Goals (welcoming 2015)

Old year dying, new year arising...

Stupid or not, I have got used to this routine of blogging by the end of every year, to take a look back and see how the year was, and also take a look forward and set my goals for the next year.
Last year I decided 2013 had been my best year so far. And for the 1st time, I didn´t write down a list of goals or expectations for 2014. This is what I wrote:

"It´s all so uncertain right now, that I cannot make many purposes for the new year... So I will stick to the immediate: pass the MIR, come back to NY, start studying for the damned USMLE and the TOEFL... And make the path by walking."

Well, I can say I did it all, so 2014 was a good year too.

I welcomed the new year in NY, dancing with a guy I got to really admire (yep, me, dancing). I did quite well at the exam, well enough to get the post I wanted. I came back to NY. And I also visited Philadelphia, Boston, Washington and Columbus. I loved, I laughed, I cried. I got the chance to observe in an american hospital. I had a wonderful 3 year old kid sleeping by my side after he peed on his mattress. I got a job I really like, I met quite a few people and made quite a few good friends. I moved back to my crappy apartment, where you can practice roach hunting even in the shower. I got serious about the USMLE. And, the most important thing, I learnt where I want my life to go -- and I´m working for it.

As for the year to come, I have it very clear what I want from it, but for the 1st time in my life I feel that it´s only up to me to make it happen. So once more, I won´t write down a list of expectations, though I have to say that, in 2015, I hope I get the chance to read more, write more, meet more interesting people and keep growing and getting wiser. And I also hope to get my green card -- karma owes me. The rest is entirely on my hand. Though my wish to have a dusty wooden attic with a piano, a guitar, a huge old chest containing who knows what, old books, an easel and oil paintings is still there...

But instead of talking about my goals, I would like to take about "goals", just like that, in general.
This is something I´ve been thinking about a lot lately, and I want to share a brief reflection with all you people of the world who will never read my posting. I have been wondering why it is so important to me to pass the USMLE, to get another observership, to come back to the US, etc. I have been seriously considering if that was what I really wanted, after all. I have been trying to convince myself that the fact that I wanted to do all that did not obey to rational but to emotional reasons. And myself ended up convincing me otherwise. I guess she´s a better arguer.
I don´t care about how things turn out. Maybe one of these days I will meet somebody, and I will decide to stay here a little longer until we see how things unfold. Maybe within a few years I will be a happily married proud mom and I won´t want to leave this decadent country anymore. Who knows. But right now, right here, I don´t want to feel trapped. And I want to know that I will be able to do whatever the fuck I want to do, to live wherever the fuck I want to live. I know I will be good at what I do, because I have a clinical experience that most of my peers lack. But I want to know that I can be good wherever it is that I want to be good.
Also, and you might think this is stupid, the fact that I was able to be by myself in a foreign country made me feel incredibly free, and I don´t want to lose that feeling. And I know that, even if I finally decide not to leave, the fact that I passed the exams, that I had the choice, will make me be proud of myself. And I want to keep learning from a culture I used to consider arrogant not long ago (and I still find funny sometimes).
But anyways, I´m losing my own thread here. I did not want to discuss "my" goals, but the importance of having goals.
Because I think life is just a succession of goals and achievements. You need to have one goal to keep you active and motivated. You need to achieve that goal to feel proud and fulfilled. And then, you need to get a new goal so you don´t get lost in your own comfort and self satisfaction. And I guess our goals are one of the things that can best define us. When we meet someone, their goals (call them plans, ambitions, hopes...) are what make us get more or less interested in them. The way they work to achieve their goals is what gives us an idea of their credibility and makes us keep or lose interest. And the way they react to success or failure tells everything about their attitude towards life.
And if you don´t have any goals, then you´re lost. That means you don´t expect anything from life, you just keep going no matter where. No ambitions, no purpose. No chance to be proud of yourself.
So you better get one.

So yes, back to my goals for 2015, I do have quite a few. I don´t know if I will achieve them, but I´m working on it. I don´t know if I will change my mind, but that´s something you can never know. I just want to know that, by the time I have to make my choice, I will have opened as many doors as possible. And then I will complain about how difficult my decision is, and I will have earned every right to complain.

Speaking of which, "the right to complain" will make a subject for an incoming post very soon.

In conclusion, I hope you and I succeed in our new year purposes, so that we can feel proud of ourselves, set new purposes and keep moving.

(And I hope one day I will get my dusty attic)

Traveler, it´s up to you to make the path.
Happy 2015!!!
:)

Frost VS Steinbeck

So nope, I didn´t quite like the letter that Steinbeck wrote to his son about, apparently, "the importance of waiting for love". You might want to read the whole original letter here, as I plan to copy-paste and interrupt it after every paragraph for analysis.
I, of course, have no right (not to say authority!) to criticize the glories, yet here I go again.

"New York
November 10, 1958
Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you."

Obvious, having somebody to love is always a good thing. Pointless advice. "Don´t let bully-boys punch you for that, poor soul."

"Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had."

Ok, but the first kind of love is not a love for somebody else, but for oneself. So the only genuine kind of love, when we are talking about "being in love with somebody", is the second one. So once again, needless paragraph.

"You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love."

Well I don´t know what the kid meant with "puppy love", maybe I should read his letter. But you can perfectly feel "puppy love" and still feel it deeper than any other thing you´ve ever felt before. This, I guess, depends also on the other person, or what the other person wants with you, or how the other person manages his social (not only sentimental) relationships. It can happen that some people are so self confident, so determined, so sure about what they want, that one´s own expectations or wishes become reliant on the other´s priorities, and one ends up living at someone else´s shadow. When such thing happens, and you find yourself wagging your tail with excitement every time the other makes a concession, then you´re feeling a really deep puppy love. I´m gonna guess, this is probably not what the kid meant. He probably meant that he didn´t love the girl the same way he´d love a puppy (a temporary whim, 1st kind of love, sexist idiot)..., but there´s no way to know.

"But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you."

Smart papa, the man knew how to read between the lines!! That´s only a part of a great author´s privileges.

"Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.
If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration."

Ok, the father is not being honest here. Nor clear. He doesn´t want to tell his kid that there´s also a possibility that the girl will not respond to his loving. He tries to mask this possibility behind "shyness". Anyways, his advice here is, "Tell her. But if she´s acting shy, don´t tell her".

"Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also."

Oh yes, girls can tell. These bitchy beings have a special sense. But they find delight in making you suffer, so she will pretend not to know. Sorry, in other words, daddy´s advice here: "Go ahead and tell her. She already knows anyways."

"It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good."

"And then, face the consequences like a man". I think daddy knows that his kid´s love is not corresponded. But, again, he doesn´t want to hurt his feelings so he won´t say it clearly. But he also wants him to stop being girly, for god´s sake, just tell her at once, be rejected and move on to the next girl, and enough writing about your feelings, you innocent little flower!

"Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it."

"Just in case you´re wondering, I love your mom. And she´s my wife. You looser."

"We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can."

"Because, like I said, she´s my wife. And she´s a woman. Therefore, it´s her duty to make all such arrangements and also she likes all this 'feelings' bullshit more than I do. So stop bothering me with that.".

"And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away."

Stupid last line for consolation. Though it will be 50% the subject of my upcoming rambling. But yes, daddy does not have too much faith in the future of this relationship... And now he´s saying "Ok, tell her..., but not yet, maybe." Poor kid must have ended so messed up. Clever daddy, he gave him every possible advice. Tell her, don´t tell her, be brave and tell her and your mom will set everything up, but maybe don´t tell her yet.

"Love,

Fa"


MY UPCOMING RAMBLING
So I didn´t make this simil in the first place, but will try to explain why, to me, Robert Frost´s "Nothing gold can stay" (or "Nothing golden stays", as the poem was originally conceived) and Steinbeck´s "Nothing good gets away" don´t have opposite meanings, though one might think they do.
Ok, Frost´s turn now. "Nothing gold can stay". True. But not less true as Quereda´s "Nothing rusty can stay". As the truth is, nothing, golden or rusty, can stay, because we ourselves cannot stay. But I believe, as long as I stay, something golden or something rusty might well stay too. Not unchanged, of course, but maybe with little change. We probably tend to think about love here. Or wealth. In any case, it can last as long as I am alive, if I´m lucky enough. It might not, but it could.
Now about the statement that "Nothing good gets away", let me bring up again Vonnegut´s "The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is."
"Nothing good gets away" doesn´t mean that golden will stay. It rather means, "if it didn´t stay, then it was no gold". Like I said, it´s a comforting phrase to think of after something good does get away. Like the fable "The fox and the grapes", it´s another way to try to convince oneself that what went away was not so good after all. That if she had been meant to be "the one", she would have waited no matter how long. That if she didn´t wait forever, then she did not deserve to be "the one". Which is a normal reaction to loss, or rejection, I guess, but not true for every particular case. Anyways, it´s a way to turn someone´s grief into another´s fault, maybe because we need someone else to blame instead of ourselves. Which I think might not be the best way to deal with it, but it´s perfectly understandable, and legitimate if it works -- and even if it doesn´t.
But I´d rather hold on to Vonnegut´s absolutely true quote. Which is another way to say, "There´s no way to tell, but this might have been for the best".
So, dear Steinbeck Jr., find your balls and tell the girl. If she must say no, the sooner the better. That´s a much better advice than the sentimental crap your dad just told you.

