Cynicism

There are certain words whose proper meaning has been steadily vanishing through improper and repeated misuse. Certain words, whose power lies in the effect of its sound rather than in the precision of its meaning. Words who resemble gardens of reality infestated by the siren chants of mythology. Cynicism is one of these words.

How is it, exactly, to be a cynic? If you are called a cynic, you won't like it, for sure. You mightn't be able to understand exactly what you have been called, but you won't like it, as cynic sounds to despicable, immoral and shameless.

Cynicism is also a term whose actual meaning today might contradict the original one it held during the times of the Greek School of Phylosophy. And this is a point I wish to capture here today. The dictionary I have in my hands now defines a cynic as the person "who practices or persists in the error, justifying his actions with impertinence, shamelessly". I understand that, for example, if your friend boasts about his stealing of the network signal from a neighbourgh, he is a cynic. Or, another example, if your boss goes on vacation during a strike in the factory in order to receive full payment and, later, complains about his subordinates preferring to work rather than demonstrating, he is a cynic.

It is a matter of fantastic surprise the fierce impudence of so many today who happen not to understand these very simple cases. The heat of discussion gets you to the argument of living in society: "we live in a social environment, you cannot isolate yourself", you are told. And from there, the seed of corporativism against individual righteousness is just sown and harvested. And, here, most interestingly, the original definition of cynicim in my dictionary comes handy: "It belongs to the School of Anthistenes and Diogenes, whose life is a practical option against social conventions". Alas! Is it not right that going against social conventions, against immovilism leads you to isolation and to frontal clash with the cynics of today?

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Ay, Espana!

I have this story in my chest and I need to cough it up: finally, I found the way.

There is nothing new in the fact that the majority of Spanish politicians, who has sworn to comply with and enforce the Spanish Constitution of 1978 as a previous requisite to accept their positions, and whose salaries stem from it, failed to attend the official acts to honor our Constitution in its anniversary on the past 6th of December. There is nothing new either in the fact that, against the Constitution and the Country itself acts were organized by some of these politicians on the very same day. We are certainly getting used to it and expect no different.

Nevertheless, the circumstances are disgusting... Vomiting, as a matter of fact. The Spanish Constitution is being openly contradicted de facto, since years ago, starting from the realization that the sovereignty of the Spanish Nation is no longer represented in the Parliament, a consequence of the First Article of the Carta Magna. The beginning of the calamitous and fatal situation in which our country, my country, is now can be amply contemplated in the dark abyss lying between the ruling class and the un-ruling.

The past 6th of December, however -and this is new- groups of citizens organized by more or less political entities, rendered tribute to the Constitution and the Unity of our country -which, as a warning to readers sailing astray, it is an indisputable historical fact-. The brave one took place in Barcelona, a dissonant voice in that putrid pool of dictatorship and corruption, the only one probably in the whole year 2012. In central Madrid, a group established to defend the Unity of Spain, did its homage in La Plaza de Colon.

My heart is kept in anguish before this demonstrations because, although righteous and veritable, are insufficient to get us all in the same direction.

I insist that, in the core, those acts were a display of citizenship but groups of dim political color were behind. The fact that those groups were or, at least, are perceived, as right-wing, is an irremediable handicap, an impossibility for agreement. Unfortunately, the left of PSOE is in decomposition, the most fantastic dreams could not bring the communists to accept the rest and the decent left is too unimportant or just suspicious. In times of betrayal, everything looks suspicious, and is there any being more suspicious than the Spaniard? The beautiful version of the National Anthem sung by a Cuban woman, mulatto face known in TV, who lives a high-maintenance life in Marbella, looks suspicious; the beautiful version of the National Anthem sung by Elena Fernandez de Cordoba, an aristocrat, looks suspicious; the beautiful version with sensible lyrics of Jon Juaristi, a former ETA militant, looks suspicious. The old guys with Spanish flags shouting "Viva Espana!" while the host of the event congratulate the singer, looks more than suspicious to many. The terrible testimony of ETA victims seem opportunistic, the anniversary of massacres is getting forgotten and the claim from Basques and Catalans that Basques and Catalans are a fundamental part of Spain is ignored.

But, alas!, in this climate of hopeless desperation, when, on the morning of the 7th I was working early while listening to the news, and heard the National Anthem in this picturesque dress, faded away completely the stench of any dictatorship, I couldn't help but cry... In the dim light of the dawn, I was crying alone. Swift, but just for an instant, like a super-fast bolt, a hope crossed my mind: "maybe, not everything is lost".

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Columbine again

Yesterday, when I wrote my comment on Mishima's novel The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea, I did have no news about the events in New Town, Connecticut. It has been only this morning, sunk in drowsiness, when I learned about it listening to BBC2 in bed. The coincidence is macabre.

My uneasiness in these cases is that, in looking for any motivations underneath such horrendous actions, the official versions normally leave me cold and unsatisfied. Explanations seem to me insufficient to sustain the reality of the facts and I always end up forgetting the story without speaking my mind up. I don't understand the psychiatric profiles -name tags for things we are unable to understand completely- nor its abstruse terminology and vague set of conclusions: "The guy was suffering from paranoia or manifested this and that syndromes, and that made him prone to..., likely to, with tendency to". However, the force that set the motherfucker into motion was not any sort of tendency or likelihood! But a real, specific thrust that made his muscles spring towards his purpose.

I happen to agree with those who claim that criminals of the type of Adam Lanza should be studied and not just piled up in prisons and forsaken -if not left them free if they are under-age. So, please, could we be more specific and study case by case? Who was Adam Lanza? What can we learn from his case?

When a case like this happens, whether becomes public or not -I just learned that, recently, a couple of similar cases were aborted, one in Palma de Mallorca (Spain), where a youngster planned to blow a school with a home-made bomb made out of fertilizers under guidance of the web-, I despised any blame blindly thrown upon Society. "Society" is our scapegoat, the concept that serves a large variety of purposes... Nah! I understand that Society, as a whole, might play an important role. For example, the effects of a long consumption of cocaine over time -out of excessive social permissiveness or inaction-, create monsters that commit terrible crimes out of the blue. However, I think that if the blame is to be on Society in general, responsibility will get diffuse, and will slow down any corrective policy. Society is not an entity in itself: individuals are.

For this reason, re-opening the debate of free possession of weapons in the States is off subject. It was, precisely, the acknowledgement of evil in the Heart of Men and, let's say, Society, what brought in the end the right to possess weapons to the Second Amendment into the American Constitution! Spotting individuals like Adam Lanza or Anders Breivik, and neutralizing them as much as possible is not a matter of sociology but of policy, law enforcement and police action. What difference does it make whether you have a gun or not?! The criminal kids of Mishima also killed, and did not have any fire weapon. I always remember this acquaintance of mine, N. who, being in the States when the shooting of Red Lake in Minnesota took place in 2005, I think, called me and exclaimed: "This is what happens after the culture of no guns: a crazy guy starts killing and you can't do anything. If guns were more freely allowed, someone would have taken him down and we would have to mourn less casualties". Well, it is just a point of view.

Seemingly, Adam Lanza knew what he was doing. He went to kill, that's it. As usually happens, the chronicles do not mentioned the most terrible detail of the event: before running to the school, he had killed his mother at home. The twenty kids their lives he wiped off before killing himself were pupils of his mother. The motive behind is connected, again, with a defective parent-son relationship, whatever it is. And, as usually is the case, Adam's mother was a wonderful person and a magnificent woman, while Adam was a strange boy, talked little, showed languid or deplorable body language and was totally careless of socialization. But, com'on! How many cases do you know? What is the percentage of youngsters in their tens or early twenties displaying a similar behavior? Be serious: what does it take to be a criminal, really?

Although Evil has long rooted into our hearts, I am sure much more can be done in the action realm, rather than in the slippery and treacherous plane of Ideals and Utopias. The shiny, little wand does not work, never did: our heredity is no fairy tale.

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We're almost fourteen

In times of decay, there is a past seen in the distance when politicians could speak and preachers moved; teachers, explained and masters, inspired; when writers wrote marvelously and thinkers deeply thought; times when professors actually knew and excellence was as much admired as pursued; times when parents were parents and kids just kids. Back in the past of glittering years, painting was not only a form of expression but an universal mystery to catch; arts demanded sacrifice and the tyranny of vested networks had not developed yet. Of course, garbage always amounts in heaps, but in the gleaming times of splendor, rubbish was as much exposed as avoided.

In those modern times -rather than post-modern-, criminals filled the emptiness with endless reasons for vindication. It is as they tried hard to exceed purposedly. Crime was a rebellious spot in the cosmos, which only those who deserve it could occupy. The unworthy was just petty and pitiful. In opposition, in times of mediocrity, even evil loses quality.

