| From an interview with some musicians: "Cuando digo esto sé lo miserable que soy y nunca he podido ponerme en juez de los demás, pero vivir en una nube de pedos, en una situación cortesana, no es una cosa conveniente, tampoco. Es como una manera que uno tiene de detener la realidad para que no te afecte todo el tiempo." --La García He's basically saying that he is as bad as anyone else and he doesn't appoint himself judge over other people, but keeping up appearances, being oblivious, or "living in a fart cloud" is not the most comfortable way to live. However, he understands that being oblivious and unconcerned (i.e. "living in a fart cloud") is a way of keeping reality at bay so that such realizations don't affect you all the time. I think this is an Argentinian phrase, "to live in a fart cloud" (vivir en una nube de pedos), which means to be unconcerned about what is going on around you. I suppose we who live in a literal fart cloud would definitely fit the bill. Ignorance is bliss. This isn't a "gross" phrase in Argentina, although it's probably a bit slangy, but I think it captures nicely the intersection of how we ignore the reality of what is around us (the fart cloud) in preference for our "preferred reality," or escapist pursuits, while simultaneously denying how we contribute to the whole situation (our farts). It's all tied up nicely in one stinky little bundle of words. Anyway, I like the phrase and thought I'd share! |
Monday, September 20, 2010
La Burbuja de la Realidád
Thursday, August 19, 2010
César Chavez Library: Thursday the 19th of August
| The guy to the left of me does philately in his ECKO Other Ground print shirt. The guy to the right blasts death metal into his headphones while he draws careful line drawings on sheet-after-sheet of copy paper. The guy to my immediate right is quiet and square-looking; he reads and writes and occasionally types. The guy down at the end of the row has recently rolled out of a boxcar and wears acid-washed denim blackened with grime and a Karl Marx style beard. I believe mice live in it. There's a lady who is here often. She sits perched on the edge of a chair and does not read. She just watches everyone and appears perturbed by the hard rock music. Her ears lay back like an irritated cat's. Soon she leaves. I spent much of the morning with my son at pre-school. Now I won't see him until the evening. I'm on vacation, so I just come here to kill time. I find the environs and the people watching to be pleasant. Later on I will have some Thai iced tea and a chicken-and-rice bowl at the nearby Quickly snack bar and watch the Simpsons on their TV. Tomorrow is the last day of my vacation and I will return to my normal schedule. The goat in me is happy (Capricorn)-- I frolic in my goals and ambitions. I love tasks and plans and passion and motivation. This is my native element, and only in the soil of realism and daily duties does my imagination take root-- not in the airy vagaries of vacation time. Yay, work! |
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Walking My Neighborhood: Friday the 13th of August
The kamikaze dog who bit my pants legs repeatedly the other evening scratches desperately against the screen door and chews on the bottom corner with her lip pressed desperately against the metal, exposing her horrific 1/4 inch fangs.
The girls one house up are dousing each other randomly with the hose. They don't even bother to spray. I think their game is more like Marco Polo, but with a hose. Since they keep spraying the sidewalk I didn't stay long enough to figure it out.
As I reach the corner, the two snack vendors approach from opposing sides. God forbid they ever face each other in open battle; fruit skewers to the midriff, hot sauce in the eyes, smearing oil and mayonnaise on their arms to slip the enemy's grip. It would be a mess.
They honk their horns insistently and glare at each other across the main thoroughfare.
I speed up to avoid the conflagration.
In someone's back yard they are doing terrible things to a tuba. The cymbals and snare get their abuse, too. The combined effect is drunken, carnival-like madness. Next door the Templo Monte Sinai stands in severe silence.
I catch a lyric from a passing Escalade, blasting a bolero-- to my Spanglish ears it sounds like "comiendo hongos con las sirenas." I'm pretty sure I missed the mark, but it would be fun.
To my Spanglish ears every single bolero sounds like it has the same rhythm and the same tune. The same tuba baseline. Its like a game where you make up different words to the Yellow Rose of Texas, like Emily Dickinson did, and sing them really loudly, pretending they're brand new songs.
A woman walks slowly down a full story staircase talking urgently in K'iche'.
A few houses down a woman smiles at me. She wears a blanket knotted at the shoulder, tying a bundle to her back. I am likewise carrying things-- a booster seat in a messenger bag and a jogging stroller under my arm.
We are bonded by the kinship of carrying things, divided by the particularities of custom.
Later, as I return with my son, the street is flooded with bicycles. They are fitted with carts with amps and speakers and the riders are fitted with hipster clothes and sculpted hair.
Hundreds of them mass in the square. It's a "bike party," as they loudly exclaim, but only for those to whom bicycles are a lifestyle accessory-- excluding all who use them out of necessity.