Reflections on black and white

I read on the news, "A US grand jury will be asked to decide whether to prosecute a New York police officer over the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Brooklyn."
And this is only a few days after another grand jury decided not to charge another NY cop who killed another unarmed black man. And after another cop was found innocent of killing a black kid in Ferguson this past summer.
I´m a white, kind of wealthy european girl. I´m writing from my bed, in my crappy but comfortable room in Madrid. What do I know, right?
Right.
I don´t know much about US law. I have never experienced racism myself. I have probably had involuntary racist behaviours many times in my life. But to me, being racist makes as much sense as hating/disliking/distrusting people who wear a blue shirt.
I´m not familiar with the Ferguson case, I never got to read much about it. But I know there´s been controversy about the facts, and it was not clear whether the killing was self defense or the kid had been trying to surrender (hands up, they said). Though in any case, I don´t get how six shots can be considered "self defense", but ok, let´s buy it. There was a reasonable doubt. He was found innocent. I´m glad he decided to quit, anyways.
But in this new case... What is it to decide? It´s a cop killing an unarmed man because he was entering his own house. Just doesn´t make sense. The decision to make should be whether or not he´s guilty of homicide, in a court. But whether or not to press charges? It´s absurd.
And yet I think the cop in Ferguson is more punishable. Again, I don´t know, so from here on this is just me hypothesizing, without any objective data to support what I´m saying.
But to me, there are mostly two different kinds of racism.
The first one would be hate. The kind of hate of those who wave the confederate flag. Those who believe that black people are a lower race, born to serve white people, and clearly not worthy of the same rights as them. (Writing this makes me feel so embarrased of being white!).
The second kind of racism would be distrust. People who are conditioned by society or education to be afraid of black people, or to think that they might be dangerous. This may sound a little forced, but these people might as well be considered as victims of racism...
So I don´t think there was an intention to kill a black person from the cop in Brooklyn. Even if he had been a person who loves killing black people for fun, doing that would have been absurd considering the current social context. No one would be so stupid to risk his career like that - I want to think. So I think in this case, the cop was another victim of a racist society with racist prejudices.
Now, this doesn´t mean I don´t think he should be punished! He should be charged, he should be judged, and he should be found guilty. But not guilty of a racist crime, but guilty of killing another person, no matter what the race, for no reason. Yes, his motivation was a racist prejudice, but probably not a racist hate. And for prejudice, there´s a whole society to blame.
I got so mad these past days reading the news. It made me wish I could resign from being white. It made me wish I could do something to prove that I don´t belong to this, I hope, minority of white people who believe themselves to be superior beings. I saw a photo of one of the protests in NY, and for a moment I thought, I should be there.
But then I thought, would I really want to be there? The photo showed lots of black people, mostly black women at the front, holding banners, raising fists, yelling in a very aggressive pose. Understandable, of course. That´s exactly how I myself would be, if I was there protesting.
But then, would they want to see me there? Would they want to have the enemy in their ranks? Wouldn´t they, at least some of them, think that I´m mocking them, that I´m ruining their cause? That a black protest has no place for a white oppressor?
Again, that´s how far my ignorance can go. I´m sure most black people would want white people to join them. But the truth is, there was not one single white person in that particular photo.
And I thought, if this is how I feel, being here, completely external to what is happening there, then things must be so messed up right now. Racial hate must be highest than ever in the past few years. Blacks hating whites for being racist, whites hating blacks for accusing them of racism... Obama in the middle of it, making unfortunate or rather polemic statements, being partial, taking sides... But how can one, black or white, or mixed, or asian, or eskimo, stay impartial here?
I guess things will get better with time. They have to. Maybe within a few generations, when we are all mixed, who knows. But in the meantime, I wish there was something that could be done. I wish we could take all these stupid ignorant racist whites, and slap them over and over until we shook stupidity off...
Anyways, this is how much my daily 6 minutes breakfasts yield...

"Dear blog..."

And suddenly, it is december. And I only realised because of the christmas trees and the lightening.
It feels like I´m exactly where I was two months ago, but I´m not. I tried to keep myself busy, physically and mentally, and I´ve done so well that time has passed by without me noticing. I´ve done so well that I haven´t had time to visit my parents in weeks, watch my shows, read the news (except for my daily 6 minutes everyday from 8:50 to 8:56, when I quickly browse the bbc website while drinking my coffee) or blog.
I didn´t blog about goals, which I hope I will do sometime soon because the idea has been whirling in my head for quite a bit of time now. I didn´t blog about african immigration (yes, again). I didn´t blog about bonds (I will, too). I didn´t blog about my new lifestyle, hanging out even on mondays. I didn´t blog about guys, apartments and wine. I didn´t blog about my new friend, whom I told I wrote a blog, and how he mocked at me quoting "dear blog, today I woke up and had breakfast" - I denied doing that, and I´m aware it´s exactly what I´m doing right now. I didn´t blog about my next observership. I didn´t blog about the Ferguson trial.
I also didn´t mention the american kid I met just a few days ago, which is the only thing of the above I´m gonna write about now (shortly), because meeting him made me reconsider again my position with regard to american vs spanish teenagers. To say it briefly, I generally consider that spanish kids take everything as a joke, while americans take themselves too seriously. Though I must say I have no reason (not an objective one, at least) to think so, because I have never met an american teenager.
Anyways. This guy was 21. His family was originally from Poland but he was from Nashville, Tennessee. He was studying computer sciences, spending his last year in some school in Manchester. We started chatting about nothing and anything, and so we ended up talking about Darren Wilson and racism in the US. And from there we got to Obama and his immigration politics, and from there to international politics. And the way he talked, this kid, got me impressed. He was talking about such high matters, as if the world was his to opine - but his it was indeed, as it is mine, as it was mine when I was a 21 year old stupid who knew nothing about life and spent her weekend nights drinking kalimotxo in a nearby pub waiting for life to cross her way, instead of actually living. So I don´t know which the right way is, but his seems much closer to it than mine. I guess you can never know, and sometimes the most unexpected person can make a remarkable impression on you. And funny thing, he´ll never know. And we´ll never talk to each other again. We just happened to cross our paths for 15 minutes some night in a bar, and then dissappeared forever from eachother´s lives. And all I know about him is that his name (curiously, now that I think about it) is Julian.

Reasons to go back (or an ode to New York)

