February 28, 2012

The swing

My oldest memory might have been during  the same summer that I had my first experience with cats, when I learnt that behind magic green eyes may hide a devilish creature. Summertime was as long as a bad preacher’s sermon then, as if life was going to last forever. I spent the first holiday that I recall at my grandmother’s vacational property. She had inherited it, after the Spanish Civil War, from distant relatives that had tragically passed away, shot down by revolutionaries. That was the story I had been told years before but, as I was just a baby the year I went there, maybe younger than two, the only knowledge I had of the evil that the place had seen, were those feline eyes down the dark corridor, like a lighthouse leading sailors to murky waters,  and the scary and hipnotic purring that the cat produced. Although the redish-tiled house was in the centre of the small village, it had an immense garden with trees and even a pergola, where the ladies of my family sat to gossip and tell stories, some of them secretly whispered when terms like “gynaecologist”, “breast” or “giving birth” were the main topics. The swing was beside the pergola. It hung from an olive tree branch and the person who made it probably chose a short tree for safety reasons , just in case the rope broke, although it was hardly a metre high from the ground.The swing had not the usual wooden seat rather a big basket with a comfortable cushion inside and I was so little that the swing was my cradle by day. I still have memories of the acrid smell of the dry straw inside the basket and the tickles on my tiny hands when I grabbed its rough edges. That day the sun was shining through the narrow leaves of the olive tree, whimsically drawing forms on my dress , according to the soft breeze that was shaking the foliage, sparkling as if it had been made of silver. My eyes squinted every time the leaves made way for a sun beam, hot like a dragon’s kiss. I was gently rocked by Nature’s hand and lulled by a choir of singing insects. The swing was the spaceship that took me to Planet Happiness when life was in black and white and in slow motion.

February 22, 2012

My bedroom, my sanctuary


The first impression you will get if you come into my bedroom,  will be that the owner is not an urban vampire whose only aspiration is to see life through dark glasses. Everything inside is light, from the walls, painted in a pale lilac colour, to the window,  iron beds  and doors that are white, maybe as a reflection of myself. I’m crystal clear like a drop of water on a mirror in both  every action and towards the people I know. After a deeper observation of the elements, messily disposed of in the room, as if something had interrupted me as I was moving in, you’d probably be lead to the conclusion that The Theory of Chaos was not about The Universe but about this small and cosy den. There is nothing wrong with chaos as long it’s controlled. Chaos is the finest form of creativity and it’s really creative to combine within a reduced space like a wooden desk surface, varied stuff such as batteries, a comb, a red candle, headphones, wires of different lengths and colours, books, a lamp and an impaired earring that lost its  better half in a battle against a domestic hurricane. I wouldn’t dare you to open the drawers of the desk, chaos would explode under your nose like a supernova in a remote galaxy and would kill you in quick and blinding flash.  Don’t look under my bed either if you are scared of strange beings. You’d probably hear a creepy breath coming from there, as if an alien were secretly giving birth.  But don’t worry, it’s just a dog that has been brought up like a child and dreams, her head on a shoe, of a woman who feeds her chicken soup with a spoon. It’s a pleasant  bedroom, though.    