The 13-year old kids who -seemingly- will disembowel Ryuji Tsukazaki are post-romantic but have a cause to fight. Their reasons fit well in a logical scheme and one reflects -why not?- whether, in wasted times, the most atrocious infants are actually the most able.

Listen to their discourse: "There is no such thing as a good father because the role itself is bad (...). They stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealized aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they've never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they've never had the courage to live by (...). They're suspicious of anything creative, anxious to whittle the world down into something puny they can handle. A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly, he believes that he represents reality. Fathers are the flies of this world. They hover around our heads waiting for a chance, and when they see something rotten they buzz in and root in it (...)".

The night when Fusako tells Noboru that Ryuji will stay and that things will change, she significantly underlined that Ryuji will start being the Father Noboru needs, that "everything I have done is for you", that you can "call him Father". Her speech, un-intently, brought everything to collapse. To seal the covenant of destruction, Ryuji's first words were: "Then I won't call you Noboru anymore. From now on, it's Son". I have to say that I was not expecting this declaration from a woman like Fusako, but rather something of the sort: "This is what I want, what I need. Would you accept it, my dear? I can't tell you how much this matters to me. Whatever happens you will always be my Son, the Son I had with the Man I loved so much". But, perhaps, it is just me and not the character; perhaps, those were different times and the psychology and the culture and all were also different. Nevertheless, the stunning conversion of Ryuji in Father and the decision to further judge Noboru as an infant, set the spark that the demoniac structure of the kids' world needed to blow. It was a non-return point. Whether Mishima forced it a little to make the story consistent or not is a matter of discussion. After all, there is always a pinch of irrationality in the most exquisite rational (and criminal) mind, and a group of teenagers is no exception.

The consecration of the murder on the eve is brilliant: "I'm sure you all know where our duty lies. When a gear slips out of place it's our job to force it back into position. If we don't, order will turn to chaos. We all know that the world is empty and that the important thing, the only thing, is to try to maintain order in that emptiness". The development of this analogy between the empty mansion in which the chief boy lives without parents around most of time and the senseless and empty world is well-suited. The boy follows: "We are guards, and more than that because we also have executive power to insure that order is maintained".

Furthermore, the plan of the execution is cold as cold is the iron anchor Noboru sees his heart to be. And here the diabolic reasoning of the boys touches ground and flows into a pool of reality so, so painfully. Mishima tells that the chief took from his briefcase an ocher law book and uttered: "I want all of you to listen carefully: 'Penal Code, Article Fourteen - Acts of juveniles less than fourteen years of age are not punishable by law". And he read it again, louder, and had the book pass around. And he said (his upper lip curled, I see it!):

"This law is the adults' way of expressing the high hopes they have for us. But it also represents all the dreams they've never been able to make come true (...). They've been careless enough to allow us here, and only here, a glimpse of blue sky and absolute freedom (...). This law they've written is a kind of nursery tale, a pretty deadly tale (...). And in a way, it's understandable. After all, up to now we have been nursery kids, adorable, defenseless, innocent kids.  But three of us here will be fourteen next month -myself, number one, and you, number three. And you other three will be fourteen in March. Just think about it a minute. This is our last chance! (...)".

At this point, the kid exulted in a disturbing shout, but quite familiar throughout history: "We must have blood! Human blood!". It seems that in the altar of their God of Order-in-the-Nihilism, animal sacrifices are not sufficient. "If we don't get it [human blood] this empty world will go pale and shrivel up. We must drain the sailor's fresh lifeblood and transfuse it to the dying universe, the dying sky, the dying forests, and the drawn, dying land". And he finished with the classic: Now! The time is come! "In another month they'll have finished clearing the land around our dry dock and then the place will fill up with people. Besides, we're almost fourteen".

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New men

I read somewhere that Miranda Kerr has recently declared: "I am a traditional woman: the man has to be quite manly". I confessed that both affirmations of the statement scare me a little. A traditional woman is an un-tameable creature, a being not completely comprehensible, much less vulnerable than any other woman and freer. A manly man is, on the other side, a chivalrous ideal, a life full of duties and responsibilities, with many backdoor escapes. Both existences are harder than any other. That might be the reason, however, why most of people, most of us, resigned, or tend to resign.

Ryuji, the sailor whom Mishima made fall from Grace with the sea, was a simple man in the eyes of Fusako. She "needed a guarantee for safety, for she had pampered herself too long, avoided danger in any form". It seemed vitally important to her that "the man with whom she was involved be down-to-earth". She was convinced, also, that "Ryuji was not the sort of man to burden her financially".

How many young women you know today who can say that the men they are with fail to comply with one or another requirements -if not both- Fusako was so sure about?

                                                           Miranda Kerr

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Political identity

My good friend V. said no, "I did not suggest you to read Animal Farm for vindi... What? But because I wanted you to realize that, the truth is, you are indeed an extreme leftist". She is so cute! When I get myself entangled in arguments with other people, and they get a little scandalized for my words, when V. is around, I sometimes heard her saying: "Don't worry, he's different, he is different from what he sounds".

Some other people have claimed the same in the old times. Years ago, the dear brothers O., warm and humane, creative and genuine, holders of a talkative heart as every good Spaniard since much before Don Quixote owns, out of one of their crazy games, a test of personality, stated to me: "Though seemingly conservative, you can be as liberal as Riego". They meant Rafael Riego. Conspiracy against the king, however, or against the Monarchy so to generally speak, is not necessarily a progressive move. It could be quite reactionary. In Spain, for example, in the feudal times, being Royalist and occupying tierras de realengo was a progressive and brave political trait, certainly preferred by many just because they normally were offered more freedom and autonomy that those in feudal lands and had to pay less taxes.

I mostly value independence. When I was a kid, I was taught to be myself, to have personality, as we were said, and to avoid being dragged and alienated by the pressure of the group or its charismatic leader. That was how good boys were supposed to be. My political interests did not come until much later, precisely in the eve of the so-called War on Iraq of 2003. My mentor in the initiation was A. I started to read and listen to comments and journalistic columns that provided a vision totally new for me. It was an awesome revelation. Most important, it seemed to me that those so writing or speaking were easy to understand, and that their words were clear and inviting: off the quicksands of dull and aseptic voices, and out of the confusion of what-it-is-said -I was no more political animal hitherto than the horses and hens of Animal Farm listening to the shady lies and leonine appeasements of Squealer-, there it came the distinct opinion of snipers, articulated in plain words, rather than the bombastic terms I was used to hear. Such snipers always directed the light of their lanterns to the side of the issue kept in the dark, covered with dust, and did so convincingly and, apparently, sincerely. That was the voice of Liberals, the heirs of the Austrian school of Hayek and Mises. In a country like Spain, without any real Liberal tradition whatsoever (being a few fundamental episodes despised or directly silenced), the discovery was like an earthquake to me. As any other natural catastrophe, it came to me and I had nothing to do with it.

So in this side I have stayed since then. Politically, I am very much convinced that liberal doctrines work much better than any interventionism or self-imposed social obligations. Along with my longing for independence it came a somewhat pompous stand for individual freedom. If you leaf through the pages of this blog, you might find plenty of examples of both.

There is a third element, less sung, but most important: the moral fabric in which I have been educated. You can also sniff the scent of this element all through the blog. The more I think about it, the more I get convinced of its capital importance. I can't stand falsehood and lies, egotism and self-centered actions and I don't take the usual rubbish around us daily. I never had any money so I am not in danger of becoming a dandy or a senorito, and the very same ethical fabric I was dressed into will prevent me from the outrageous cries of the self-pitiful left, up to morally save the planet, but always with a keen eye on to their (massive) current accounts.

The flawed part in the thinking of V. is to believe that one's political stand determines his disposition to care for others. In my opinion, no political system and no high or super-high education will make humans an inch better. At least, no directly. Quite the opposite, the illusion of seeing education and politics as the keys to definitely unlock the box of human happiness is the old, distorted dream of the Alchemist from which, of course, the evil profits. That power is, however, in the old book of Life, the Oracle to which the hero comes for advise, if you wish, and it is stored in the struggles of those who, mysteriously, incomprehensibly, base their lives in showing and disseminating little pieces of glittering goodness, in any form, either in friendship, professional or personal relationships or out of familiar duties. I am no more than one who was shown and now wants to show; I was given and now I am ready to give. Doubtless in my mind is that the eradication of this tacit cycle will bring this or any other civilization to an end. And there is no other knowledge or action in the world that can prevent it. One has only to remind the advocates of the global annihilation that not only the dinosaurs once reigned over the Earth, but also the Romans.