When I was in NY, in one of my visits to Barnes & Noble, I picked a book called "Ways to come back home", by a Chilean author who tells the story of a 9 year old boy during Pinochet´s dictatorship.
I only read the first few pages and, more than likely, it has nothing to do with what I will write about here. I just wanted to brag.
Anyways, I´ve been thinking about this "coming back"/"going back" thing. Because there are a few places I want to go back to and, honestly, I don´t know what´s in there for me. Which means, I have no idea why I want to go back. And I guess many times, when we think we want to "go back", we really don´t want to go back to some place as much as we want to go back to some time.
No matter how beautiful a city may be, we don´t want to go back to a place where we were unhappy. Take for example this friend of mine who, before leaving Madrid after living here for 5 years, said she hoped she never had to come back to Spain again.
The first time I remember having this idea was when I went back to Venice with my family, a few years after I had been there with my boyfriend. Venice was so incredibly beautiful in my mind, and going back kind of ruined the memory. My parents found it too hot, too wet, too crowded and too smelly. My brother was down because this girl had broken up with him. And I realised how different a place can be, depending on the circumstances.
I was also with my boyfriend when I first went to London, and I loved it. And when I went back, I remember telling Mar I didn´t want to walk Regent Street because I wanted my memory of it to stay as it was. Of course, I did walk it, and the curve from Piccadilly Circus is still one of my favorite places in the world (yep), but it was much better when I saw it for the first time, at night, from the front seat on the upper floor of the bus.
When I think of the places I would like to go back to, all of them on my list seem to have one thing in common: I not only liked the place for itself, but I also liked what I was feeling at that point of my life. So after London, I would like to go back to Brussels, and then NY and DC. And if I had to pick one, NY would go first.
I haven´t done too much travelling but I wouldn´t go back to Lisbon, Berlin, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Egypt or Tunisia (that I can recall now). Not at least without a good reason. I wouldn´t go back by myself. Even though I had a great time in all those places.
So why NY? I didn´t really like the city. It is too big, and too small at the same time, and too noisy. There are too many people pushing each other to get out of the subway, too many people rushing, too many people drinking coffee, too many people working late hours or studying on saturday night. It is dirty and dark and buildings are so high that it can be suffocating. I don´t like the glowing lights and the lifestyle. I don´t like shopping like mad, or eating in a fancy restaurant that not many people can afford, or getting some really healthy food in a vegetarian, or paying 24 dollars at Walgreens for a bunch of paper rolls and a bag of apples.
So what made it so special?
When I first landed there, I thought I would be taken to lots of places. Well, the first night I was taken to Macy´s and then we took a walk somewhere around there, and we walked to Times Square, and my first memory of the city is a lot of superhigh buildings over my head, with their superlarge screens at the front, the top of them dissappearing in the mist. I thought it was crazy. And I was cold.
And then, I wasn´t really taken to many other places. I mostly discovered the city by myself. I learned to move around, I did my little research on must sees, and I did it all. I started to wake up late, and I had coffee and cookies for breakfast, sitting on the mattress, and then I used to study or read, then take a shower, then asparagus with cheese and mayo sandwich, and then starbucks and sightseeing.
I won´t lie, I was dissapointed at the beginning. But then, the feeling of being by myself, thousands and thousands of miles away, further away from home than any other member of my family had ever been, in a place where nobody knew me, where it could be hours ("hours"!) until anyone would know if anything happened to me, where I could be punched on the ribs by a random guy at the street, or called a white bitch by some woman at the coffee shop,  where I could get my palm read by a guy whose favorite flowers were cherry blossoms, or have a nice walk in the park with a guy who was afraid of "blacky" people, where I could have 10 chickenwings and live music for a dollar, where I could be asked about my shaving habits on a bus trip... that feeling, I was saying, was awesome. I don´t remember having lived so many new experiences so condensed in such a short amount of time before. And then I went to the hospital and saw that, even though they were really good, they were not unreachable. Not by me, anyways. And that too, felt great.
I don´t think I can explain to what extent the city changed me. And of course I know it was not only the city. It was all of it. It was the winter from a 15th floor in the bronx, the fish tank at the hospital library, the free wifi space in that building in Lexington where I shared the hand dryer with a homeless woman to dry our socks after the strongest rain, the walks in Roosevelt Island, the Strand, the gardener. All the people I spent time with. Staying up until 6 am talking with Kene after the coldest night. Yomi the fellow. New year´s eve at 6 pm with my family on Skype.
I didn´t intend to write a post about NY, but that is what this will end up being, I guess. And you know, I would be cheating if I changed it now. You don´t censor yourself in your own blog.
So yes, I want to go back to NY, because I want to get that feeling back. The feeling that I am barely starting my life, that I´m just about to make the ultimate discovery, the feeling that I´m completely free to do whatever the fuck I want to do, and nobody will judge, and any option will be a good option. But I´m also aware that the moment is gone (and shall never come back). Which makes "wanting to get the feeling back" not a good reason to go back. Sorry about all these backs and the next to come, btw.
So I guess my rational reason to want to go back is because I want to keep liking the experience, and possibly keep disliking the city, but from a different perspective now.
But the reflection is, do we really want to go back "there", or are we just desperately trying to go back "then"? Will we be happy to be there, knowing that we cannot be "then" anymore?

Cynical me

Last night, for the anniversary of the fall of Berlin wall, I watched a movie about the world war II. And I thought again about the letters in Ohio Veterans Plaza, and I thought again about the bombings in the World Trade Center, and the trains in Madrid, and I thought again about the stupidity of the human race, about how we don´t seem to understand that we are all the same and all looking for the same things in life, and none of us knows shit about what will happen to us, we all live under the same uncertainty, we are all alone and afraid of being alone. We all have the same instincts and the same fears, and still we don´t work together, even though we would be much happier if we helped each other instead of fighting each other.

But then the cricket in my head says, "Ok, the world sucks. Get up and do something about it". And I realize how cynical I am. How I´m always talking about these utopic ideals of mine, but I won´t be the one to change the world. Because the truth is, I don´t want to. I am too busy trying to fix my own life, too comfortable sitting in front of my books and complaining about how unfair the world is, but it´s not my fault and therefore not my responsibility either. Thank god, there are a few people in the world who don´t think like me. But hey, I am not worse than all those perroflautas who protest for the wrong reasons, or for the right reasons but the wrong motivations.
And I know I could help a lot. Not enough to make a significant change, but still, for somebody, it could mean a lot, even everything. And sometimes I kind of feel that I need to do something meaningful. Maybe some day.
But for now, I will keep writing down my ideals with the vane illusion that someone might read them and get up and do something.

All animals are equal

This is one of the recurrent topics in the residents´ room when we´re not talking about sex, and I thought I could discuss it here.
The issue is "differences between men and women". Some of us are sexist (or feminist), some others claim we are all the same.
I think denying the differences inherent to our gender is nonsense. With this I´m not saying I don´t believe we should have the same opportunities. Unfortunately quite often I throw stones against my own roof (spanish phrase) but I would be stupid if I did it in this context... And I´m a woman, not a stupid!
As Jüng and a NY metro station wrote, "Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose".

(Use this pause to think about this statement and how it relates to the matter on discussion)

We cannot deny nature´s rules. We´re different from the moment of our conception. All of our cells carry a whole different chromosome (out of 46 in most cases, which means, even if the rest of our genome was exactly the same, we would still be 2.17% different).
We´re physically, mentally and emotionally different. Our brains develop in slightly different ways. Our bodies develop in hugely different ways. It´s all chemistry. We are naturally not equally qualified to perform the same tasks, socially or biologically.
For some reason when we hear something like this, the idea immediately pops up that poor women are meant to become legged incubators, and that they are weaker, which by the way is kind of true though not politically correct (stone), so denying it is our first impulse. I am not going to discuss the potencial kinds of weakness, let´s just assume I´m talking about physical strength. The majority of women are physically not as strong (let´s put it that way) as the majority of men, therefore there are certain tasks that the male gender will perform in a better way or more easily, generally speaking. Which is not to say that no woman can do better than a man, that would be a not very smart deduction. But it means that, in my very arguable opinion, a woman should not be given any advantage to access the army, for example. Or any other job involving psysical stregth. In this respect, I claim for equal rights for persons, not genders. If the job requires you to lift a car on one hand and a person, male or female, cannot do it, then I´m sorry, they don´t qualify. And I don´t care that I´m facing the strongest woman on earth. Good for her, but she still can´t lift the car, so she´s not qualified for a car hand lifting post. So percentual restrictions in this kind of jobs are counterproductive. (And now that you bring that up, let´s talk about percentual restriction in other jobs, because that´s something I cannot make up my mind about. At least 30-40% women in a company? I don´t know. Is it fair?)
Now, this said, I must say I hate stereotypes. I hate novels "for women", movies "for women", etc... Yet I have to agree that certain books or movies are better received by women than men, or men than women. Example: you will find more female readers who like Jane Austen and more male readers who like Tom Clancy. The reason? No idea. It´s also more likely in my experience that a man likes reading essays and a woman likes reading poetry. Or that a man likes reading the newspaper and a woman likes reading magazines.
This though might have nothing to do with the 46XX or 46XY karyotype, but with the educational baggage or the socio-cultural background traditionally associated to each phenotype. XXs play dolls, XYs play superheroes. Girls are sweet, boys are brave. Girls are cute, boys are smart. Tags are deleterious both ways. A girl is expected to become a mom someday, and a boy is expected to sustain his family. (This, according to nature laws, might have a practical sense though). Girls´ idols are singers and actresses, boys´ idols are football players.
Just a note about tags. They don´t necessarily have to be related to gender. As a child I was always said to be sensible, cautious and shy, and I wonder how much of my self repression, fearfulness and social impairment obbeys to that. To what extent are we what others make of us?
But now, back to stereotypes, and speaking of the quest for happiness that is giving me so much trouble these days, I also think we have a different sense of what will make us happy. While stereotypical women are eager to find their one true love, stereotypical men want to be successful to afford a young and pretty wife to show and fuck. Too much of a cliché, I know, I´m sorry. But then, this would be much more likely than the opposite situation where a man sighs for his love and a grams pays a hottie for sex. Another cliché, girls want to get pregnant and guys freak out. A woman wants a man that is warm, sweet and honest, and a man wants a woman who is smart, independent and respects his privacy. Yep, stereotypes, yet there is some truth in them...
I must say though, I tried to make an experiment with my male and female friends some time ago, asking them to choose the 3 qualities they would like their mates to be defined by, and I didn´t get the results I expected. But then the sampling might not have been representative enough (I got answers like "cheap, big mouthed and not too loud") so further studies are warranted.
Also according to my experience, and here I´m totally risking my roof, I have to say that the average intelligence of the males I have met in my life was significantly higher than that of the females (measured in terms of no idea what). In med school for example, we were about 100 girls and 20 guys in my year. If you looked at the top 10 scores, there might be 6 girls vs 4 guys. Which means, in average, guys performed better. And this is also true for the MIR exam, where the best score every year is almost invariably a male. And if you look at the favorite readings of the males and females I know, males tend to be deeper (I told you, they read essays!). And I still cannot find a reasonable explanation for this. (Any males to help?)
Anyways, concluding, I do think men and women are different (come on, it´s pretty obvious...). I think the situation we have now with feminism is a fair rebound to the sexist society of past generations (this is actually not a good conclussion as I have not mentioned any of this above, but spare this woman). And I think equal rights should not be demanded for men and women but for individuals. Otherwise we are admitting that we women are in fact inferior and need to be protected or given an advantage.
But then, there´s the unsolvable issue of pregnancy and career opportunities...
Peace :)

