A Different Drum

When I came back from the sleazy bar to which I went automatically every Friday by 4:05 in the afternoon, I found her in the threshold of my crisis. Everything seemed contradictory for me. If my predisposition of fucking the world indicated that I should simply fuck her, why did I hesitate? The conscience has never played an important roll in my impulsive decisions. My body, in its balance and natural harmony gives me signals... certain impulses.

What the majority of people would consider impulsive actions, not pre-thought actions, I consider them instinctive actions. And it's fair to give credit to your instinct. I don't want to minimize the brain's importance, the logic thinking. But there are more things. The problem is that the man insists on synthesizing: the less, the better. If I understand something, I stay there. The so called, comfort zones.

Anyway, in the end I didn't fuck her. I didn't follow my instinct, and I did follow some... guidelines... moral? I've always complained about the moral. I think it's bullshit for the minds and modern perceptions, having to feel ourselves tied to commandments of past societies. Societies that have a little or nothing to do with me. But my intellectual posture doesn't matter to her. She attacked me. Hard.

I asked her – with that vague idea I have of being a gentleman – to leave. I had no interest in fucking her. There was something very nasty in the idea of having sex with a .. dead woman... don't-- don't judge me. It's not something literal, what I mean is that it would've felt dead, empty. I don't know. I think neither my body, not my mind have to do with it, or anything of metaphysics in my decision and change. It's a third person.

Her name is Cathy.

She took me out of my comfort zone.

Regressions

Do you remember that old man with cloudy eyes? That old man that stuttered every time he called you. That great man whose wrinkled skin showed you, centimeter by centimeter, a story filled with struggles, happiness, frustrations, loves, forests, seas, and fruits. That old man who was young sometime before and whose hand you held as support not to fall. That man who you considered your hero at least once. The one you didn't see during the day sometimes, and you simply resigned to dream of during the night.

That kind and tender person which you ignored for the most part of your life. The one you denied. Do you remember in secondary school or high school? Remember how you blushed with shame... SHAME...because your friends might see you on that great man's side? Now you only have the memory, and you cry, and you talk about him, and you want to take his hand and make sure everyone sees you by his side.

But those gems are perishable. The things that matter, the things we care about and we stick to the most are destined to stop existing physically. And your are a perfect example of this eternal irony. The human as an eternal adolescent, who doesn't know what he/she wants, and never learns to value anything. What a sad story the one of the father that's always there for his kids, even when those kids don't want to know anything about their father. It's the “natural” road, unfair and hard. Because they are the ones that are only left with their white hair, their wrinkles, and their labyrinth of random and fantastic memories; the ones that stay alone at the end.

I see old people. Those men whose eyes hide piercing screams that cry for company... for the no-annulment. I don't even want to imagine the memories, regrets, laments, and cries that are trapped in their deathbed, when they're surrounded by faces and silhouettes that are now hard to decipher. They must cry in silence. Cry behind a peaceful face.

And you, as part of those undecipherable and unrecognizable faces, just observe with incredulity how something that seemed eternal extinguishes slowly, at the rhythm of the erratic shaking of his hands. And is in that final irony when, if you pay attention, you could hear a spectral whisper, filled with calm, that says: “you've had me for years... don't torture yourself... take my hand and we'll be in peace.”

_______________________________________

To my father,

Leonard Cohen said

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

I've never denied you, I've never been ashamed by you, I've always admired you.
But I cannot stop feeling that I owe you so much.
I hope there are no final moments filled with guilt or regrets.

I love you, I respect you, and thank you for everything you have sacrificed for your kids,
the ashes of your life, the poems of an idealist and a dreamer.

Eight

Do you believe in inexplicable connections, almost magical, with something or someone?

I don't know if it's an obsession of mine for trying to find a proof of transcendental elements in a world where the spiritual and the magic are judged as stupidities. But the eight has followed me... I'm sure, and I'm stubborn about it.

Salvador, my name, has eight letters.

Martínez, my second last name, has eight letters.

When I lived in San Nicolás, my house had the number 208.

My actual home has the number 208.

The apartment I live in is number 1808, in a building with number 588.

My first feature script is around eighty-something pages in its first draft.

My student number in ITESM was 595888.