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The Freedom of the Press

It is a matter of vindication and self-assurance the reason that led V. to suggest me the reading of Animal Farm. This happened, I would say, in the face of certain personal or "professional" events that have been taking place lately. As a matter of fact, I have been able to find close parallelisms between recent situations and those narrated in the novel. As I mentioned here a couple of days ago, Animal Farm is more the lack of individual expression and the give-away of personal exploration and overcoming for the benefit of the group rather than any left-biased claim against dictatorship in abstract and fashionable ways. Naturally, something of the sort was at the beginning. The purpose of Orwell in writing the novel was to shout the silent cry of those betrayed by the usurpers of the Soviet Revolution, and such specific aim banned the publication of the novel by at least one of the four publishers who rejected it. George Orwell himself told the story: a general denounce against dictatorship would have simply done it.

Orwell had a neat and tidy style. His writing is complete and concise, and words seem to be precisely chosen for the job, without pomposity or vane fluorishment. The very beginning of Animal Farm I saw once written on the walls of the Metro in Madrid: "Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself  a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs Jones was already snoring". The amount of imaging of this opening paragraph is staggering. Sometimes (like that good woman from New York told me it is said over there), I say to myself: "Self, you gotta start reading novels by images rather than by symbols or sounds". Shall I ever learn?

Apart from a few interesting details, the most juicy taste of the novel has come to me, once again, from its outskirts. I bought a nice hard-cover edition, with an appealing letter style and an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. This is something a kindle will never give to you and why, if I have some petty cash to spend, I prefer more expensive editions. The edition I bought with the remnant money of a birthday voucher brings, happily, the preface that Orwell himself wrote for the novel and that never appeare: the document has been a fantastic discovery. For sure, Hitchens, who spends time talking in the introduction about the ups and downs of the novel in China, Burma, Zimbabwe and the Islamic World, and who even pointed at the stupidity of The Dial Press and the malevolence of the American right-wing and the CIA for using the novel for propaganda purposes, has not read what Orwell had to say in his Freedom of the Press. Amazingly, as Bernard Crick says in his 1982 study, it was "a blast against self-censorship" and, clearly to me, a description of the British press or the so-called English intelligentsia.

Orwell distinguishes between two types of censorship in the English literary intelligentsia: the one that is "voluntarily imposed upon themselves", and the censorship that "can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups". I have been hypnotically attracted to the first type, as it is the one that provides a fitting explanation to my personal, recent experience in this country, despite the fact that has nothing to do with the literary universe or the press world. Listen to this:

"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news (..) being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact (...). The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady". And Orwell finishes the paragraph: "Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing , either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals".

Oh! It can be said louder but hardly clearer. Perhaps, it is just an irony of destiny that Animal Farm, beyond its clear portrait of the Russian Soviets, with their Stalin but without their Trotsky, with Napoleon but without Snowball, does reflect to the minimum detail the overwhelming pains and cold of the independent actor in the crowded and warmer stage of the accepted.

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Animal Farm

Following the suggestion of V. I am reading Animal Farm. A couple of times I have mentioned it to a couple of friends in a couple of different situations and, curiously, both replied in the same manner: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others".

Throughout the story, as the spirit of the original Revolution becomes more and more corrupted and deserted, the initial Commandments are adulterated. This is certainly one of the sharper, self-exposed splinters of Orwell's message. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that, throughout the story, in so many occasions, the distortions of Squealer can't be argued because of lack of memory: the animals cannot remember exactly what happened, cannot remember the truth. Against the evident efforts to re-write the history, memory stands out as the most powerful weapon for such a task. Given my very weak memory to render remembrance to offences in past, this remark is a truly revealing point.

Perhaps, the savvy of pundits can put into perspective what the Soviet Union and the whole Communism world meant; how the cult of personality, the exalting of the shear force and the leveling dictatorship of the masses came together to write an outrageous passage of history. Orwell has his own reasons to write the story and, obviously, as he himself explained, had a very specific purpose. However, in my view, if Animal Farm is today in the hot-spot for the new generations is not to fight the old battle of the old ideals, nor to take any side for the Socialist against any form of extremism _either right or left. In my view, Animal Farm is the praise of the individual against collectivism, any kind of collectivism. The developments of the story and the evolution of the animals' behavior are quite familiar to all and all of us can, for sure, put the novel in parallelism with prosaic stories of our daily life. To me, this is the actual message of Animal Farm for us: the independence of mind has a prize.

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Labiaplasties

I was visiting the pretty opticians for about 2 months while trying to overcome the restless repulsion of a contact lens approaching my eye on top of the tip of my pointing-finger. It took me 2 months to get them in. That day and the next couple, of course, the pretty optician available had to assist me to take it out when the metallic shutters of the door were already half-way down. Months later, I could not help but notice that, although getting the lenses in was becoming easier, the process of taking them out was doubtless harder and got me strangely anxious. I started to hate the routine of spending 5 minutes to take the lenses out late at night before going to bed and, mostly, the weird palpitations I used to get. I have never been able to see properly with contacts anyhow and my eyes were often irritated. So, now, if the glasses bother me somehow, I just take them off and hang them on the top of the head or whatever, and prefer not to see neatly.

The only male optician in the store convinced me of the wrong principle of surgery to correct the prescription. I mean: if you don't really need it. His point was clear: via surgery, you burn something in the eye (so delicate!), an organ which is just a little flawed, but otherwise perfectly healthy. Do you want to burn something that is right? I say no.

Obviously, other people would say "why not". This morning in the tube I read the following: "Girls as young as nine are asking for vaginal cosmetic surgery on the NHS (...). Some 343 labiaplasties were performed on girls aged 14 or younger over the last 6 years". That accounts for an average close to 60 a year. The lead-in title of the information stressed the blame on "the porn-star chic" that Tory MP Claire Perry claims, and the Shadow Public Health Minister, Diane Abbott, "called for better regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry". (Both declarations came from women, noticeably).

However, surprisingly, what about the parents? The responsibility of parenthood is totally skipped, overseen by the pundits of the Governmental regime. Who else is to blame, if not the parents? I can guess that the 343 labiaplasties-achievers walked in the corridor of the operating room along their mothers or fathers or both... So?

It was a time when the role of the parents was to say "no" to their children, with or without reason, wasn't it?

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Cosa fece

More than twenty years ago, Don F. told a group of boys the story of Michelangelo engraving his name in the ribbon band that his Pieta was wearing. He wrote: "Michael Angelus Bonarotus Florentinus Facievat". Cosa fece. The young Michelangelo was burning in a flame of rage. Blind, gay, work-alcoholic, crazy or not, one can empathize with his feelings of being wrong. Nothing is worst than being doubted or disposed of the inner intimacy: one's own creature.

Those boys of the group could not understand for sure the subtleties of our deranged man's world. I could not, but I certainly can now. Taken right or wrong, the wounds of such harm are deep and endure. I can see that any project you undertake must go beyond the pure state of its art; it starts before and it goes farther the credits part. Not many people stays at the end of the movie to see the names, to listen to the music. Like an iceberg, the unknown consume themselves in the shadows of the unsung. The big fish eats the small. The spot light is powerful and jealous and allows nothing else to be seen. The company, the institution, the idea, the culture, the group, the social class, all tend to wrong the individual. The burn of wrath is so bad that, although you see it right, you can always take it wrong. Or so, someone as strange as Ayn Rand, did_ pushed it to an unacceptable consequence.

When the Jesus Christ told his disciples to act in secrecy and abnegation, He was asking too much: "That thine almes may be in secret: And thy father which seeth in secret, himselfe shall reward thee openly" (Mt 6, 4). Oh, My! Very hard for the able.

However, the anguish of claiming one's rights, of protecting one's intimacy, of being faithful to one's principles is hard and offers no more that a continuous strain. I can't stop thinking of those many peoples the Jesus spoke to, unable to do so, that probably found these words soothing and exonerating... .

My question is severe: Was that the right message for them?

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Britain, my Britain

Like the damped sounds of the rocky sea against the menacing cliffs far in the distance, I am following the echos of the so-called BBC crisis. It all started with Jimmy Savile, a man buried and honored like a king only one year ago. The man is Sir, knighted for charity services in 1990. He held a list of honorific titles, including one bestowed by the former Pope, Jean Paul II. In all the tempest, I have not heard any attempt to revoke his titles, to separate his name, at least provisionally, from the "Sir". When the sexual allegations against Michael Jackson came to light sometime in 2004, if I remember right, an American acquaintance told me: "He is a freak". Why! What does it make of Jimmy Savile? The list of adjectives in the dictionary is not enough for him.

The nastier corner of this case is that BBC knew. The sacrilege did even happen too many times in its own premises! Also the police. The question is why? Why did BBC kept silent? Why did it become an accomplice?... I guess that when the BBC and other networks kept saying in the past for decades that ETA was a separatist group (not a terrorist group), as they say now and will say in the future, some room might be allowed to distrust, dishonor and prosecute them because, in my view, political reasons or interests or shear complicity were possible or likely to lay underneath.