Strangers in a train (and prehistorical hunting)

A girl sat in front of me in the train on my way to work this morning. She was wearing dark blue jeans, sneakers and a white sweater, her black curly hair in a ponytail. She was about my age, a little younger maybe. She was pretending or trying to study some handwritten notes, but she couldn´t stop looking at her phone over and over, eagerly. She kept going from her notes to the phone and back every half a minute or so, and she wouldn´t turn the page. She wasn´t texting, just waiting for someone else´s text that didn´t come. Notes, anxious, phone, disapointed, notes, anxious, phone, disapointed again. And she looked more anxious-fearful than anxious-excited. I decided she was lonely.
This girl made me think of how many lonely people take the train with me every morning. How many of us would not feel so lonely if we could just start a conversation with any other random lonely stranger in the wagon and share a few minutes of our day. How many of these people could be good friends of mine if we met in more proper circumstances, and we just miss it because well, you don´t start a conversation with a random stranger in a train at 8am.

I don´t like philosophy (I don´t like being forced to study someone else´s philosophy that will never prove itself more valid than my own) but I like things or moments or situations that make me get philosophical and I try not to miss the chance (or the inspiration). Or if I do, I always try to get the thought back later when the timing works. And this morning I thought about what this XXI century world gives us and what it deprives us of. About how lonely you can feel in a world where you are never alone. About how we have let our career ambitions become so important that we don´t have any time left for the really important things. Or maybe about how we can now find happiness in something that was originally conceived for being just the means to survive in a society.

Imagine a prehistoric twenty-something guy. He can proudly claim to be the best hunter of his tribe -- he hunts faster than the tribe can eat -- but he could still be even better. He knows about some guy a few tribes away who might hunt more bisons per moon. So he spends night after night sitting on the bear skin by the fireplace, reading the last updates on hunting techniques he just downloaded from his seasonal suscription to the American Journal of Hunting. In a different world, he could have gone hunting for a couple of hours every day to get the food he needs to feed his whole tribe, and then devote the remaining 22 hours of his day to be happy in whatever fucking tribal way. Instead, he is seriously considering not to have offspring with his prehistorical teenage girl, because that would keep him from spendind the nights reading the AJH by the fireplace.
So why doesn´t it sound absurd if we extrapolate to our days society?

But it´s late. I might be rambling...

Inscriptions on a wall

I got used to blogging in English and maybe to thinking in English too. I am thinking of ending this blog some time soon anyways, but until that happens, I will keep posting in English.
That said, I´m not gonna say that it´s been a long time since my last entry like I always do.
So let´s get it started.

I have wanted to write about this for more than a month now. You know I don´t give a fuck about patriotism, especially when it´s related to the great USA. But for some reason (which I know but am not gonna share) one thing in Columbus made me cry inside, and maybe a little bit outside too. The thing in question was these walls in Ohio Veterans Plaza:

I didn´t know what they were when I first saw them. They are two walls, in both borders of the plaza, showing inscriptions which are real transcriptions from letters that US soldiers sent to their loved ones while fighting in any of the multiple wars the US have been involved in.
Yes, this probably intends to enhace the american spirit of a united nation that I dislike (and despise) so much (paradoxical, I know, since I want to move there). But, forgetting about that, these are letters written by men who knew they would probably not come back to their people alive. And when I read what they wrote to their wives or girlfriends (or kids) I kind of felt (it´s taking me a good while to find the word) let´s say jealous/lonely/relieved. In a way, I envied those women who had someone who loved them until the last breath, whose last words were love words for them. Lonely, I don´t need to explain why. Relieved, same thing.
But I (stupid girly me) couldn´t help imagining I was one of those women, and wondering whether I would want that or not. Whether I would rather have and lose a love like that, or never experience it. And I don´t know the answer to that question yet, but for now I will take option A.

So I want to share some of the pictures I took of those inscriptions. That will be it. Bye for now.

Spanish stereotypes and Tordesillas' Meadow Bull

Like every year, the Spanish village of Tordesillas "celebrated" yesterday the festivity known as El Toro de la Vega (The Meadow Bull), which consists, as wikipedia well points, of slaughtering a bull by people on horseback or on foot.
Groups defending animal rights protest against this brutality year after year without success.
And here's my view.
As usual, it's always about the two Spains. And for this purpose, we could divide Spanish young society in two main groups: the toffs and the perroflautas.
According to the stereotype, the Spanish toff is typically a middle/upper class kid who studied business or economic sciences in a private university, votes for PP, wears sunglasses and hair cream (and pearl earrings, as big as possible, if it's a female) and goes to clubs to dance like crazy, drink long drinks like crazy and if so, takes drugs in the form of pills.
The Spanish perroflauta, as opposed to the toff, studied social sciences or journalism in a public university, votes for lefty or republican parties, wears clothes as colorful and wasted as possible and green/blue/pink dyed hair, has multiple piercings and tattoos, and gather with friends to drink beer and smoke marijuana sitting on the floor in a public square -where he pees when needed.
The perroflauta will protest in favor of free abortion, euthanasia, public services and female rights. The perroflauta might have worked as a volunteer helping immigrants in the coasts of Cadiz, or cleaning the petrol spilt in the coasts of Galicia (whereas the toff volunteered to receive the teenage pilgrims who came to Spain for the World Youth Day).
In their condition of perroflautas, these guys also protest for animal rights and, in this case, against the meadow bull. Problem? Society doesn't see them as people concerned by the brutality committed against the bull, but as young and miscarried trouble makers who have nothing better to do with their time.
Even myself, being my ideas much closer to those of the perroflautas, tend to consider them this way sometimes...
You'll get my point when you see the photos in this article:
(Click here to see the article)

For the record, I want to make it clear that I'm talking about "stereotypes". I don't mean to offend anybody... Only those who support the festivity!!

I would like to end this post with a funny anecdote... My friend Miky writes a blog where, from time to time, he posts about wikipedia sabotage. Of course, they have moderators to censor the fake facts from the articles, and they act rather quickly, so I had never seen one live... until today!! When I found this:

There's a fake line in spanish next to the photo, under the title "Torneo del Toro de la Vega".
Translation: "Nonsense consisting of slaughtering a bull with lances, which some idiot murderers find funny and they support it. A whole country against this tradition which, mayor after mayor, all completely retarded, no one has the balls to abolish."
(And yes, for possible spanish-speaking readers, the last tab reveals I had no idea how to get a screen shot with a Mac...)