My girlfriend since almost eight years and now fiancé is called Gabriela: eight letters.

The first phone number I remember was 76-88-83.

My musical idol is called Bob Dylan: eight letters.

My cinematographic idol's last name is Scorsese: eight letters.

There are many things that connect me to that number. Why? I don't know, and I'm not interested in knowing. Is part of giving life the credit of its capability to surprise. I'm sure that if I make a deep analysis of my life and what surrounds me, I would find many other things.

Blessed eight, until now it has been a great trip. Lets stay together.

Brainfuck

December 2009. The screen was there, desolate, sad, cynical. My sight wandered between one window and the other, continuously. Something like the people with the habit of changing the TV channel again and again, without stop. Is like trying to catch the most amount of images possible. Make them yours, be jealous, not letting them go. And above all, give them no truce.

The pages of what was priority stayed, as a couple of weeks ago, at the end of my interests at the moment. Coffee, facebook, twitter, view to the urban landscape, the analysis in Senses of Cinema is fuckin' great, coffee, facebook, twitter, what the fuck do we hand in tomorrow?

A very dear friend of mine and very putilla coined (or at least introduced me) a term for the people of the current generation, in which the social webs and other spaces, not only work as a tool, but create little things... little pleasures, very very addictive, that make you become a captive client/user. That term is digital autistic. What an appropriate term!

The worst is that digital autism doesn't seem to be the exception, but the rule. Either because you're a laptop slave thanks to your profession or study, or you simply have the possibility to access social webs by cellphone or other media the activity that appears every 5-10 seconds, is frankly scary.

I don't want to get to the point of having a blackberry or iphone in my hands. The worst thing is I will. 2010 looks like we'll be one step closer to being Wall-E-esque people. We're getting there. I have no doubt. People tend to think that I'm kidding when I say Wall-E is a prophetic movie. I think they're in denial.

I hope society proves me wrong... I don't think so. We've already crossed the point of no return and there's nothing left but to keep on with the same ridiculous obsession for the quick, the immediate, the quantity and no quality... Artificial autism. Good, we're on our way.

Disgusting!

A Start From Scratch

The hangovers continued, the insomnia nights, the days of dreaming, the combination of Vitamin C and E for a better immune system, the hours stuck in front of a laptop trying to write and only getting to be a big virtual voyeuristic, the LBSII pills for a lazy bowel.

Stories in my head pounding randomly during the day, stories that find their way out in the most imprudent moments, my attempt to trust in my memory and that my ADD doesn't get in the way when I get the chance to vomit on the keyboard everything I need to, seven years of an uninterrupted love relationship, its formalization, the support and stimuli necessary, the muses.

The honor of having people by my side who ignorant people call crazy but are geniuses, the drunk gatherings with my blood siblings, the drunk gatherings with my chosen brothers, the mediocre movies, the trash movies, the movies with soul, the soulless movies, the movies that tear your soul apart, a new country, a new city, new people, re-encounters.

And the drinking gatherings continue, and the hangovers, and here I am again, in front of a laptop with nervous and hesitant fingers, and everything starts over again from scratch.

Excuse Me, Sr

Excuse me, Sr, are you a cop? Pardon me, I've noticed your badge. I see you're traffic officer. Monterrey Traffic Department. You must feel extremely powerful, no? Important, maybe? Yes.

I see you don't feel like talking.

Remember that night? It was nearly 12:15am. Gray Toyota. Broken light. How do the transit regulations work? How does a person driving a car with a broken light ends up becoming, along lots of punches, into a drug dealer?

Do you know Kafka?

Of course not. How could you know him? Excuse me, Sr. I didn't intend to offend you. You only know about cowboy magazines, or joke books, maybe.

Do you know what happens to a person when, one night, after finishing his thesis... I'm sorry, do you know what a thesis is? No, of course not. A thesis is a final document that many universities require in order for someone to graduate. Graduate! From architecture, in this case.

Well, do you know what happens to a person after that, being punched and accused to be a drug dealer, and exposed to the media by a negligible being who feels powerful for being dressed with a uniform made out of second hand fabrics?

Did you listen? Kafka again.

