, immensely empty at least ninety something per cent of the time. Imposed on the background: the monotonous humming of the machines, fridges, little dispensers of DI water; the purring of napped computers; the sudden snort or beep of a sleeping clock. Finally, above all, the tremendous and suffocating sound of silence, engraved in a peculiar smell, indeed.

The leader and the friend of friends does not feel that deafening sound, no doubt, it could not be otherwise. The silence, however, feels like a thousand pins all at once piercing the skin of the naked hand for the abandoned, the disposed, the forsaken. The situation is hopeless, and in the case of the powerful and overall winner knowing the effect of this killing silence on the loser, this vast, isolating and isolated combination of silence and smell is an act of imposed cruelty.

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On Sale

The 134 to North Finchley is a lazy bus, a sort of a tardy cat with dilatory motions. Tired and disenchanted, leaned against a litter bin, the would-be passenger awaits, and so do many others. They raise their eyes to entertain them at an old man who works on top of a cornice, right across the street. It is dark and he walks and operates carefully, but he is wearing no protection whatsoever, and the risk of a down-fall is all a possibility. As the 134 bus slothfully wriggles somewhere off sight, the bored spectators seem to have one and only one thing in mind: the man can actually fall -the old man who walks on top of a big commercial building's cornice, placing and unfolding big "on-sale" placards.

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The dead end of pride

Like a fire that burns without a trace, but thrice as much bigger than a forest of flames, Pride walks in and consumes the leaves around the trunk of life. The sap of its veins dry off at once, and a vast shadow of sad bugles and blacked-glass sounds occupy the rearguard. Up front -that is, before that tragedy-, the sight is a swindle, quite opposite, like the rear of a surf wave. A couple of sisters come along with Him: Dignity and Respect. Their proximity is announced at the call of drums and the blast of sirens and an intense light precedes their presence, though.

Unlike wine, Pride never tastes as mild, warm and evasive as a red cup. Pride is furious and intense and requires immediate surrender and compliance. His call is of immediate urgency; his nature, of pure electricity burning all along as He progresses forward. Blood and turbulence, heat and necessity, that is Pride: the Universal driving force of personal justification, in a momentous departure of Reason... Or in vast and silent desert of Reason.

He is hard to resist off... Hard to be away from.

However, be! Be away from the dead-end of Pride!

Heart and brains

The night has turned barren.

The lights of my refuge are no longer on in the night. The writing is missing and missed; but the night is no longer the hostess nor the whore who whispers to the ear and conjures fantasies and lures me with better hopes. I am standing up the nights, I know -I sense the vacuum feeling of it-, despite the fact that, surprisingly enough, more than ever I notice the urge -albeit gentle- of the writing, the warmth of the mindful muttering of verses and thoughts.

All comes in the morning, with the quietness, large and larger, of the dawn and when the wind or the rain ruffles the hats of the trees. Heart and brains, that's all Life is about, no matter how much ones folds to the dictates of experience. The quest of Man is not Happiness -that ominous Circe of every shipwrecked Ulises, drifting through the deserts and jungles of doubt, sensual and capricious-, but Serenity; nor Reason is the highest aspiration of Humans, but Joy.

The warm thoughts of it, all comes in the morning.

The path takes contradiction and giving in. Shall Man be like the Bombyx mori, worm which builds its cocoon from its own liquid and undergoes transformation. The longed Kingdom to come shall be this reviled, muddy world of us -but beloved, as well as the Man himself, as Creations of the Creator-, but transformed and renew, at the End of the ends. Shall Man be reflection of life and change: if not mysterious fire, embers of light and burning coal. Now.

Coffee, worries, the company of a good book, a fine poet, a opened-chest life-traveler, heart and brains. Life all starts in the morning.

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The sunscream

I realized today of the benefits of writing in the morning, I mean, after a good rest. You see clearer, you think better, you enjoy double... Believe it or not, this is what I have to say today. I still hold strong opinions on global or irrelevant issues, but lately I have found ways of venting them and it turned to be much more exciting to play not to be a smart ass.

The writing of Antonio Gala is great, I have already said it before. I have thought that it would not be very difficult for me to imitate his style but, still, it would not be an original, fresh style. He had "his heart and his brains", and an opened breast to meet and embrace life. That's all you need.

I was in the Museum of London today and enjoyed it a lot; certainly, I did it more than any other I have visited till the date. Someone, a friend, E., a smart girl, suggested this song here, after a sort of conversation: Desiderata, Ehrmann's poem, perhaps, Baz Luhrmann, doubtless, all comes to mind. (Have you noticed the similarities between both last names?). I had three pints of beer today, traveled in the tube, walked down the Southward as well, and laughed openly, widely, loudly with Gala's book. I spend three quarters of the day with people I just met or hardly, very hardly knew and saw the sunset from a very unexpected and beautiful -precisely, for being unexpected- place. I guess that's all it counts at the end of the day.

The Spanish team is doing great in the Eurobasket, I read. I am glad about it, but I know this is what I am exactly missing: the late afternoons or evenings at home, watching the game on TV, listening to the commentators, the Spaniards who were glorious in the past, who holds the myth, the old and even the dead, all the ones exhibit a magical ability to bring simple joy and amusement.

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Antonio

Los Aires Dificiles has been my summer reading. A short summer, no time for much. A good novel, a good recommendation. I smuggled an autobiography by Antonio Gala from my cousin appartment and these days I am starting to dig into it, Ahora hablare de mi. I feel a little tired of English readings; there are so many good stuff in Spanish.

I love Antonio Gala's writing... Who's this man? He looks like a prince, someone the Universe was already smiling to even before he was born, all around important people, all day long loitering about homages and invitations, his major occupation: writing.

I love his writing. It reminds me of a friend I was somewhat close years ago, R... Teachers in the art of living and telling.

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