Reflections on S11

13 years ago now, televisions all around the world interrupted their programs to show a plane crashing against one of the towers. I remember I was at home, watching the news while having lunch -it was lunch time in Spain- when the anchor announced this last minute news about a horrible flight accident. Then we all saw live the second plane.
When I first visited NY last year I had a lot of time to go sightseeing by myself. Not only in the US but in general, I'm not attracted by these "glory to the brave who gave their lives for their homeland"-kind monuments, and I visited the WTC only after I had seen every other main touristic attraction I could think of. Once I got there, I saw I had to pay if I wanted to visit the memorial, so I decided to pass. I wandered around, not really knowing where to go next, when I accidentally found St Paul's chapel. I hesitated for a moment, but as I was already there...
Patriotism is one thing I will never understand, and about that, the land of the free and home of the brave knows quite a bit. Religious -or any other kind of- fanaticism is another one. Actually I guess patriotism could be considered as another form of fanaticism.
Anyways. I saw the churchyard first. Despite it, I still entered the chapel, not knowing what I would find. And what I found was a few improvised altars showing personal objects that belonged to the victims, along with firefighter helmets, army medals and decorations and so on. At the very entrance, at the right, a bed and a piece of paper on the wall explaining that volunteers took turns to sleep there during the rescue works. Everywhere, photographs of the victims, many of them young people smiling in their graduation ceremony, or dressed in their firefighter uniforms holding a little child on their arms, or simply posing with their families. And all around the place, short letters, postcards and post-its reading "God bless America", "Always in our hearts" or "We will never forget" type of notes.
As I was walking around the place, I passed by a few groups of proud americans.
Do you know how I say sometimes a shabby drawing can inspire me more than the finest work of art? It was kind of the same thing here. It was like if I had entered some grey space, completely unexpectedly, I didn't know how to feel. Those americans had it very clear, they felt proud of their country. I mostly felt awful, awful and ashamed of the human stupidity and blindness.
Don't get me wrong. If I were american, I'd probably feel proud. Even being spanish, even being politically atheistic, even not being part of this wonderful community of brave and free people, I absolutely think that all those volunteers, dead and alive, deserve my admiration and my credit for what they did, had their reasons been patriotic or simply humanitarian.
But I cannot share that feeling of hate and revenge, of America vs the world that some people seem to have. As I said, I felt terribly awful and all I could think of was the blindness of the human race. Just like I feel when my fellow talks about getting a kalashnikov to go kill russians in the name of Ukraine, or when he says I can't compare the Soviet Union to the spanish civil war, because we only count 500000 killed against their millions.
We tend to organize in groups. Geographical, political, religious, racial. And we defend our members against the others, just because they belong to our group. We don't seem to fucking understand that we are all alone here, and equally alone. That we all have the same feelings, the same needs, the same fears. If you allow me, that by the 8th week of intrauterine life we all have our body parts equally formed, that from a unicellular organism we all end up being human bodies, with our arms and legs and head, and our heart in our left chest and our liver in our right abdomen, and we don't develop wings, peaks, tails, scales or hoofs (but even if we did). That we'll all have the same end. That our lives are rivers ending in the sea of death... And therefore, that we should help individuals fight situations, instead of groups fight groups. Even more when what makes us belong to a particular group -geographical, political, religious, racial- is some artificial distinction that in most cases (even political and religious) has not been chosen, but imposed to us. So watching those americans share that feeling of "together against islam for the memory of our dead" only contributed to my general feeling of shame.
The same when I read this kind of idiocy in the bbc news: "The bell tolls, the national anthem is sung but always it is sound of relatives reading the names of lost love ones that lingers longest in the autumn air."
I guess someone should explain the writer a few things about physics... Or that might just be me, but I don't see the necessity of getting sentimental when it's supposed to be an objective article.

Connecting with these ideas, I can't help talking (again) about african immigration into Spain, and the fucking brutal fence.
Frontiers aren't but artificial lines drawn arbitrarily to separate the political units we call countries. Now, to all those who protest against immigration, we should wonder what we did to earn the land we live in. Personally, I don't think I have done much. I have never worked the land, I have never built my house, I have never planted fruit trees, I don't even recycle most of the times. And if I had ever done any of these things, it wouldn't have been because I am more worthy than others, but because I was allowed to be there and do it. And if my ancestors (assuming they lived in what we call Spain, which I don't even know) had done anything, I don't think I can attribute that merit to myself.

Anyways, I just wanted to write a few lines with the occasion of the anniversary...

I will still say one last thing. On March 11th 2004, more 200 people were killed in Madrid in several train bombings. From the beginning, Al Qaeda was said to be responsible. My mother works as a primary school teacher, and she always has a lot of immigrant students in her class. By that year, she had a muslim girl whose mom was the typical muslim veiled woman who didn't speak a word of Spanish. The day of the bombings, when the woman came to pick up his girl from school, she approached my mother, crying under her veil, and hugged her. That's what I mean by individuals.

Here the aliens

As you probably know, I finished reading The war of the worlds a few days ago. Just like it happened to me when I finished A brave new world or Animal Farm, I thought it´s awesome how a book written by the end of the nineteenth century can still be so valid today. I mean, you can well read and enjoy many classics, but with these ones, you could even think they have been written only a few decades ago...
Anyway, this is mostly my impression. I enjoyed reading, even if the story is not thrilling and is kind of slow. And I also liked the "poof!-type" ending.

I would like to share a short text here. I don´t know if you know, but sometimes my favorite part of a book is not the most brilliant one, but the one that makes me think the most, especially about things that are not closely related to the story... The part that makes my mind maunder to philosophical matters and such. I think that´s also why I like paintings such as Richter´s Tote, not because of the esthetics of it in itself.

Ok, here it goes.

All these--the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way--they'd be no good. They haven't any spirit in them--no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or the other--Lord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to work--I've seen hundreds of 'em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn't be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world. Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on Sundays--fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will just be a godsend to these.

I will probably get philosophical here very soon... I have a lot of things whirling in my mind these days. But this is it for today.

[Suggested readings (other than, of course, A brave new world and Animal Farm):
Childhood´s End by Arthur C. Clarke
From the Earth to the Moon by J. Verne (I will have to get this one)]

And what about aliens?

It´s been so long again. I have wanted to write about many things these days, but my mind was somewhere else (it still is, actually) and I wasn´t too motivated.
I wanted to write about (in order of appearance in my mind along the days) Coetzee and Foe, my new residency, ebola, african immigration to spain, spain, relativeness (I don´t think that exists as a word in spanish either, at least not with this meaning of "everything being relative"), unfinished stories and aliens.

About my new residency I will just say, I don´t know how it will end up being, but right now I´m so happy with the choice I made: I like what I do, I´m getting to know great people and I think I can be quite good at it (with time and effort, of course).

About ebola and immigration, not today.

About spain, not a great place to live but definitely an awesome place to visit, I will write some other day.

About relativeness, here it goes:
When I worked with oncology patients I used to think I was so lucky to be healthy. I used to think about those unfortunate people I was trying to help, some times succeeding, some others not so much. Some of them died, some of them lived, a few got cured. Many of them were even younger than I was. But then, as they say, while there´s still life, there´s still hope.
What I´m seeing now is what comes next: they are already dead. We get these bodies that were real people just a few hours ago, people with hopes that turned out to be useless. People we don´t know, people we have not treated, people we don´t care about. People who, by the moment we put our hands on them, are just inanimate things. We cut them, open their bodies, slice them. (Yes, the happy group of people you just saw in the photo, we do that). And then we learn about the medical tragedy behind each case. I mean, they wouldn´t demand an autopsy if it was an expected death of a long time sick patient.
And then you think, no matter how bad things are, I´m not that person on the autopsy table, not even a relative of his/hers. I´m not a grieving mom whose dead fetus is being sliced to be later stored in a plastic container. And there´s no guarantee that I won´t be there, it could just happen any day. You might think it´s macabre, but it actually helps. And I develop a whole philosophical theory every time I go down there.

Changing subject, I know I have to write about Coetzee´s Foe, but I don´t have the book right now and there were a few lines I wanted to transcribe, so that will come later, soon.
So about unfinished stories now. This goes in relation to this book I read a few months ago, Atmospheric disturbances, which I really liked. I have already posted about it, but I published it without saying a word about this. It´s not that the story in the book is unfinished, and I don´t want to spoil it. But it was something I thought about as I was approaching the last pages. And I guess this is also, and again, a reflection about happiness. We always hope to get this "happily ever after" ending, and most of the times we don´t realise that such thing just doesn´t exist. That after the movie ends, after that last love kiss they show us on the screen, the characters will still have to cope with their everyday lives. The happy ending won´t last, because it´s not an ending. Unless the characters die at that very instant, which, on the other hand, would not exactly be happy (though it would definitely be "ever after"). So, what I mean is, we all aspire to happiness, but all we´ll get is, at most and if we´re lucky, a few happy instants that will only last in our memories, and I don´t think we can ever be satisfied with our lives if we don´t keep that in mind, if we keep hoping and suffering for an imaginary happiness that we´ll never reach, not as a final condition. We all survive the best way we can.
That, or I´m particularly gloomy these days.

