Me Duele Una Mujer En Todo El Cuerpo
Saturday, September 05, 2015
El Amenazado - Jorge Luís Borges
Es el amor. Tendré que cultarme o que huir.
Crecen los muros de su cárcel, como en un sueño atroz.
La hermosa máscara ha cambiado, pero como siempre es la única.
¿De qué me servirán mis talismanes: el ejercicio de las letras,
la vaga erudición, el aprendizaje de las palabras que usó el áspero Norte para
cantar sus mares y sus espadas,
la serena amistad, las galerías de la biblioteca, las cosas comunes,
los hábitos, el joven amor de mi madre, la sombra militar de mis muertos, la
noche intemporal, el sabor del sueño?
Estar contigo o no estar contigo es la medida de mi tiempo.
Ya el cántaro se quiebra sobre la fuente, ya el hombre se
levanta a la voz del ave, ya se han oscurecido los que miran por las ventanas,
pero la sombra no ha traído la paz.
Es, ya lo sé, el amor: la ansiedad y el alivio de oír tu voz, la espera y la
memoria, el horror de vivir en lo sucesivo.
Es el amor con sus mitologías, con sus pequeñas magias inútiles.
Hay una esquina por la que no me atrevo a pasar.
Ya los ejércitos me cercan, las hordas.
(Esta habitación es irreal; ella no la ha visto.)
El nombre de una mujer me delata.
Me duele una mujer en todo el cuerpo.
The Threatened One
It is love. I will have to hide or flee.
The walls of its prison grow, like an atrocious dream.
The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is unique. What purpose will
my talismans serve: the exercise of letters, the vague erudition, the learning
of words used by the rough North to sing of seas and swords, the serene
friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the
young love of my mother, the military shadow of my dead, the intemporal night,
the taste of sleep?
Being with you or without you is the measure of my time.
Now the pitcher breaks above the stream, now man rises to
the voice of the bird, those who view through the windows have darkened, but
shade has not brought peace.
It is, I know, love: the anxiety and relief of hearing
your voice, the wait and memory, the horror of living in succession.
It is love with its mythologies, its little useless
magic.
There is a corner I do not dare pass.
Now the armies surround me, the hordes.
(This room is unreal; she has not seen it.)
The name of a woman betrays me.
A woman hurts throughout my body.
The Other Limbs Cannot Remain At Rest
Friday, September 04, 2015
The sons of
Adam are limbs of each other,
Having been
created of one essence.
When the
calamity of time affects one limb
The other limbs
cannot remain at rest.
If you have no
sympathy for the troubles of others,
You are
unworthy to be called by the name of a Human.
Saadi Shirazi – Bani
Adam
Fading Mastheads & The Fuzzing of Geist
Thursday, September 03, 2015
My friend
architect Abraham Rogatnick, who died five years ago informed me of his
forthcoming death a year before. He told me, “I know this is a cliché, but
after my death it’s the deluge.” What I believe he meant is that whatever would
happen after his death would not be of any bearing to him. Oblivion may have
had something to do with it. At my age of 73 I am beginning to get the message.
About a
month ago I found out (it was not reported loudly anywhere) that the Vancouver
Courier would no longer publish twice a week. It was also revealed that it
would be business as usual on the net and that they would “publish” every day.
Since I am
a product of the last century, for me real publishing is something that ends up
with ink on paper and on my fingertips. I publish a blog every day but I squirm when I think that
this is true publishing.
Furthermore
I found out that the Vancouver Courier would now be available in special boxes
like those of the Georgia Straight, the Westender, and Xtra Vancouver. For
those like me who might live on the West Side you would not note a ubiquity of
Xtra Vancouver boxes nor would you know that at some point this
gay/bisexual/transgender/etc publication was formerly called Xtra! West. Note
the loss of the exclamation mark.
Furthermore (again)
if you note the changing demographic of my West Side neighbourhood, recently
amalgamated as Vancouver Granville for the next federal elections, you would suspect
that it didn’t pay off for the Vancouver Courier to deliver their West Side
Edition here. Every few months we stop getting it but I then email the
circulation manager and it's delivered again. I guess we represent a house that is simile for circling wagons.
For those
who know and read the Vancouver Courier (I do but my wife opts for the "editorials"
for IGA, London Drugs, Best Buy, etc) they might go directly to Kudos &
Kvetches. This would be the only column where you might read nasty intramural (but newsy)
comments about the disaster that Michael Kissinger (we who know, know he is Mr.
Kvetch) thinks the Vancouver Province, The Vancouver Sun and the Georgia Strait
are. That is fun as well as the irreverent choice of language. Compared to the Vancouver Courier's real gossip columnist and that of the Vancouver Sun's specialist of the bent soprano sax Kudos & Kvetches is real gossip.
Those who
know and have a good memory might miss Geof Olson’s musings on the existence of
flying saucers. I do as I remember.
So it
was with extreme surprise that last week and in this week’s Vancouver Courier
(dated September 3) that I saw on the strange two “editorial pages”, page A
10 and A11(complete with a big ad – New Dentures or a Natural Smile? & Famoso -
Neapolitan Pizzeria) a tiny rectangular masthead.
If you ask
those who are under 30 they would probably not know what a masthead is. They
might guess it is a shark.
The
masthead had the picture of three people, Publisher Dee Dhaliwal, City Editor
Michael Kissinger and Tara Lalanne as Director Sales & Marketing.
Nowhere
could I find the name of the editor or find a street address. On the
Vancouver Courier’s web page there was no masthead but something like it can
be seen under “Contact Us”. I noted that there Michael Kissinger was listed as
editor. I pressed the email link and got a blink@ address. Barry Link was the
former editor. Not more than 30 minutes later it was all corrected and now Barry Link
like Ballet BC’s John Alleyne is now a non-person in the old Soviet style of
disappearing people.
Still in my memory is the Vancouver Courier scoop (not quite the same as Breaking News!!) in which they revealed that a West Side Manse was being used as a house of ill repute. The Vancouver Sun was caught with their pants up.
But the
above is not all that bad if you compare the Vancouver Courier's crisis of a diminishing
masthead with that of art magazine Geist. If you live on the West Side you would
never suspect of its existence.
There is no
masthead but there is a street address. They (Geist, whoever they might be) mention
an editorial board. It is not hyperlinked. There is blog on the net that
mentions some sort of palace coup that happened in April.
As an Argentine born Canadian all these behind the scenes rumblings and shifts in our venerable journalistic tradition make me homesick for the real palace coups of my country. In those palace coups that other venerable tradition that is our CBC would have been de-masteheaded a long time ago as they would not have waited for the slow and painful efforts to transform the Corporation into a geist by our present supreme leader.
I must stop
right here as I want to listen (and see) Rachel Maddow tell me the latest about
Trump.
What Did My Fingers Do?
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
Sylvia Plath "Three
Women: A Poem for Three Voices" (1962), a radio play published in 1968