On the way back, the tall women in stilettos prances around her coupe, emblazoned in Morrissey, The Cure and other decals. She is waiting for her boy toy to finish up with his slow rearrangements of items from seat to seat. He has streaks of glittery Christmas tree foil and green-apple green in his hair, and a funky hat.
They both seem to have recently run off from the circus. Or possible they're carny folk. I think she's slumming it with him, but he doesn't know.
We pass the El Centenario taco truck and the tortilleria (La Finca) and head up the hill. On the other side the far hills seem emblazoned with Christmas lights and the perfect half-circle of the moon lazes above, lighting our journey.
The girls one house up are dousing each other randomly with the hose. They don't even bother to spray. I think their game is more like Marco Polo, but with a hose. Since they keep spraying the sidewalk I didn't stay long enough to figure it out.
As I reach the corner, the two snack vendors approach from opposing sides. God forbid they ever face each other in open battle; fruit skewers to the midriff, hot sauce in the eyes, smearing oil and mayonnaise on their arms to slip the enemy's grip. It would be a mess.
They honk their horns insistently and glare at each other across the main thoroughfare.
I speed up to avoid the conflagration.
In someone's back yard they are doing terrible things to a tuba. The cymbals and snare get their abuse, too. The combined effect is drunken, carnival-like madness. Next door the Templo Monte Sinai stands in severe silence.
I catch a lyric from a passing Escalade, blasting a bolero-- to my Spanglish ears it sounds like "comiendo hongos con las sirenas." I'm pretty sure I missed the mark, but it would be fun.
To my Spanglish ears every single bolero sounds like it has the same rhythm and the same tune. The same tuba baseline. Its like a game where you make up different words to the Yellow Rose of Texas, like Emily Dickinson did, and sing them really loudly, pretending they're brand new songs.
A woman walks slowly down a full story staircase talking urgently in K'iche'.
A few houses down a woman smiles at me. She wears a blanket knotted at the shoulder, tying a bundle to her back. I am likewise carrying things-- a booster seat in a messenger bag and a jogging stroller under my arm.
We are bonded by the kinship of carrying things, divided by the particularities of custom.
Later, as I return with my son, the street is flooded with bicycles. They are fitted with carts with amps and speakers and the riders are fitted with hipster clothes and sculpted hair.
Hundreds of them mass in the square. It's a "bike party," as they loudly exclaim, but only for those to whom bicycles are a lifestyle accessory-- excluding all who use them out of necessity.
On the way back, the tall women in stilettos prances around her coupe, emblazoned in Morrissey, The Cure and other decals. She is waiting for her boy toy to finish up with his slow rearrangements of items from seat to seat. He has streaks of glittery Christmas tree foil and green-apple green in his hair, and a funky hat.
They both seem to have recently run off from the circus. Or possible they're carny folk. I think she's slumming it with him, but he doesn't know.
We pass the El Centenario taco truck and the tortilleria (La Finca) and head up the hill. On the other side the far hills seem emblazoned with Christmas lights and the perfect half-circle of the moon lazes above, lighting our journey.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Legend of the Mapache [Dos]
| [slide 1] Safe atop their former mountain sanctuary, the raccoon-dogs laid in their fortifications. [slide 2] The demonic eyes of their ravenous foe haunted their dreams. [slide 3] Their only thought was for revenge... [slide 4] and sustenence. |
Legend of the Mapache [Uno]
| [slide 1] They once enjoyed an idyllic existence, in the peaceful woods atop Raccoon Mountain... [slide 2] but one day their peace was interrupted by war. [slide 3] The neighboring raccoon-dogs attacked, [slide 4] progeny of an unholy union, and they were driven from their homeland... [slide 5] to become refugees. [slide 6] They wandered the dark night of their exile, [slide 7] did what they had to to survive, [slide 8] let nothing stop them. [slide 9] Sometimes they felt they would go mad. [slide 10] They came to a place where people fed them peanuts. [slide 11] They were looking for a home. |
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sorry, it's true... Santa is a Yeti.
What most people don't realize is that Santa is a Yeti and his suit just serves to cover all his fluffy white fur and huge cranial ridge.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Just Some Tommy J to Chew on
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." --Thomas Jefferson
So are we really just so happy with our current form of governance that we feel no need to rebel? I mean, according to TJ we are about 18 rebellions behind, that is if we count the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement as embodiments of that spirit of resistance. We may question their results, but they do show without a doubt a willingness to risk life and limb for the sake of liberty. We shouldn't accept everything that Jefferson says without question-- he is as fallible as the rest. But without refreshment has the tree of liberty survived? or have we just not noticed it's loss? Freedoms are given, but liberties are earned. We are free, but we're "freely marching on to exploitation," and the next four years are not likely to be quantitatively different-- so I suppose we're just not paying attention.
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