Understanding the conflict...

I tried to do some little digging about it, to make myself an opinion mostly, but I found that, as it usually happens, sources are clearly biased and they pick sides, just like media does. So after a while of alternatively reading that ones or the others are the good and the bad guys for this and that, I´m sharing with you the most reliable information I could find. Hope it helps you to understand!

Time must have a stop

I finished Time must have a stop, by Aldous Huxley, a few days ago.

As usually, I tried to find a link to the book review... but in this case, I couldn´t find one I liked.

Will explain:
All of them talk about what happens in the book, the characters, the story of Sebastian Barnac and his summer in Italy. All of them (and also the cover of the edition I got) tell us how uncle Eustace shows him the pleasures of life, and how Bruno Rontini teaches him about spirituality instead.
Ok yes, that is what happens (in broad strokes, at least), but that is not what the story is about! Huxley didn´t write that book to tell us about a stupid teenager´s summer in Italy. What matters here is not what happens. The whole story is just an excuse to introduce the characters, and the characters are, each one of them, a representative of one particular ideology. This way, Sebastian´s father stands for politics (passionate politics, rather); uncle Eustace, for the joyful life (sex, art, vice) free of consequences; Bruno Rontini, for spiritualilty and insight; and Sebastian is the young guy who cares only about himself and actually believes himself to be the center of the universe, and who measures the importance of every fact in relation to the consequences it will have for him. This is only the main characters, then we have others who, not being so "main", also play their parts in the snapshot of society Huxley makes.
And, until you get that (until he exposes at least a few of the main characters), the book is boring as hell. After all, why should you care about a stupid selfish egotist (english) kid?

I bought the book because the cover said it was Huxley´s favourite among all his novels (and also, because the first lines are quite similar to something I read in one of García Márquez´s short stories and I wanted to compare the resemblance! -- I still have to). And I think the reason why it´s his fave is because he uses the characters as he pleases. He uses them to defend his own arguments over others, and at the end, he (kind of) places them in the situation he thinks they deserve as their closure...
It´s funny, because that is exactly what uncle Eustace criticizes at one point of the story, comparing Chaucer and Dante. This is what he says:
"Whereas Dante has to rush into party politics; and, when he backs the wrong horse, he spends the rest of his life in rage and self-pity. Revenging himself on his political opponents by putting them into hell, and rewarding his friends by promoting them to purgatory and paradise. What could be sillier or more squalid? And of course, if he didn't happen to be the second greatest virtuoso of language that ever lived, there'd be nobody to say a good word for him."
Well, well...

Anyway, to finish, let me share with you a few lines I liked:

"But the grace had been withdrawn again, and in recent days ... Sebastian sadly shook his head. Dust and cinders, the monkey devils, the imbecile unholiness of distraction. And because knowledge, the genuine knowledge beyond mere theory and book learning, was always a transforming participation in that which was known, it could never be communicated - not even to one's own self when in a state of ignorance. The best one could hope to do by means of words was to remind oneself of what one once had intuitively understood and, in others, to evoke the wish and create some of the conditions for a similar understanding. "

"And, of course, in an age that had invented Peter Pan and raised the monstrosity of arrested development to the rank of an ideal, he wasn't in any way exceptional. The world was full of septuagenarians playing at being in their thirties or even in their teens, when they ought to have been preparing for death, ought to have been trying to unearth the spiritual reality which they had spent a lifetime burying under a mountain of garbage."

I don´t want to share more, because I don´t want to spoil anything in the unlikely case that, one day, you decide to read the book.
(If you do, there are a few really boring and, in my opinion, absolutely dispensable chapters that you can perfectly skip -- I did. You will identify them when you get there! I tried to read them, but I think Huxley was on mushrooms when he wrote them.)

Atmospheric disturbances

I was supposed to be blogging every time I finished a new book, and I´m already quite delayed...
I have to blog about several García Márquez´s, Brave new world and Animal farm (that I remember).
But I will leave those for later. Today I´m blogging about Atmospheric disturbances, by Rivka Galchen. (If you don´t like my "review", this is a link to The New York Times Book Review - And I hate American/English use of brackets; I´d never write this this way in Spanish...)

First of all, as an introduction or something like that...
I had run out of books to read, and I still had a whole week left in NY, plus the flight back to Spain... So I went to The Strand (where books are loved) with the intention to pick something in Spanish. I did - Time must have a stop, by A. Huxley, in progress - but then I saw this book on one of the desks. I had seen it many times before (it was in a very visible place - just like The lord of the flies, I´ve seen that one like 2983456 times!!) and it had never got my attention. Rather, it had, but I would just think it was probably one of those stupid pseudo-sci-fi books for nerds or for casual not very committed readers. I don´t know why that day I had an impulse to take it and read the cover:

"When Dr. Leo Liebenstein´s wife disappears, she leaves behind a single confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves exactly like her. A simulacrum. But Leo is not fooled, and he knows better than to trust his senses in matters of the heart. Certain that the real Rema is alive and in hiding, he embarks on a quixotic journey to reclaim her. With the help of his psychiatric patient Harvey—who believes himself to be a secret agent able to control the weather—his investigation leads him from the streets of New York City to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, in search of the woman he loves. Atmospheric Disturbances is a witty, tender, and conceptually dazzling ( Booklist ) novel about the mysterious nature of human relationships."

Despite this description of a kind of girly story, and despite the list of six excellent critics (I tend to distrust a book that displays a list of nice critics), and despite one of the female critics calling it an "exquisite first novel" (I tend to distrust even more a book written by a woman and displaying a list of nice critics all written by women - which was not the case though), I opened the book and read the first lines:

Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife. [This first line is already a great one, I think.] This woman casually closed the door behind her. In an oversized pale blue purse—Rema’s purse—she was carrying a russet puppy. I did not know the puppy. And the real Rema, she doesn’t greet dogs on the sidewalk, she doesn’t like dogs at all. The hayfeverishly fresh scent of Rema’s shampoo was filling the air and through that brashness I squinted at this woman, and at that small dog, acknowledging to myself only that something was extraordinarily wrong.
She, the woman, the possible dog lover, [this, "the possible dog lover", is what made me decide to buy the book] leaned down to de-shoe. Her hair obscured her face somewhat, and my migraine occluded the edges of my vision, but still, I could see: same unzipping of wrinkly boots, same taking off of same baby blue coat with jumbo charcoal buttons, same tucking behind ears of dyed cornsilk blonde hair. Same bangs cut straight across like on those dolls done up in native costumes that live their whole lives in plastic cases held up by a metal wire around the waist. Same everything, but it wasn't Rema. It was just a feeling, that's how I knew.  

So, synopsis, my style:
The narrator is a 50-something years old American psychiatrist, married to a young and charming Argentine woman, who (the psychiatrist) unconvinced follows the wife´s suggestion to pretend to be a secret agent from the Royal Academy of Meteorology, for which one of his patients thinks he (the patient) is working with his special ability to control atmospheric events. This is what we get to know after reading a few pages. But the first thing we know, the central story of the novel, is that the psychiatrist´s wife has misteriously dissapeared and been impersonated by an exact replica of hers, a woman the narrator calls "the simulacrum". And, apart of the fact that he doesn´t know where she is, or even if she has left by her own will or instead she´s been taken, apart of the fact that he doesn´t know the reason of her disappearing or whether she will come back or not, what is most disturbing is the fact that nobody seems to notice the difference, not even the simulacrum herself. From his perspective of a psychiatrist, he of course acknowledges that he could be taken by a fool, but he obviously is not, and he gives us rational proof. Also, after getting a misterious call from the Royal Academy of Meteorology, which might be related to Rema´s disappearing, he starts digging and reading some papers by Tzvi Gal-Chen, the meteorologist he and Rema invented for his patient and who he is supposed to be working for, according to their fake story. And it turns out, the papers might subtly reveal some clues about Rema´s possible location:

The first author: Tzvi Gal-Chen.
The paper was originally presented at a conference in Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires being Rema´s hometown.
And Tzvi Gal-Chen being Tzvi Gal-Chen.
And the article was about retrieval. Specifically: "Retrieval of Thermodinamic Variables Within Deep Convective Clouds: Experiments in Three Dimensions."
My pulse rose. My fingers went cold. Then the light went out; I crawled along the shelving to turn it back on. I know the ordinary often masquerades as the extraordinary, that if you put thirty people together in a room, the likelihood that two have the same birthday is over ninety percent, that when you learn a new word and it then seems suddenly ever present it is only because you have just begun to notice what was there all along. (This once happened to me with the word cathect. Also Rosicrucian.) Maybe that´s all that this find of mine was. For all I know, maybe Tzvi Gal-Chen and Buenos Aires were both already pervasive terms and I´d simply stumbled accross two examples of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. But the fitting together of so many elements—sometimes that really happens, a stray orange peel, a necklace, and a certain joke about iceberg lettuce once converged to reveal a girlfriend´s infidelity—convinced me that I was perceiving something real, that I was not myself in any way cracked, that only my world suddenly was.