**

A couple of days ago, I was coming back after grocery shopping from Muswell Hill. I was in the bus, absorbed in the discussion of the BBC crisis in one radio station (through my phone) when, suddenly, the bus stopped short. The handle of the shopping trolley slipped itself free from my grip and the bag tipped and fell over the ground. A few items scattered on the floor of the bus and spred a good 6-ft distance forward. (No, goodness, no: no eggs involved). Apart from the lady next to me, who held the trolley while I was collecting the food from the floor, no one did help me. No one... Go, Britain! What a glorious spirit!

Is this all what your brave soldiers fought for? Is this what your poppies honor?

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The iron and the tweezers

In the course of a First Aid training today at the Red Cross, we were asked to draw in an A1-sheet of paper objects representing possible sources of burns. One, two, up to three people draw, as good as they could, a pair of hair-tweezers. "It is the number-one cause of burn in children", we were told. And I said to myself: "Self, times are changed: it used to be the iron".

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The sisters

The Sisters is the first story of Joyce's Dubliners. Although written sometime before 1914, the whole Universe of this story is totally familiar to me: the priest's sisters, the priest's altar-boy and the priest himself. I grew up astride the 80s and 90s, so I guess certain things have clung on uses and cultures for too long. That or that certain things have certainly changed dramatically in the last fifteen or twenty years.

The edition I am reading is annotated by Terence Brown and I can say that this man -educated at Trinity College in Dublin- had little regard for religious believes, particularly Catholicism, and any form of its rites and practices. I am just guessing from the notes he wrote on the following paragraph: "He has told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest". The boy is telling in first person all about the death -solitary and tormented death- of Rev. James Flynn. The underline is mine.

In his notes, after explaining that "the Mass is the supreme act of worship in the Roman Catholic Church", Brown tells that "there are many Masses associated with different times in the liturgical year and Masses for different ecclesiastical occasions", and points out as, an example, those celebrated after the wish of a person. He called them votive Masses, which is not strictly correct. Finally, he concludes: "It is probably these complex regulations that Father Flynn explains to the boy narrator".

I think, on the contrary, that the meaning of "the different ceremonies of the Mass" refers rather to the different parts of the Mass: the Liturgy of The Word, Offertory, Consecration, etc. All parts full of meaning, good purpose and rich symbolism. One can for sure confirm from time to time how superficial, gullible and prejudiced is the knowledge of scholars in matters of Religion (the Religion traditionally rooted in their own countries and culture!). In a similar way, the second note of Terence Brown on the vestments of the priest is unnecessarily recherche and misleading. Although "during the liturgical year the outer garments of the priest at Mass" are of different colors, their symbolism is not complex at all, as he states: as far as I know, green means hope, white means life and red means blood. Simpler, simply impossible. Additionally, it is only the chasuble and the stole the vestments that changes color along the year. The alb is normally always white (from alba, white, dawn) and so is the girdle.

One does not need to study to know this. It is something you learn from going to Mass... It permeates you like water down a patch of clay, until you stop going to Mass and the memory forsakes you. This is why I can guess that the number of Masses Terence Brown attended can be counted with the fingers on one hand... Two, tops.

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Remora

Few weeks ago, during the course of an early evening radio talk-show, of magazine type, three or four very interesting guys disclosed the novelty for me of a mythological fish who was used to attached itself to the hull of the boats and prevent them from sailing. Indeed, the first question that these three pundits were asking to the young announcers and presenters was this: "do you know what a remora is?

In Spanish, almost everybody knows that a remora is a "burden", quite often used as a synonym of "ballast". However, only quite a few might know that remora is the name of a fish: Echeneida or, popularly, the sucker-fish.

One, two, three, the three pundits pointed out several cases of historical documents that underline the capability of these fishes to suck themselves in the hull of a boat and make it useless for navigation. For example, it is in the chronicles of Pliny the Younger and accounted in the Treasure of the Spanish Language (1611) by Sebastian de Covarrubias.

The question is whether this is or not at all possible. The pundits could not believe it would and I guess that no sage little-learned in Hydrodynamics would. However, I am inclined to believe that these fishes, variable in size (from about 15 cm to 1 meter), with a remarkable sucker on top of their head, could somehow affect the hydrodynamic of primitive vessels and make the sailing or the steering difficult. I can imagine the rotten wooden keels of the nutshells that conformed the fleets of the Ancient Times infested of crustaceans and mollusks, all entangled in algae and, why not, remoras.  It is easy to imagine the precarious ships of the past at the mercy of the winds... And the waters.

Of course, no one knew anything about Hydrodynamics at the time... It just makes sense to me.

Remora: the sucker on its head makes it look like swimming upside down when attached to another fish.

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Honesty

It sounds kind of boring and dull to talk about honesty, but I will. Billy Joel got it straight: honesty is such a lonely word. Although I don't think the statement adds anything new, the obscene lack of it keeps on slapping me in the face. Tough day, today. Tough. The kind of day you are about to send everything to hell. I feel stupid and alone, empty as the drunkard. Nothing makes any sense to me. I am the hero without cause. Always getting the worst deal for myself without any good reason for that. Honesty pays off stupidity. Wrong, wrong day.

My friend M. pushed me to read a few weeks ago the manual Adapt: why success always starts with failure by Tim Harford. Well, I dropped the book from my hands after a short little while in the tube for being crap and against the minimum rules of the hygiene. Crap, pure crap. I have read about 25 pages only, but I could find a few pieces of food for thought, though. For example, the story of Peter Palchinsky in the pre-revolutionary Russia, that Harford recalls. Peter was a young engineer when sent to the coal basin in the North of the Black Sea. He had orders of the Tsar's goverment to gather data on the coal's area, report it and build a dossier on the working conditions. He then discovered that everything was crap: "the miners were housed forty or even sixty to a room, stacked in shared wooden bunks like cheap goods in a warehouse. In order to sleep, they had to crawl into position from the foot of the bed because there was no headroom to clamber over their fellows. Toilets and other facilities were rudimentary". Palchinsky's superiors did not stand by the bare truth of the facts reported and sent Peter to Siberia. Tim Harford points here that, a few years before, Palchinksy won  himself a place at the Russia's top engineering school and that he had taken pride in the fact that he had gotten the position because of his exam results, instead of relying in having the right connections. Harford completes Palchinsky's portrait: "In short, (he) was bright, energetic, confident -and almost absurdly honest".

Alas! Absurdly honest! Honesty: a mistake, Mr Harford? Where is the limit to absurd honesty? Another fashionable stuff in the world of fashion?

My mother has just sent me a text: "how are u? All well around here"... . It is fucking amazing and mysterious... A very wrong day and she felt something... I am sure. Can anybody doubt that God exist? And that He is a gift?

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The flight of the Felix

When the capsule's hatch rolled aside and Felix Baumgartner saw the black frame of the vast emptiness and a thin realm of blue 39 km below, what did he feel? What could a human feel? For a person like me -and Mr. Bean, of course-, who gets dizzy at the sight from the top of the diving board or feels incapable of bungee-jumping from scarcely 150 m, the sense of being at the edge of a capsule ascending unflappably into space is something that a million of pounds could not buy. Apart from the physical demand of the jump, technical developments and economical efforts, Felix being suspended in the Universe is the most appealing deed for me: the capsule, being fatefully carried away; the oxygen, ticking down unmercifully. And three, four, six seconds before jumping that account for a whole eternity.

As for the speed of sound, I guess Felix broke the limit of the sound, although the information is contradictory and surprisingly imprecise. In any case, I think that any statements made in this direction need to be more thoroughly explained. 

Leaving aside the suspicion that a large percentage of people who have written and talked about the speed of sound does not know how much it really is or what it is, one can read that Felix reached Mach (M) 1.25 at a maximum velocity of 833.9 mph. However, the video shows different figures. In the video, it seems that Felix reaches a maximum of 729 mph and that remains there (terminal velocity) for about 20 - 25 seconds, after which he starts decelerating. (The video is cut in the best moment, but listen to the voice of the man). 729 mph is 325 mps, which is below 340 mps, the speed of sound in air at NTP conditions (atmospheric pressure and 20 Celsius). Of course, the speed of sound is lower high up in the stratosphere and, with this consideration, Felix's flight was probably supersonic. How much lower? If we take 833.9 mph as M=1.25, 833.9 mph is 372.5 mps, which gives a hypothetical speed of sound of only 298 mps. If 729 mph is the true maximum speed at which Felix traveled, his supersonic flight would have been M = 1.09.