February 19, 2012

The accordionist

The same melancholic waltz sounds every day on my street. The accordionist invariably performs it, whatever it’s scorching hot or so cold that he can hardly move his fat fingers on the black and yellowing keyboard of the old instrument. The melody slows down in winter and flows like a stream of vibrant notes in summer. The speed of his performance, along with the shed of leaves, marks the end of each season. He sits on a small stool beside the corner of the avenue, where the Sun stays longer. At his feet, on the grey cobled pavement, a cardboard box keeps the few coins that people, dismissively, throw into. The old lady, in a beige coat and wig-shaped hairdo, eternally searches inside her old-fashioned hand bag until she finds the least valued coin, maybe five cents, then she drops it into the box and keeps on walking like a female Charlie Chaplin with no hat nor walking cane; the civil servants that work at the institutional building, hard to tell from themselves*, walk past him mumbling with a fag in their mouth and, some of them, throw a few coins too, that fall with a dull clinging sound into the box. The accordionist nods as a way of thanks with every coin he gets, but never stops playing. He sways his tough body while he taps one of his feet in time with the music, raises just one of his thick, dark eyebrows and there’s a broad smile on his round and tanned face. Some days a small dog is tied up to the parking fence where the accordionist performs. It’s one of those ugly furry dogs, the living reminder of a forbidden union between a pet and a stray dog, the luckiest in the litter, a survivor dog who shamelessly licks its private parts, without paying attention to the ladies on the street. It stands, like a memorial statue in a pet’s cementery, close to his master who keeps playing until the evening comes.
Each morning I pass by where the accordionist sits and, although I’m hurried, I slow down my pace to listen to his music that is like a glimmer of magic in the moronity of the rat race. He notices what I do and probably guesses that I like the waltz he’s playing. He looks at me then, raises his open hand in a friendly greeting, and says “Hello, hello!” in a cheerful voice. It’s just a short break, the only moment when music stops sounding on my street.
*The sentence is grammatically incorrect but it’s an artistic license. It should say “hard to tell them apart”


 

Dreams


Give your dreams a chance to be real
No matter how crazy they could be
or if you’ve told they'll never be fulfilled.
Follow them, do what you feel.
You can spend your life to make them come true
but sometimes you wake up and they’re here.
Some are reluctant to happen, some are taboo
and I’d only tell about them wispering into your ear.
Simple, like a smile from somebody you like
Hard to get, like a new and different life
Silly, like a country house with ten pine trees
Special, like me and you somehow could meet.
Don’t fear being disappointed if they come true
and they’re not what you expected; they are only dreams,
you still have nights to create new ones; you still have reality.

