скрипка - el violín eléctrico, alivian el pasaje de la hora.
Saturday, January 04, 2020
En estos primeros días del año 2020 me afecta una fiaca tremenda. Me acuesto de espaldas en la cama con los dos gatos Niño y Niña y mi Rosemary. Reflexiono el por qué no quiero hacer nada. Bajo a mi oficina y busco entre mis miles de negativos a ver que me atraiga para pasar el tiempo. En la noche como a las 10:30 le digo a Rosemary, "
Hace cinco minutos era ayer."
A un dios
desconocido
Quienquiera seas
no vengas ya.
Los dientes del tigre se
han mezclado a la semilla,
llueve un fuego continuo
sobre los cascos protectores,
ya no se sabe cuándo
acabarán las muecas,
el desgaste de un tiempo
hecho pedazos.
Obedeciéndote hemos caído.
-La torre subía enhiesta,
las mujeres
llevaban cascabeles en las
piernas, se gustaba
un vino fuerte, perfumado.
Nuevas rutas
se abrían como muslos a la
alegre codicia,
a las carenas insaciables.
¡Gloria!
La torre desafiaba las
medidas prudentes,
tal una fiesta de
estrategos
era su propia guirnalda.
El oro, el tiempo, los
destines,
el pensar, la violenta
caricia, los tratados,
las agonías, las carreras,
los tributos,
rodaban como dados, con sus
puntos de fuego.
Quienquiera seas, no vengas
ya.
La crónica es la fábula
para estos ojos tímidos
de cristales focales y
bifocales, polaroid, antihalo,
para estas manos con
escamas de cold-cream.
Obedeciéndote hemos caído.
-Los profesores obstinados
hacen gestos de rata,
vomitan Gorgias, patesís,
anfictionías y Duns Scoto,
concilios, cánones,
jeringas, skaldas, trébedes,
qué descansada vida, los
derechos del hombre, Ossian,
Raimundo Lulio, Pico,
Farinata, Mío Cid, el peine
para que Melisendra peine
sus cabellos.
Es así: preservar los
legados, adorarte en tus obras,
eternizarte, a ti el
relámpago.
Hacer de tu viviente rabia
un apotegma,
codificar tu libre
carcajada.
Quienquiera seas
no vengas ya.
-La ficción cara de harina,
cómo se cuelga de su mono,
el reloj que puntual nos
saca de la cama.
Venga usted a las dos,
venga a las cuatro,
desgraciadamente tenemos
tantos compromisos.
¿Quién mató a Cock Robín?
Por no usar
los antisudorales, sí
señora.
Por lo demás la bomba H, el
peine con música,
los detergentes, el violín
eléctrico,
alivian el pasaje de la
hora. No es tan mala
la sala de la espera:
tapizada.
- ¿Consuelos, joven
antropólogo? Surtidos:
usted los ve, los prueba y
se los lleva.
La torre subía enhiesta,
pero aquí hay Dramamina.
Quienquiera seas
no vengas ya.
Te escupiríamos, basura,
fabricado
a nuestra imagen
de nilón y de orlón, Iahvé,
Dios mío
Julio Cortázar©
Sleeping the Big Sleep
Friday, January 03, 2020
Both my Rosemary and I in our little dúplex in the Kitsilano
neighbourhood of Vancouver have this fear of becoming addicted to the films of
Netflix or any of the other made-to-be streamed films in other channels. So we
watch Rachel Maddow sometimes and like the random finding of classic movies of
TCM.
Now we have a problem. We have become addicted to sitting in
our living room with our two cats, Niño and Niña, to watch at the comfortable Vancouver
time of 9pm, Eddie Muller’s TCM Noir Alley on Saturday.
He is a knowledgeable and affable gentleman who hosts the
series and brings lots of pleasant information before the film begins and right
after.
Tomorrow Saturday it will be The Big Sleep with Lauren
Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. It is a 1946 noir film directed by Howard Hawks. It
is my hope that the film we will see will be this one mentioned in Wikipedia:
Parts of the original,
unreleased 1945 cut were significantly rescripted and shot to take advantage of
the public's fascination with "Bogie and Bacall". A copy of the 1945
version was restored and released in 1997.
To me film noir has a special significance since at my age
of 77 I can state that I have read all that Dashiell Hammett and Raymond
Chandler wrote. These two led me to discover Jerome Charyn, Elmore Leonard
and James Ellroy. I had the good fortune of meeting them and taking their
portraits.
 |
| Jerome Charyn, James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard - Photographs Alex Waterhouse-Hayward |
For anybody who has seen The Big Sleep many times (I have)
it is irrelevant to figure out who killed whom. It has been written about
Chandler that the process is what is important.
As a lover of cool jazz from the time I was 20 I have
associated it with Chandler and the rest of the hard-boiled. I particularly recomend the CD Charlie Haden's Quartet West in Angel City
One of my finest pleasures is to read the first paragraphs
and the last of any book I may want to buy. Here is The Big Sleep:
Chapter I:
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-October,
with the sun not shining and the look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the
foothills. I was wearing my powder blue suit, with dark shirt, tie and display
handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I
was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was
everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on
four million dollars.
Chapter XXXIII:
What did it matter where you lay once you
were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were
dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like
that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the
big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Ragan
was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quietly in his canopied
bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a
brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as grey as ashes. And in a little
while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of
double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of
Silver Wig, and I never saw her again.
The scanned page is from my
red leatherete collection of Raymond Chandler's novels, Heron Books, 1981. The illustration is by Paul J. Crompton.
rodear el ombligo - Objectively
Thursday, January 02, 2020
This blog may read oddly. Some years ago I went to listen to a Spanish anthropologist called Santiago Genovés who warned us about reading history. He said that no historian could be truly objective. He said, "Objectivity is a subjective invention by man."
As a 77 year old man I can assert that my plumbing is beyond repair. I look at women of any age and I feel that Genovés may have been wrong. I see them objectively (not as objects or objects to be desired in the ways of the 20th century) as if I were a doctor. I seem them coldly but paradoxically I am enjoying that which I see remotely. While I may have lost my sense of taste for food, I can remember and imagine what it did taste at one time. This parallels my idea that eroticism, now in my cold way of looking (feeling it in my head) is cerebral, elegant and wonderful. As wonderful as the poem below by Uruguayan poet/writer Mario Bendedetti. Unlike Jorge Luís Borges who was standofish in his writings about women, Julio Cortázar, Eduardo Galeano and Mario Benedetti are enthusiastically baroque.
Pies Hermosos - Mario Benedetti
La mujer que tiene los pies hermosos
nunca podrá ser fea
mansa suele subirle la belleza
por tobillos pantorrillas y muslos
demorarse en el pubis
que siempre ha estado más alla de todo canon
rodear el ombligo como a uno de esos timbres
que si se les presiona tocan Para Elisa
reivindicar los lúbricos pezones a la espera
entreabrir los labios sin pronunciar saliva
y dejarse querer por los ojos espejo
La mujer que tiene los pies hermosos
sabe
vagabundear por la tristeza
Beautiful Feet
The woman who has beautiful feet
will never be ugly
beauty gently moves
from ankles, calves and thighs
lingers by the pubis
which has always been beyond any canon
to surround the navel as in one of those door bells
which if you press play For Elisa
to claim the slippery nipples on the wait
part lips without pronouncing saliva
and to allow to be loved by the mirrored eyes
The woman with beautiful feet
knows how to roam in sadness
My translation