Taken as a simple and ideal exercise, as good as I could, I drew the evolution of Felix's fall speed and estimated the acceleration he suffered from the data of the video. I have been unable to paste it here. The maximum acceleration takes place at the beginning of the fall, of course, but only amounts to 9.2 m/(s^2), approx. Given the altitude and the latitude (35N, Alburquerque), one would expect 9.74 m/(s^2), so let's assume that the difference is due to friction or/and drag or whatever (spinning, Magnus effect?, etc). Then, the acceleration felt by Felix reduces, although it is irregular, as expected. Both acceleration and deceleration shows peaks (up to 2.2g in deceleration) but, who knows, I just collected the data with pencil stopping repeatedly the video... .

I calculated as well the distance traveled until deceleration starts (first minute of fall) and got about 14 km. If this is correct, it means that when Felix started decelerating he was still in the stratosphere. The average velocity of fall during the acceleration part is, then, about 522 mph.

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Walk in loneliness

This blog looks lately as barren as my life in the last month. Nothing wrong with it... Otherwise, I would not "ritrovai (myself) per una selva oscura".

**

Today, as I do sometimes, I have walked from Euston to Highbury & Islington tube station, all the way up Pentonville Road and straight-ahead Upper Street, passed Angel. It is a nice 60-minute walk to be refreshed, full of pretty-looking people having dinner in nice-looking restaurants or having drinks in pubs. When I feel lonely it is not very pleasant, although I know that loneliness in company is the worst of its kind.

Right outside Highbury & Islington station I saw an image, not surprising anymore: a beggar reclined on the sidewalk hoarding its misery, holding an open book on his knees and talking in self-assurance through a cell phone. If I don't lose myself before, I will have to record a documentary with a factual message -how many times I have mentioned it!: the book as a hide-away shelter. And portrait the so-typical, so-familiar but universal image of the urban homeless reading a book inside his bag, in a puddle of dirt. It is the dark-side of the come-to-the-books-and-you-will-see horseshit.

Eight minutes later, a bald man, around 45, bad taken and ill-conserved, travels in the train reading a newspaper almost in tatters. He seems content, though. He is wearing shabby clothes and has not-cleaned hands. In his shirt's pocket he has stuffed an empty, half-a-litter can of Fosters... .

Ladies: such is the inextricable effect of loneliness on us men.

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The mighty minority

London is a rough city.
London is full of pride but not of joy. It is not a joyful town.
London is full of noise, crossed by myriads of bits of communication. But people are deaf: the sounds of silence stuff.
London is a city for the mass, the fashion and the pretense.
Don't you think?
Oppose to the appearances, only the soul that is lost and lonesome, out of place and astray can feel the frozen skin of a city like London.
Perhaps, it has always being like this. London, New York, L.A., the big monsters.

**

Everything is orchestrated in London. Even the good-will, the sacrifice and the perspiration. Independence and self-assurance are the name of courses and the right-to-be-brandished has a price on its own. Massive events, charity, taxes, scandals and Jimmy Savile are just too often one word. One thing lead to the other. "Excuse me" is a lonely request, followed by nothing else. "Thank you" has died in the hands of "Cheers", and "Bye" is a long, hollow wail from a set of white teeth and long eye-lashes. The same everywhere else?... Not even as bad as in other places?... Good God!

 

Four people, exactly four, pray like nerds in a square close to the British last Tuesday. Their claim is as pitiful as rightful, and lonesome... .

But God sees in secret.

God bless them, the Minority.

Love song for a vampire

If you were thinking "that's enough of this s*** Dracula, Dracula" -as I kind of think myself-  sorry, I have something else to say today. First, rule of gold: I am convinced that the commentators that write on the flaps of the books we read or in their back-pages usually do not know what they are talking about. It is like they had not read the book or, at least, let's be modest, we dare say that their observations are not very precise. My edition of Dracula is certainly not an exception: "Vampire expert Professor Van Helsing convinces Harker and his friends that if Mina is not to share the same fate as poor "un-dead" Lucy, Dracula must be caught and ritually killed"... Well, it is not exactly like this, is it?

Secondly, being as I am on page 300 (50 more to go), I suspect of an unexpected twist of the story, which is neat: Dracula really is a love story. Think about it. On the eve of the final events, Jonathan Harker, Mina's husband, writes in his diary: "To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone". Love is the important stuff for this man, more than Life. He is willing to follow Mina and love her in the shadows of Death. That is what I understand. However, Count Dracula is on the other side pulling at the other end of the rope.

Harker shivers: Going alone in the terrible land! Here it lies this twist of the story I glimpse a few pages to the end. Mina is being attracted to the monster by the power of pity (is pity love? Can pity become love?). She says to all the men right before sunset: "I know that you must fight (...). But it is not a work of hate. That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all (...). You must be pitiful to him too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction". And it is not the first time Mina brings out excusatory arguments in favor of the monster, a creature who is going through the land alone. Annie Lennox's song captured the idea: "Oh loneliness, oh hopelessness, to search the end of times".

The spinal cord of the novel is blood, an element that match all the requirements to be a legal substitute of sex in it: passionate, dirty, unclean, unfaithful, weird and wrong. Mr Renfield, awfully betrayed by Dracula, highlighted the role of blood clearly: "blood is life". For the alive and also for the un-dead in the shadows of Death.

A final remark has to do with "unfaithfulness". The five men struggle to destroy all the places where the Count could possibly rest... But hide all their errands from Mina, on the fictional grounds of not disturbing her (after dinner the first night they send her to bed, even though she is not sleepy, which seems implausible in a woman like her). Jonathan feels a little awkward about it, but it is specially Mina who feels bad. And she hides back from them her dreams on the same grounds, which are, indeed, not dreams, but a point of unfaithfulness: Dracula is weaving his alliance with her. Interesting. This familiar fable of "I-am-not-telling-in-order-not-to-hurt" seems a plot for one of O. Henry's stories. Of course, it never does right. This is one of the first lessons one learns in business: the customer might not like it, but one must tell her.

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Bitter-almond smell

Only four years after Dracula was published (1897), Landsteiner made his discovery of blood groups. The appalling and unholy four blood transfusions that poor Lucy received before dying would have not being so easy or, perhaps, offered more possibilities to the fiction. On a different side, it is a discovery to me the use of telegrams that the characters of the novel make: telegrams can be sent and received in the course of a train trip and some of them are directed to the housekeepers or assistants. Kind of a common piece of technology, isn't it? The cargo ship in which Count Dracula arrived to Whitby, England, is however a puppet in the hands of nature, navigating astray and at the mercy of the winds of the storm. No communication existed with the coastguards whatsoever. In an invigorating walk along the White Cliffs of Dover today, I just learned that the first go-and-return ship-to-shore radio message using Morse code was transmitted on the Christmas Eve of 1898... Alas!

**

Diaries seem to mean a whole lot for the characters of the period. All effects of writing that we experience today were already manifested more than 100 years ago. Dr. Seward, Jonathan and Mina sooth their pain, anxiety, worries, doubts and stress in keeping diaries. Sometimes, one of them says "that's it! FINIS", only to come back to it a few days down the line. Sometimes they find themselves too worn out to write; sometimes, they record two or three entrances in the same day... . Messages, letters, telegrams and notes complete the urge for communication.

**

It is not a big thing, nor any original at all, but I would like to record here another example of the tremendous stupidity of excessive and zealous care for security in teaching labs nowadays. I keep asking: Why? Stupidity to the point to replace mercury thermometers by "spirits", alcohol ones, or to worry at the rotten-eggs smell. What, if not, is Chemistry for a student but a rotten-eggs and a bitter-almond smell?
\
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Desire-less

Again, a little bit of reading/writing before cooking dinner. 

I am getting kind of surprised, how many familiar scenes of the SyFy filmography, good or not that good (especially the bad and the terrible) are described in Dracula (which is, of course, primary to all of them). For example: the ghost boat with dead people on board, being swept away by a fearful, ephemeral and as much impossible as inexplicable storm; the clusters of dark clouds moving fast in the otherwise calmer sky; the fog and the mist; a pair of glaring red eyes and the atmosphere of fear and madness. "It", the poor morituri mortals  on board Demeter call Dracula. Quite familiar, isn't it? The image of Dracula crawling head-down the stony walls of his castle reminded me of Gollum (miserable, irredeemable creature) creeping among the boulders of an inhospitable and inextricable mountain. Like a huge spider of sharp teeth, sharp ears and sharp, bald skull. A sort of pale and disgusting larvae of the Allien _one that crawls instead of jumping.

**

But today I wanted to record a thought I have been pounding about lately: how would a group of humans survive if they were unable to define and defend their wishes against the very selves? 