The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges



And the queen gave birth to a child who was called Asterion.
Apollodorus Bibliotecha III, I
I know they accuse me of arrogance, and perhaps misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (for which I shall exact punishment in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house, but it is also true that its doors (whose numbers are infinite) (footnote: The original says fourteen, but there is ample reason to infer that, as used by Asterion, this numeral stands for infinite.) are open day and night to men and to animals as well. Anyone may enter. He will find here no female pomp nor gallant court formality, but he will find quiet and solitude. And he will also find a house like no other on the face of this earth. (There are those who declare there is a similar one in Egypt, but they lie.) Even my detractors admit there is not one single piece of furniture in the house. Another ridiculous falsehood has it that I, Asterion, am a prisoner. Shall I repeat that there are no locked doors, shall I add that there are no locks? Besides, one afternoon I did step into the street; If I returned before night, I did so because of the fear that the faces of the common people inspired in me, faces as discolored and flat as the palm of one’s hand. the sun had already set ,but the helpless crying of a child and the rude supplications of the faithful told me I had been recognized. The people prayed, fled, prostrated themselves; some climbed onto the stylobate of the temple of the axes, others gathered stones. One of them, I believe, hid himself beneath the sea. Not for nothing was my mother a queen; I cannot be confused with the populace, though my modesty might so desire. The fact is that that I am unique. I am not interested in what one man may transmit to other men; like the philosopher I think that nothing is communicable by the art of writing. Bothersome and trivial details have no place in my spirit, which is prepared for all that is vast and grand; I have never retained the difference between one letter and another. A certain generous impatience has not permitted that I learn to read. Sometimes I deplore this, for the nights and days are long.
Of course, I am not without distractions. Like the ram about to charge, I run through the stone galleries until I fall dizzy to the floor. I crouch in the shadow of a pool or around a corner and pretend I am being followed. There are roofs from which I let myself fall until I am bloody. At any time I can pretend to be asleep, with my eyes closed and my breathing heavy. (Sometimes I really sleep, sometimes the color of day has changed when I open my eyes.) But of all the games, I prefer the one about the other Asterion. I pretend that he comes to visit me and that I show him my house. With great obeisance I say to him “Now we shall return to the first intersection” or “Now we shall come out into another courtyard” Or “I knew you would like the drain” or “Now you will see a pool that was filled with sand” or “You will soon see how the cellar branches out”. Sometimes I make a mistake and the two of us laugh heartily.
Not only have I imagined these games, I have also meditated on the house. All parts of the house are repeated many times, any place is another place. There is no one pool, courtyard, drinking trough, manger; the mangers, drinking troughs, courtyards pools are fourteen (infinite) in number. The house is the same size as the world; or rather it is the world. However, by dint of exhausting the courtyards with pools and dusty gray stone galleries I have reached the street and seen the temple of the Axes and the sea. I did not understand this until a night vision revealed to me that the seas and temples are also fourteen (infinite) in number. Everything is repeated many times, fourteen times, but two things in the world seem to be repeated only once: above, the intricate sun; below Asterion. Perhaps I have created the stars and the sun and this enormous house, but I no longer remember.
Every nine years nine men enter the house so that I may deliver them from evil. I hear their steps or their voices in the depths of the stone galleries and I run joyfully to find them. The ceremony lasts a few minutes. They fall one after another without my having to bloody my hands. They remain where they fell and their bodies help distinguish one gallery from another. I do not know who they are, but I know that one of them prophesied, at the moment of his death, that some day my redeemer would come. Since then my loneliness does not pain me, because I know my redeemer lives and he will finally rise above the dust. If my ear could capture all the sounds of the world, I should hear his steps. I hope he will take me to a place with fewer galleries fewer doors. What will my redeemer be like? I ask myself. Will he be a bull or a man? will he perhaps be a bull with the face of a man? or will he be like me?
The morning sun reverberated from the bronze sword. There was no longer even a vestige of blood. “Would you believe it, Ariadne?” said Theseus “The Minotaur scarcely defended himself.”
Asterion is the name that Jorge Luis Borges chose for the Minotaur, the mythological creature who is the protagonist of his short story “The House of Asterion”. In this story, Borges writes about the infinite loneliness of Asterion, incarcerated in a labyrinth that he believes is the World, only for being a different creature that, in the people of Ancient Greece’s opinion, should never have been born.
According to mythology, the Minotaur was the son of the queen Pasiphae of Crete and a white bull from, by reasons that only an ancient Greek could understand, she felt a sudden, unnatural and lusty passion. Horses for courses. Quite inconceivable, not only for the oddity of the love match, but for the fact that it was a wooden bull. The king of Crete asked his architect, Daedalous, to design a labyrinth in his Palace of Knossos to keep the Minotaur, under the pretext it was a wild and harmful monster, although the real reason was he wanted to hide the shameful proof of the betrayal of his wife, or maybe the proof of the bad taste of the queen.
This labyrinth is “The House of Asterion”. The Argentinian author portrays its only inhabitant as a naive being, with a bull appearance but a childish heart. He did nothing but invent games to relieve his boredom. He figured out an “imaginary friend” to play with, like some children do when they’re feeling lonely; even killing people was a game and not an act of cruelty. He had a simply way of thinking as no one had taught him the difference between good and evil. That’s way he was killed by Theseus. When the prince came into the labyrinth, brandishing his sword and with the ball of string that he had been given by cunning Ariadne, Asterion thought he was the saviour who would redeem him from his miserable life. Theseus was the bearer of his freedom and not the bearer of death. If Theseus hadn’t killed him, loneliness would have anyway.

Why "My heart and I"?

Maybe those who, personally or virtually, know me and know my musical tastes as well, might think that the title of this blog it's due to a particular song by a particular singer. (Google it and you will find it out. I want to keep you busy from my first blogging day. It's a great a song, by the way.) If you think so, you are wrong. Nothing to do with music but poetry. “My heart and I” is a poem by the British victorian poet, Elizabeth Barret Browning. She, like me, was a disabled woman; she, like me, was a sickly child; she, like me, had an overprotective family; she, like me, loved dogs but she had one and I have three; she opened her heart on poems and finally, she found love. She is, without a doubt, my role model. I love her and her poems, specially the poem that gaves title to my blog. It was written before she met the poet Robert Browning, her love, and there is sadness on it. At the end of this post I put a link where you can read the poem but I couldn't resist to extract the second verse of the poem. I wish I have written it. It's me in a period of my life on these lines and sometimes, even now, we're tired, my heart and I.

II
You see we're tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colours could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune's end,
We loved too true to keep a friend ;
At last we're tired, my heart and I.