This book is, indeed, a very good first novel (I wouldn´t say exquisite, but it is good). The author herself is a doctor, so she knows her stuff, but she also talks a lot about meteorological science, which proves that she did some additional research. She uses (the psychiatrist uses) such an analytical and somewhat scientific languages that for moments you get to believe that the simulacrum is just a simulacrum, you think "ok, I know this is not possible, but what if...?"

Which takes us to the matter of the beauty of literary language.
No one would say the text in this book is beautiful, no one would call this a beautiful story. It´s a smart story with brilliant phrases and brilliant whole paragraphs written just the way the psychiatrist reasons. And yet you can tell that the words, the prases, the speech, are carefully chosen with the purpose of making it believable, enjoyable and addictive.
And here´s what I think:
I don´t think a literary work must be necessarily beautiful. I don´t think the story must serve the beauty of the language, but the language must serve the story. This is not a story that could have been written with pompous grandiloquent words.
And one of the hardest aspects of writing a novel (not that I know though) is being able to choose the language that best suits the story you´re telling.

Anyways. I really enjoyed the reading, it made me think (also about things other than the story itself), it was a very good sample of a first novel, and it made me want to read 240 pages of English.

Abdication

I was working on a post about the last book I read, but recent events made me publish this first, that we need to discuss with some perspective.

So... our king.
This man that we the youth remember mostly for his superboring new year speeches, his lung surgery for something that was "not cancer", his famous "why don´t you shut up" to Hugo Chaves, his safari to Botswana defraid with our money to hunt some elephants and get his hip broken. We also know his family quite well: his son, the prince, who was finally weaned when he married the news anchor; his eldest daughter, who got married to a count who loved spirits (and eventually got divorced); his second daughter, who got married to a former Spanish handballer and gave the royal family an even worse name "not knowing what she was signing". His wife, always correct and composed while he is said to be fucking around and having more bastards than Robert Baratheon. This is what we have seen.
For older people though, this is the man who took Spain out of Franco´s régimen, who released a bunch of political prisoners, who got a coup d´état aborted in 1981 (known as 23F), who defended the Spanish constitution.

I think he deserves respect for all he did in the past, and I also think he deserves negative respect for all he´s been doing in the last few years.
And I think we got tired of a monarchy, especially when the royal family is involved in scandal and financial fraud. But even if it was not, the idea of a political system where the designation of the ultimate authority is based on a birth right sounds absurd to me, no matter how good or bad this authority might turn out to be. And we got mad at these people who not only waste our money for hunting elephants, but also defraud and are not punished (yet; we´ll see).

So... if the other option is a democratic republic... let´s give it a try! Let´s call for referendum to see what the people want. And then, at least, whatever the result, we will have the satisfaction to be given the oportunity to opine.

And maybe Felipe will be elected as the president of the III Spanish republic...

PD- I wouldn´t really define myself as a republican. I just think monarchy sucks.

Life is a bitch

I was gonna start this entry saying that I would talk about something I had never thought of before, but that´s not true. So I will start pointing out how it´s funny that sometimes one suddenly finds oneself translating a vague intuition into a clear and well structured thought, if such thing even exists. And it´s funny how that happens at the most unrelated moment, for example, while you´re washing the salad bowl.

In synthesis, my thought was: “Life is a bitch”. A bit better developed, it was: “Life is one and only one, and you never get anything for free”.

Let´s start with “Life is one and only one”. Yes, it´s rather obvious but, like I said, I had never actually thought of this as part of a proper thought. Life is one and only one, and there´s no turning back. What you do, gets done; and what you don´t do, will unavoidably remain undone forever and ever in the CV of your life.

And here it comes the second part, “You never get anything for free”. Life is nothing but a succession of decisions and consequences. Some decisions are not too important, and their consequences are not final. As kids, the training is not too hard, and it´s always kind of easy to distinguish the right from the wrong decision: good vs bad, I like this vs I don´t like this, you´re my friend vs you´re not my friend… The right choice will have good consequences and the wrong one will have bad consequences, which you can anticipate. But as we grow older, it becomes more frequent this kind of situation when you have to choose between two options which are restrictive, either this or that, and which you know will have both good and bad consequences that will change your lifeline forever in whatever direction: leave vs stay, commitment vs no commitment, one job vs another job (lucky you if this is your case btw), kids vs no kids, now vs not yet, push vs let go, try harder vs this is not worth any more of my time and effort…

Let´s take the first example: If you leave, that´s great. The CV of your life will say: “This person left”. This person saw this opportunity and took it. Cool. But it will also say: “This person didn´t stay”. This person saw this opportunity and decided to give up some other great things he/she already had.

If you stay: “This person saw this opportunity and decided that it wasn´t worth to give up the great things he already had here”, but “This person missed this opportunity because he wasn´t courageous enough to give up other great things he already had”.

Commitment, yes: “This person made this commitment that led to this and this and this great things”, or “This person lost this and this and this great opportunities because of this commitment he had made at this point of his lifeline”.

Commitment, no: “This person didn´t make this commitment, which let him be available for this and this and this other great opportunities”, or “This person didn´t make this commitment and lost this chance forever”.

And so on.

Kurt Vonnegut said: 'The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.'

[Let´s be honest, I haven´t read anything by him yet. I stumbled on this quote only by chance]

And that’s the thing, right? You will never know whether you made the right or the bad decision, because there´s no way to compare what did happen next versus what could have possibly happened, had you taken the other path. Which, btw, didn´t necessarily go in the opposite direction, but in one of the many other possible directions. Kind of like this:

If you decide to take one path, at the same time you´re deciding not to take any of the others. Because life is a bitch, life is one and only one, and you never get anything for free. With every decision you make, you are sacrificing the good consequences that could have derived from the decisions you didn´t make.

So I guess, at this point of our lifes, my friend, a good approach would be, not to try to identify what we want (because that´s almost impossible, at least in my case… I want a lot of things that are restrictive among them), but to identify, above all the possible choices, what we don´t want to regret. That way, at least, we can comfort ourselves: “Ok, this turned out not to be what I expected, but at least now I know it”.

If anyone has some consolation words for me, THIS is the moment.

Trigger

Llevaba yo toda la tarde con un nudo en la garganta, y ha sido ver este vídeo y no poder parar...

I posted about the death of Garcia Marquez but this post is about Saramago

First of all, I have to say I did write something on the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, only in this other blog that I recently started.

But there's this post I'm delaying because I don't want to be the one who writes it, but I do want to write about my last conquests by José Saramago.

In my vast ignorance about non-Spanish literature (which I'm trying to fix) I didn't know about him until after I finished university. For some reason I don't remember, probably related to some stupid paperwork I had to do before taking my MIR exam, back in 2008, I was on my way to the university and from the bus I saw one of those huge posters by the road, showing a photo of the author and some novel I don´t remember. Because I had decided not to study for the exam, and because I was feeling so guilty about that and I needed something to fill all that sudden "free time", I did some little (tiny) research and went to the library with the intention of picking The gospel according to Jesus Christ. They didn't have that one and, when I was trying to take All the names, another book felt down (Homecoming -Die Heimkehr-, by Bernhard Schlink - review here) and I thought, why not? Well, to be honest, I thought this is a sign! and picked that one instead... Didn't happen to be the wrong choice until the last 50 pages or so, when the author had a personality crisis or something and the story turns into a completely different one, but whatever.

So... Back to Saramago, since then, I had always wanted to read something by him, and I won't say I never had the time because I did, but it was like one of those things you vaguely want to do but never actually do..., until the first time I came to the U.S. with James Joyce's Odyssey in my backpack and it turned out not to be the most productive reading for me, at least at that point of my existence.

So, the first novel I read by Saramago was Blindness (Ensaio sobre a Cegueira - "Essay on blindness" in English), which I downloaded in pdf for free while in NY, muahahaha.
In this novel, he tells a story that happens who knows where, when the citizens suddenly start to get blind inexplicably. Of course panic spreads, because nobody knows how this "white blindness" is transmitted.
If you're not used to his style (I wasn't yet) and maybe also even if you are, you might find it not easy to read. You'll see, he uses these kilometric sentences that sometimes are so long that they don´t fit in one page. He never uses full stops but you'll have a lot of commas to separate narration from dialogues. You'll know when a dialogue starts when you see a capital letter following a comma, and you'll know that there's someone else speaking when you see another capital letter following another comma, and so on. Also, he never uses proper nouns in this novel, so the characters are "the first blind guy", "the doctor", "the doctor's wife", "the girl with the dark glasses" and such.