Desire is a fascinating word. But Desire is been despised and distrusted. I guess it is so because Desire comes all wrapped up in aggressive flames, quite red and scorching, and has acquired the fame of being antechamber of sin. I am not talking about the sin of lust and debauchery, although I know it pops out in mind, but that most terrible of selfishness. However, what a beautiful word! Desire is the old term, full of wisdom, while Motivation is the decaffeinated shit, politically-correct surrogate, that acts on its behalf. Desire is personal and confidential. Motivation is a mere whore that can be showed, betrayed or used as an exchange currency to get jobs and such. How important are desires for the individual! How important to defend them from all sorts of intrusions!

Here is the topic for a short story or film: how would an unsecured man, ashamed and mortified by his true wishes (though legitimate) would survive? It would be entitled "The Desireless Man".

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Ebb tide in appetite

Yes, yes, yes, I know. I have pending the writing of my notes on Frankenstein. With Camus' essay at hand, the novel turned out to be crystal clear, even predictable, and more fixed to the conventions of Reason than bowed to the excess of Imagination. What a thing! Even imagination has its rules. It always had.

But as soon as I finished Mary Shelley's story, I started Dracula, written at the other end of the 19th century, in 1897. Fantastic stuff! It is gripping me like tales can only gripped kids. How many months I have been only reading in the tube (mainly, at least)! Today, instead, arrived home around 8, made a cup of coffee, and in the dim light of desk and bed lamps, amidst the fainted tickle of rain drops "without", kept reading. Like a child. It is more than 20 years ago, I kind of remember, when P. and I rolled down the streets boasting like a couple of peacocks in our 13, and were dismissed by V., who was always reading like crazy in the chamber upstairs his parent's bar. I kind of remember the day he was sitting by the window, wrapped in the skirts of the table, warmed by the heat of the brazier, reading Dracula. A king's pleasure.

The writing pace of Stoker is really nice. No point to make a more elaborate description of my opinion so far. I have felt the urgency to write this after reading Chapter 5, mainly after enjoying with ecstasy the first letters exchanged by Mina Murray and Lucy Westerna and the latter's account of her three proposals in a day: Dr. Seward, sunken in gloom spirits after her refusal ("ebb tide in appetite, cannot eat, cannot rest"), the Texan Quincey Morris and the fortunate Arthur. How beautiful is the style of Quincey! "Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover (...). My dear, I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come. Won't you give me one kiss? It'll be something to keep off the darkness now and then". What a universal and timeless custom of honest men to offer friendship to the woman they love after being refused! Poor Dr. Seward does the same, less eloquently. Lucy relates to Mina: "he hoped I would be happy, and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best". Oh, boy! Universal stuff.

Indeed, how similar we are to them, to those characters of that old, dusted time. The habit of writing letters, abandoned in the bottom of history, was revived by the emergence of the email, there is little doubt of it in my mind. And, despite the gap, there is something unchanged in the tone of the messages between Mina and Lucy, twenty years-old, and our own. Take as example (notice the three interrogation marks at the end): "Tell me all the news when you write (...). I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???".

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Adios, Esperanza

Just a few months ago, I reflected upon the moral responsibility of successful and honest politicians in the past (if such entity exists) to step up and attempt bridling a country in decomposition. The shocking step-out from the first line of Esperanza Aguirre (politician who, as her name indicates, remained possibly the only certain hope for such a task) has put me in an angle from which my reflections spawn into a completely different direction.

The general public really does not know why she resigned on Monday 17th, although there are a number of plausible reasons. Most of them certainly have to weight one way or another towards Aguirre's final decision, but I happen to believe the argument that Esperanza brandished as the main, positive reason. "I never took really care of myself. I want to do it now, and be close to mine people", she said.

Because of the fainted political situation in Spain right now and the slender pillars on which its institutions support themselves this very day (utterly wretched circumstances), the light-hearted resolution of Esperanza has fallen like a massive anvil of concrete on people's brittle hearts. I mean, of course, people who admire and love her... Naturally, the same counterweight of hatred and aberration towards her liberalism, celebrated her retirement. The anvil has fallen all of a sudden and raised a tidal of lack of understanding. Now? Now when she is more needed? Did she not say that she will not give up?

The point is that Aguirre has not given up. In my view, she has just revealed her way of understanding politics. Against the common, historical role of a politician as that vocational being touched with the power to bend history and undergo social projects of savage proportions, being those good or evil, Aguirre seems to understand politics as a profession in itself consisting in going to work every day and setting into practice a collection of certain ideas and principles. She was (is) an ardent defender of the battle of ideas because she is convinced of the moral and technical superiority of liberalism against any kind of state interventionism. The task might be demanding, but it is just work. There is life after it! There is a family, there is a space for personal development beyond the public spot, there is room for intimacy. In this sense, she is unique: ideas are relevant, but not to the extend of undermine and overwhelm the individual. The opposite example can be found in Mariano Rajoy who, a few weeks ago, repeated two or three times in the course of a TV interview: "Be confident that I would do what I feel best for the country". I am shocked at the fact that nobody seems to rest in these terrible, authoritarian words. Mariano: I don't care what you feel; please, fulfill those actions you say you would do before the Spaniards gave you a landslide majority in the elections. You are beginning to be traitor and a liar, the empty tin man without a heart.

The most surprising part of the story has been the statement of Aguirre's enemy in the Parliament of Madrid, Tomas Gomez, not more than an insignificant socialist pawn, but always, daily, Aguirre's punchbag. His words seems sincere with acknowledgement and recognition, by far more honest and significant than any pronounced by the Aguirre's fellows of the Popular Party. The guy has proved to be much smarter and good-hearted than he seems, but also has revealed himself ignoble and soaked in cowardice: such is the nature of the hideous game he plays.

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Frankenstein (I)

Frankenstein was written in 1816, when Mary Shelley, her author, was 18 or 19 years old. Interesting stuff, although must undergo a purge. Do it when I finish. Let me recount here a contradiction. It could be the classic contradiction from an 18 year-old writer, or it could not, apart from all other implausibilities, exotic stories and romantic aura. When Victor Frankenstein is pulled out a piece of ice going astray in the middle of nowhere by the adventurous sailors, and gets recovered, he tells his story to Robert Walton, which begins like this: "I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic". However, two pages later he says: "I, their eldest child, was born at Naples". Interesting lapsus... . The contradiction is solved in a Spanish translation I had at hand last weekend, though.

Anybody noticed? It might be an on-purpose mistake. Romantic stuff, I guess... .

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Sherlock straight

Yesterday, the new movie of the Spanish film maker and intellectual Jose Luis Garci was premiered in Spain: Sherlock Holmes, Madrid Days. The title is a little bit off... And difficult, like a punishment: we tend to make the "d" of Madrid more or less mute (when not a "z"), but here Garci adds another one next to it, absolutely necessary for "day" to be "day". Talking about the letter "d", the title sounds a little bit dodgy.

The title has though the charm of a passionate person of great conversation, incapable of speaking English. Those are the most charming and sweet of all! I don't think he has improved a tiny bit since his famous speech at the Oscars in 1983, when he became the first Spanish director in winning one (best film). It seems not to be in YouTube, O wonder of wonders! But it does not matter. That is the spell of Garci's universe, a world of passion and hope that is coming to an end. In a radio station where he collaborates, surrounded by friends, someone asked him to say a few words about the movie and, out of everything that is possible to say, he chooses: "what can I say? That it has been a true miracle for this movie to be out". Somewhere else, he points out: "the days of cinema are doomed".

Garci belongs to a different place. No mobile phone, no web, no social network, no shit. However, I find a sort of comfort listening to him speak, the way he does, unfolding naturally a significant life and knowledge, no better than anybody else's, but lived with enthusiasm and in the wings of passion. Jose Luis Garci seems to be one of this guys that pass by this vale of tears lighthearted (o, wondrous word and concept!); they look innocent, gullible, old-fashion and, possibly, they are taken as losers and unfitting, but as you scratch a little the appearance, you find a different story running underneath: "life ain't be no crystal stairs" for them, like Langston Hughes sang, like ain't for anybody else. Perhaps, they just embrace faults and wrong as part of it; perhaps they just lived it generously.

**

Precisely this afternoon, Without a Clue was on the TV. The idea of a imbecile Sherlock Holmes taking all the credit from a sharp Watson is interesting. Being Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley, one and another, respectively, is even more interesting. Funny and theatrical. Great... Ben Kingsley, the great winner of the Oscars in 1983 in Ghandi, precisely. D.M. invited me to his place along with other leftist friends of his to watch it in a huge screen he got, 8 years ago, in the States. It was a Friday and I fell asleep on the couch. It was  his last invitation to movies... .

**

I have only read a couple of novels of Sherlock Holmes, the first two. I think I have already commented here about it. The most interesting fact about the couple is, likely, the only aspect completely forgotten. And it is that Sherlock and Watson were two wretched individuals, without girlfriends, without women, sharing a flat. Watson had just came from the war in Afghanistan and checked in a hotel. However, he happened to be a spendthrift and had to start looking for a room to share and, therefore, cut down expenses. That's how they met each other, through a common acquaintance. On his side, Sherlock would have become a sort of Cosmo Kramer one hundred years later: the individual -the crazy individual, super smart, that almost all sometime have met- always up to something strange, moving from one blinding enthusiasm to another every other week. His addiction to drugs seems to me just something "elemental": the necessary, logical move of his nature.

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Garbage 98 %

Precisely on  the eve of the 60th anniversary of the characterization of the double-helix DNA molecule, the destiny written on the stars has brought to the spot light a major realization, in my opinion, regarding that molecule. I must say, however, that I know nothing about. Sometime in the late 90s, when the genetic maps were for the first time -I guess- drawn and reproduced, when Dolly killed God to become the new, ruthless Frankenstein, I looked a little into the matter. But that was all. I have forgotten almost everything.

Nevertheless, I heard these days that the 98 % of the DNA molecule, the one not made of genes (the sugar-phosphates rigs), might play a major and unique role and explain why the same genetic information can lead to different outputs in two different individuals. Until now, that massive part of the molecule was considered as "garbage" by the plenary scientific community. Two main, general thoughts come to my mind: 1) how stupid and vane is to believe that 98% of something can be useless in Nature, as it were a public company or institution, with free licence to squander; and 2) how tyrannical the dictatorship of Science can be to those who dare to swarm in no-man-land waters, away from the warm streams of the accepted and networked shit.

For sure: garbage 98 %.

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Betrayal

Finally, I sit down to write. Things, ideas come and go, but I would not like to forget to say something disgraceful... Actually, a couple of disgraceful episodes, episodes of betrayal.

The first one is about Breivik. Breivik himself. Do you remember him? A lot of fuss about was around one year ago. One year after, he has been forgiven for his murdering of 77, most of them underage. The guy has gone almost away with it: 21 years of prison, that's all, the maximum penalty in Norway which, you will see (if we are still around), will get shorten down to 10. That is disgraceful! The guy is crazy; his crime was the modern edition of Mr Jekyll and Dr Hyde with a touch of Dr. No and Viktor Frankestein. Chemistry, diaries, full conscience and premeditation. His recipe and cooking was a boiling pot of frozen cruelty and all he gets is just nothing! It would have been better to declare him perturbed and disturbed and all fucked-up and have him caged for life in a mental institution.

Still, what has Norway done to change the police and the security structures and policies? The tragedy got record pikes because of a total incompetence and lack of common sense in security issues! The myth is all that remains: oh, the blessed Scandinavians, social paradises. All we get, one year gone is words, words, words.

**

The second awful story of betrayal is the Bolinaga case in Spain. Josu B. Bolinaga is a motherfucker, son of a bitch, murderer of 3 policeman and main responsible of kidnapping a man and keeping him in a two-by-two hideout for 532 days, until the Spanish police found him. The victim was more a ghost than a person. Apparently, the executioner is now dying from cancer and the Spanish Government is about to let him out. I am not too sure, tough, I rather think the Government got in a good trouble itself.

The problem with ETA in Spain is tragic these last years. I have pointed out here sometime before that the Socialist Party betrayed decades of fighting by negotiating with the criminal gang a plan to make political concessions starting something like 10 years ago. The current Government, against its political ideas and electoral promises, is following down the path... But why?

I can only think of one reasonable explanation: they don't want any more killings. None of them want. But alas! That is precisely the gist of the stuff! 10, 15, even 25 years ago, all governments up to that of Aznar repeated to ETA: "avoid violence, forget violence, you will never get anything via it!" Unfortunately, the Spanish politicians have abandoned the struggle. They have given up and ETA is arriving safely to destination through it. ETA is not killing today, but has now political power and control over many towns, villages and areas of the Basque country and has chances to win the Regional elections in the whole Basque country on next October 21st against PSOE or PNV. ETA does not need to kill now, but if it does, it will, because violence will pay off. ETA got it, all by fear to VIOLENCE. Amazing. Disgraceful. Vomitive.

ETA is about to get THROUGH violence what has always pursued: a totalitarian state based on lies and lack of liberties, a pure reflection of Cuba, Venezuela or the worst Soviet republics at the time. The lost lives of so many (858 since 1977, Franco already dead) count nothing, the sacrifice of so many, the horrifying kidnapping and killing of Miguel Angel Blanco, the blood, the innocence of children, the youth of so many young police-men and women, the murder of Spanish politicians, journalists, judges, most of them still young, the most terrifying and cruel moments.

I cannot think of anything worse. ETA got what it wanted the way it wanted. Years from now, I can see, the  parents will tell their criminal cubbies that it was a time when they did not give up nor given in, and so they have to do.

Terrorism and evil is being perpetuated.

FUCK ETA. ETA FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK YOU!!

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While mortals sleep

While mortals sleep is a collection of short stories by Kurt Vonnegut, published by Vintage Originals. I bought it in a bookstore aside one of the entrances to Hampstead Heath a couple of weeks ago.

I don't think Vonnegut is any great short-story writer in the trail of the great short-story American writers, such as O. Henry, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver or Jack London. However, his writing is inviting and in his straight, linear stories one senses this musty smell of what can go wrong with adults, sometimes as if imposed by an overwhelming power above, part of which, I must say, is nonetheless familiar to me. I find the book a pleasant reading and an open invitation to sit around and bitch about -an experience-sharer.

Here and there there is interesting stuff, like this definition of a "dreamer" that Bob, the 21-year old, just-married, MIT engineer gives to his wife: someone who "never sees things the way they really are". The musty smell becomes pungent before this super-familiar-to-me, meta-cognitive sentence. Everything points to chaos and to an eternal cliff for Bob and Nancy. They've been married for a few hours, but she is already crying: "you sound so mad". One, two, three, four words... Four words that mean so much.

Particularly, the Hundred-Dollar Kisses story contains a sentence in current order. Henry is being judged for having hit his co-worker Verne with a telephone. Why he did it? Because Verne represents everything that is wrong with the world. What is wrong with the world? "Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves"... .

Anybody has any doubt?

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Theseus in Google maps

I ate a little piece of chocolate this afternoon and I am holding now with my fingers the small red strip of wrapping paper. There is a little drawing of the ruins of the temple of Poseidon in Sounio, "the most meridian point in Attica".  From up there, up these walls, Theseus' father jumped down the cliffs in terrible agony and killed himself, for he thought his son had perished in the fight against the Minotaur of Crete. E. told me the story today. But Aegeas was mistaken, since his son had been successful over the beast. Only that Theseus had forgotten to pull out the white sails of the battle ship -as it was the agreed signal- when returning victorious from the island. O, sons! What a mess. What an universal mess! The tiny body of the old man, lost in the vast ocean... The magnitude of the tragedy was made justice by re-baptizing -let us use this word at this time- the privileged sea around: Aegeus.

On the other side, the Minotaur, a beast caged in a labyrinth, with horns and all, was one of the many sons of the king Minos of Crete. The pretty Ariadna -one can only imagine her pretty- was also Mino's daughter. Nature is capricious. The relationship between father and son is stated with tons of wisdom and experience by Montaigne, precisely, in the first line of his essay On the Education of Children: "I have never known a father refuse to acknowledge his son however scabby or deformed the boy may be".

A nice story of fathers and sons, no doubt. The next chapter could be written today by any father with any son and the little help of Google maps. How easy it is now! Zooming in and out the narrow strait of sea from the continent to Crete, one can almost feel the fear of the warrior inside those egg-shells, sailing at the mercy of inconstant winds and voluble gods; one can almost see the dark silhouette of the menacing island and hear in the distance, like in the old King-Kong movie, the tam-tams calling upon the horrible creature to soothe its hunger and placate its fury.

Everything makes sense.

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Commoners, rogues and liars

Michel de Montaigne's Essays are turning to be refreshing and revealing. Quite an interesting chap, Montaigne, he would love this blogging thing. He says: "Whether they happened or not, in Paris or in Rome, to John or to Peter, there is always some turn of the human mind about which they give me useful information. I note and draw profit from these anecdotes, whether they are shadowy or substantial". That is, for sure, the most transcendental and interesting feature of his writing. His source of insight and inspiration, to an important extent, comes very well from the common episodes of common people. Montaigne is well rooted, I can see that, in the devoted culture of Aristotle -Seneca and Plutarch, in his case- and the whole Roman tradition, before the revolution. And that's what makes the fact so interesting. The old fathers seem to have done so. Not only his 16th-century writing sounds modern to my ears, much unexpected, but it is also striking that "to vindicate the supreme power of our will", the great St. Agustine "claims to have seen a man who could command his bottom to  break wind as often as he wished". That's what I am talking about: did he really wrote that?! The Philosopher! If St. Agustine had been married at the time, his wife would have shouted at him from the kitchen: "it is the last time, my dear, that I ask you to come downstairs and clean the stable!".