After that one, I read The Elephant´s Journey (A Viagem do Elefante) (haven´t finished it yet, because I´m reading it in english and I´m lazy), Cain (Caím) and Death with Interruptions (As Intermitências da Morte).

Cain is my favourite so far, but I´m gonna let someone else blog about it (hopefully, some day).

I´m just gonna try to explain why I think his style works so well, to me at least.

Will give you as an example the beginning of The Elephant´s Journey (sorry for the length):

Strange though it may seem to anyone unaware of the importance of the marital bed in the efficient workings of public administration, regardless of whether that bed has been blessed by church or state or no one at all, the first step of an elephant’s extraordinary journey to austria, which we propose to describe hereafter, took place in the royal apartments of the portuguese court, more or less at bedtime. And it is no mere accident that we chose to use the vague expression more or less. For this enables us, with admirable elegance, to avoid having to go into details of a physical and physiological nature, often sordid and almost always ridiculous, and which, set down on paper, would offend the strict catholicism of dom joão the third, king of portugal and of the algarves, and of dona catarina of austria, his wife and the future grandmother of the same dom sebastião who will go off to lead the attack on alcácer-quibir and die there during the first assault, or perhaps the second, although there are also those who say he died of an illness on the eve of battle. This is what the king, with furrowed brow, said to the queen, I’m worried about something, my lady, About what, my lord, The gift we gave to our cousin maximilian at the time of his marriage four years ago always seemed to me unworthy of his lineage and his merits, and now that we have him close to home, so to speak, in his role as regent of spain in the city of valladolid, I would like to offer him something more valuable, more striking, what do you think, my lady, A monstrance would be a good idea, my lord, a monstrance, I find, is always most welcome, perhaps because it has the virtue of combining material value and spiritual significance, Our holy church would not appreciate such liberality, it doubtless still retains in its infallible memory cousin maximilian’s confessed sympathies for the reforms of the lutheran protestants, or were they calvinists, I was never quite sure, Vade retro, satana, exclaimed the queen, crossing herself, such a thought had never even occurred to me, now I’ll have to go to confession first thing in the morning, Why tomorrow in particular, my lady, given that it is your custom to go to confession every day, asked the king, Because of the vile idea that the enemy placed on my vocal cords, oh, I can feel my throat burning as if it had been scorched by a breath from hell itself. Accustomed to the queen’s sensory excesses, the king shrugged and returned to the difficult task of finding a present that might satisfy archduke maximilian of austria. The queen was murmuring a prayer and had just begun another when, suddenly, she stopped and almost shouted out, There’s always solomon, What, asked the king, perplexed by this untimely invocation of the king of judah, Yes, my lord, solomon the elephant, And what has the elephant got to do with anything, asked the king somewhat waspishly, He could be the gift, my lord, answered the queen, standing up, euphoric and very excited, He’s not exactly an appropriate wedding present, That doesn’t matter. The king nodded slowly three times, paused and then nodded another three times, after which he said, Yes, it’s an interesting idea, It’s more than interesting, it’s a very good idea, an excellent idea, retorted the queen, unable to suppress a gesture of impatience, almost of insubordination, the creature came from india more than two years ago, and since then he’s done nothing but eat and sleep, with his water trough always full and a constant supply of food, it’s as if he were a kept beast, but one who’ll never earn his keep, That’s hardly the poor creature’s fault, there’s no suitable work for him here, unless we were to send him to the docks on the river tagus to transport planks, but the poor thing would only suffer, because his professional specialty is transporting felled trees, so much better suited to the curve of his trunk, Send him off to vienna, then, But how, asked the king, That’s not our affair, once cousin maximilian is the owner, it will be a matter for him to resolve, he is, I assume, still in valladolid, As far as I know, yes, Obviously, solomon would have to travel to valladolid on foot, he has the legs for it after all, And then on to vienna as well, he’ll have no alternative, It’s a long way, said the queen, A very long way, agreed the king gravely, and added, I’ll write to cousin maximilian tomorrow, and if he accepts, we’ll have to agree on dates and ascertain certain facts, for example, when he intends leaving for vienna, and how many days it would take for solomon to travel from lisbon to valladolid, after that, it’s up to him, we wash our hands of the affair, Yes, we wash our hands, said the queen, but deep inside, which is where the contradictions of the self do battle, she felt a sudden sadness at the thought of sending solomon off to such distant lands and into the care of strangers.

(Here to read the whole first chapter)

Yes, if you see this mass (or this mess) of words without full stops, without paragraphs, you might not feel very inclined to read it (did you read it? Right, that´s what I mean). It looks like there´s no pause for breathing until the end. And it looks like you will never be able to get to the end, or even to the third or fourth page... But once you start reading it, he gets you so interested in the story that you will not even notice the lack of conventional punctuation. Rather, you will notice it, and you´ll see how naturally the story develops.
To me, during the parts where the narrator is speaking, it's like he's trying to recreate the way he would tell the story if he was telling it out-loud to a friend (i.e. you), whereas for the parts where there's dialogue, he tries to emulate the scene, to set you in the very room where the characters are, so that you're not just listening to a narration but actually witnessing the action. And, in order to do this, he gets rid of those artificial elements of written language that don't have a translation or an equivalent in spoken language, such as the dashes in dialogues or the capital letter in proper names (when he uses them).
This way, contrary to what it may seem if you just limit yourself to take a superficial look at the bunch of lines, and lines, and lines, page after page without a breathing pause, the story goes on fluently without being constantly interrupted, artificially, by things like:
- Blah blah blah - the King said.
- Blah blah blah blah - the Queen replied.
- Blah blah? - he asked her.
- Blah blah - she stated.
No, you don't need all that "the King said", "the Queen replied"..., you don't need him to tell you that, because you're seeing it as it happens, first-hand.
Another characteristic of Saramago that I've noticed, I think, in all the four novels I've read by him, is the fact that, as a narrator, he (or they, because he always refers to himself in plural as if he was a part of some group) is somehow above the story, he's better than the characters and he takes the liberty to judge or criticize them or to make comments completely outside the story.


But not only he is a great story teller, he's also a great story maker. I told you about Blindness. If you haven´t read it, you might think it´s a stupid story: people getting blind by some sort of magic. Great. And I haven´t told you about Death with Interruptions yet, but here I go: once upon a time in the present time, this woman named Death quits her job and people stop dying. Also, great. Both of them sound like the kind of stupid stories that I, grown up and busy adult, don´t want to waste my time with.
Yes. The facts that originate the stories are absurd. What happens next is rather comic. The way he tells it is quite satirical. But what is great about it is that, if you think of it, this might actually be the reaction of people if they did suddenly get blind, if they did suddenly stop dying. And because, given the absurd circumstances that trigger the story, that might actually be the reaction in reality, he has the justification to be satirically critic towards society and its strata. With special attention to clergy!

Funny thing, in Death with Interruptions, written in 2005, he states something that anticipates the fact that origins the whole Cain pilgrimage in Cain, written in 2009:
It´s easy enough to understand, it takes very little imagination to see why death´s workplace is probably the dullest of all those created since cain killed abel, an incident for which god bears all the blame. 
About this particular book though, I'll probably post something in detail sooner or later (later, I guess, let's be honest). Because, although overall I liked it, I got kind of disappointed...

But anyways, this "anticipation" business made me realize, because I had recently read Garcia Marquez's No one writes to the colonel and noticed the same thing (read this post about it), that, the same way some readers read several books at the same time, also some authors write several novels at the same time. Yes, I know it's ridiculously obvious, but I had never thought of that before! And I discovered that I enjoy crossed references between them when I'm able to identify them. Rather, I enjoy being able to identify crossed references between them...

I think this is it for now. I hope it's not me the one who posts about Cain (wink-wink).
I already have several other books to post about: Brave new world, Strange pilgrims and Animal Farm, which I'm reading right now.

I have to say, I hate when they don't translate the title of the books accurately!!
The Spanish name for Brave new world is Un mundo feliz (A happy world).
The English name for Ensaio sobre a Cegueira  is Blindness.
The English name for Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memory of my sad whores) is Memories of my melancholic whores.
The English name for Doce cuentos peregrinos (Twelve pilgrim tales) is Strange pilgrims.
Why??!