**

Recently, I heard that someone working for a small company got fired and, despite being smooth and soft at the time of departure and farewell, he came back in retaliation with all the fury and sued the company and the chief of personnel. And it comes so handy the juicy story of Montaigne, the first one the reader gets: "King Henry the Seventh of England made an agreement with Don Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian -or, to give him a higher title, father of the Emperor Charles V- that the said Philip should deliver into his hands his enemy the Duke of Suffolk of the White Rose, who had fled for refuge to the Netherlands, but this on condition that Henry should make no attempt on the life of the said Duke. But when the English king came to die, he commanded his son in his last will to put Suffolk to death immediately after his decease.

Montaigne's stand is as certain as beautiful: "I shall see to it, if I can, that my death makes no statement that my life has not already made".

**

Montaigne makes a claim against his bad memory and puts it in simple words: to be a bad ass and burned brilliantly with ambition, memory is a must. I, like him, have a short memory for the injuries received, which is my perdition. Sometimes, the sun even shines on the prairies of my memories, although I know it is a vile mirage and I know that it was rather a dark and damp moor. "Like Darius", king of Persia, we "should need a prompter (...): Sire, remember the Athenians". Montaigne finds some consolation in the pleasures of unending novelty but, as I said, I don't.

And who has never had this experience?: "(...) At the expense of those who profess to suit their speech only to the advantage of the business in hand" and, perhaps, "to please the great man to whom they are speaking". O, vast truth! Now, take a few, the liars, of short memory. Montaigne puts in words what is a tangible experience of all: "The circumstances to which it is their wish to subordinate their faith and their conscience being subject to various changes, their language has also to change from time to time; and so they call the same thing grey one moment and yellow the next, say one thing to one man, and another to another".

It sounds quite a modern complaint, but it is the same stitching-and-bitching about of the primitive times, the times where good many thousands have already gone through the forests of life, before every new generation, blind-folded and tam quam tabula rasa, call it anew.

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Amidst the smell

O, the smells of the summer's nights... . The bewildered side of hearts only finds repose at sunset, before dusk, and the content one is at peace at night _Mild, tender breeze, and all these smells around. It's like being caressed.

Those are the inexpensive fragrances of these last days of the summer. I could not ask for more. A couple of days ago, an old veteran struck kingly his guitar in the hub of noisy and dinning Covent Garden. Old songs from the good old times, and the old lucky sun setting down above, unnoticeable. A woman past her age was singing quietly along, with a voice pitch close to that of a boiling kettle. Her eye was taken by the nostalgia and the sour warmth of wine. But it was all just so gentle and nice... . It was that time when all poor devils rambling their lives get their truce.

**

Talking about boiling kettles, I happened to watch -again- the 40-year-old Virgin sometime this week. That was an expression in it. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about the life of the main character _whatever his name was, don't remember. It was a sad life of order, dull and tasteless, totally unappealing and with no excitement whatsoever. Lonesome too. But it was a life of order. The house was also cleaned. He sits at a neat table and eats his breakfast. Everything is in order.

It is this well-underlined, pointed-out order and discipline what caught my eye and, probably, kept me watching: it is somehow my own life... I once saw in a magazine a story about the rooms of inmates, with pictures and all. I think I commented about it here. My God! All rooms were tidy and in order, even with taste, undoubtedly. That marks, clearly, a qualitative distinction: discipline, order, cleanliness, tidiness are not strange to the wretched spirits. Montaigne name these behaviors results of habit which "not only can mould us into whatever shape it pleases", and put it in straight words: "I remember having taken children from beggary to serve me, who have almost immediately left my kitchen and abandoned their livery, simply to return to their old lives. And I found one of them afterwards picking up mussels from a garbage pile for his dinner, yet neither by entreaties nor threats could could I make him abandon the relish and charm that he found in indigence. Beggars have their delights and sensual pleasures as well as the rich and, so they say, their dignities and civil precedence as well".

This is so true, so true. I have -I think, everyone has- my own stories about it. In fact, Montaigne is turning out to be quite a pleasant and insightful reading: "In the experience that I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar. Anyone who recalls the violence of his past anger, and to what a pitch his excitement carried him, will see its ugliness better than in Aristotle (...); anyone who remembers the ills he has undergone and those that have brought him from one state to another, thereby prepares himself for future changes and for the understanding of his condition".

It is just so. Naturally, not all is this kind of "transcendental" stuff. He gives full details of the smallest things. For example, in order to show the tremendous variety of human behaviors and tendencies, he gives account of the preference of the French for the fireplace, but the disliking for stoves which, by the way, were preferred by the Germans; he then praises the old idea of the Romans, who use to make the fire outside houses and warm them up by conveying the hot gases through pipes buried within the walls. Nice!... And so, so many other examples about almost everything, anyway.

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Basket: London - L.A.

I'm just writing a lot these days, a different kind of writing, somewhere else, and about this time of the night I feel tired, most of the days I fall asleep in front of the T.V., after dinner. But today I'd like to make a quick remembrance. It's been 28 years now since that hot night in the blossom of summer, where a bunch of kids entreated until 4 am to watch the Olympic Final of basketball USA - Spain. Those who did not wait and went to bed until the time, did not have the stamina to wake up nor their parents let them make the sacrifice. I was among those.

Spain was silver. The USA rolled over us, but at that time, playing against USA was like visiting Mars. It did not count. During the next year, boys at school stop playing football a little and turned to basket. Stores across schools made profits with those small balls that kids -their parents- bought like crazy. We all used to play in the football goals, between stick and stick, to get the ball inside a gap there was there. Those basket players were heroes, or at least that is how I remember them. Now Internet lets you watch those days and, somehow, wipes off the stardust of the fairy tale.... . There is something that has not changed, though, real as tough stone: the proverbial complex of inferiority of Spanish commentators.

Today Spain won silver again in London 2012, after losing against the USA, 107 - 100,  with the best generation of players that never was. Much, much less attention, unfortunately, these players have received for, not 1, but the last 6 years. Some of them -some were not even born in 1984- play now in the NBA and are successful. And all of them has shaken off the fastidious, ever-lasting inferiority complex. They never give up, did not today; 40 seconds before the end, while the USA players already celebrated, they kept playing. Up in the bleachers, the Queen, Her Son and Her Daughter in Law did come along, doing what they have to do. The Queen's sister, Irene -although younger, much worn out-, born in South Africa and Princess of Greece and Denmark, resident in London, smiled and cheered like she were recognized in Spain.

I don't know what to say. It's just a game... But everything seemed to me genuine and clean. The Spain I believe in and that has been stolen.

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Gibbs's fundamental

I'd like to make a quick remark, before I forget, about the fundamental equation proposed by J. Willard Gibbs. Far from being pleased with intuitive concepts alone -to which we are too keen to sometimes-, I still get the thrill any time an equation takes me into the mysteries of a natural concept. The math language -when lights up a connection in any dark corner of my brain- adds that poetic touch that "a romantic" mind needs to booze in the unknown. Quite an orgasmic feeling. Or better. Feels like love indeed. Half-way to heaven.


The fundamental equation of Gibbs is so simple and so profound at the same time, that one regains hope in the millenary yearn to have the essence of the Universe caged in a little glass ball _A sort of complete source of knowledge in which all is contained and which pundits can caress in their hands, like a witch would do, feeling invincible. 


The beauty of the equation is to highlight a fundamental concept, much, much used and much elusive: the concept of energy. The state of energy of any system can be changed in many different ways, dE:

dE=TdS-pdV+μdn+φdQ+u dp +ψdm+⋯

Each term of the RHS of the equation is formed by an intensive property (i.e. not dependent of the mass of the system), such as T, temperature; p, pressure; μ, chemical potential, φ, electrical potential, ψ, gravitational potential; u, velocity, a vector magnitude, etc; and by the change of an extensive property (i.e. dependent of the mass): S, entropy; V, volume; n, quantity or moles conforming the system; Q, electric charge; m, mass; p, linear momentum, etc. The larger the change of any of this properties, the larger the change of energy. However, each change is modulated by the intensive property, which acts as a sort of coefficient.


Don't know about you, but this sounds music to me. Lots of scattered pieces of knowledge, somehow disparaged, fell into place. Once again, re-discovering the Thames is the most ambitious and adventurous trip!


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