Well it's good that a person like you is used to Kafkian processes. Your -how should I call it?- Expertise... would help you understand that a person in that scenery, exposed in the media, unfairly accused... a person like that looses much more than his family, title, or his reputation.

A person like that looses something unfixable in his essence. I don't know what it is. I just know that something disappears. A person like that has nothing to loose. A person like that transforms.

I'm gonna to take the blindfold off your eyes. Your sight's gonna take a while in getting used to the light. It's just a matter of seconds. Before that, however, I want you to bring to your mind the last memory you've got of your children.

Excuse me, Sr, can you see now?

Look at them... your kids.

I suppose those pieces of meat, guts, organs, and hair don't look a lot like the image you had in your little head. Do they?

Kafka!

In A Beautiful Pilgrimage

So yes. I saw her crossing the street and I immediately started chasing her.

There was no reason. Why do we insist on finding reasons for everything? I've always thought they're useless. Something that's completely logic and reasonable for someone (such abstract words!); could seem the most primitive, sickening, and dark thing to somebody else. I don't waste my time looking for reasons for what impulsively comes out from my heart. (does it exist?)

I chased her. Because I just felt like it.

I followed her along main avenues (I felt judged by the multitudes), along commercial streets (is it that people won't conceive anything else to do on weekends but consume?), along narrow and claustrophobic alleys (much better, now we have something in common), I followed her at a safe distance. And she kept walking, non-stop, without turning around, like if she had her eyes fixed in something that I couldn't guess.

And yes, I tried to guess: I imagined her arriving the kinder garden to pick her kids; or meeting her husband and have an improvised kiss in the middle of the street that would remind me to Doisneau; or even better, that she arrived to leave her kids at home with her husband, said goodbye, met with her young, beautiful, dominant lover, and had an improvised kiss in the middle of the street that would remind me to Doisneau.

Nothing, no husband, no kids, no lovers, no improvised kisses. Just her and her solitude ahead; I and she before me. Is it that she pursued her destiny? And I? I don't know. Three hours of quick walking make anyone tired, even a walk-junkie as myself.

But she kept walking at that fast pace. She, with her short dress that showed that sweet cellulite of a mature woman, of a woman who has lived, who has world, and above all who walks a fucking lot. She with her high heel shoes that made her show off that beautiful calf, as the lyrics of that Bronco song said. And I with those callosities that gave me the cramps like small electric discharges. Five hours and she wouldn't stop.

But, how could one let someone like her escape?! I saw her when she came out of that lingerie shop. I, who love, who fantasize with the women who enter a lingerie shop uninhibitedly and take their time picking thongs, hoses, garters, bras. Those women who raise the items towards the light, look at them, and imagine themselves wearing them. And while they do that, I, with my wrinkled cigarette, almost smoking the filter, imagine them.

I imagine their lives, their tastes... I think that a woman's underwear says a lot about her. I imagine everything about them before they decide to enter the shop. I imagine and never guess. But this time was magical. I did it, I saw the lost look of this beautiful forty-year-old and I imagined her in underwear.

I had that image in my head, mixing with the smoke of the tobacco and filter of my cigarette. And while the image focused, she picked those items which revealed before my fantasy. She chose everything that I imagined and put it in the bag.

How to let someone like that go away?

I don't know... it's been a day and a half, and I keep walking. She's still there, before me, at the same distance.

She walks and walks, and I follow and follow. The view of that human woman, without perfections, makes an eternity of pilgrimage worth it.

Visits

Is there anything true about reincarnation? I don't know. What I know about the concept is that one way or another, many societies/cultures/religions in history have theorized about it. I know the inherent kindness of the Buddhism, whose followers firmly believe in the cyclic journey of the soul until it reaches the state of purity and climax: the nirvana. I know that the concept has been part of innumerable film premises throughout the young cinematographic history.

I know that the majority of the new generation have grown and have been growing with an obsession for the alternativeness and for the need of differentiation. In that obsession, the resistance to certain religion is strongly attached. The atheism has become a fashion. It has become just that of which lots of atheists ran from.

I know I'm catholic from education and from family. I know that I've set up my own personal Jesus in which I want to believe. I couldn't care less about the church, the priests, and any human and institution who thinks that has the hand in religious aspects and imposes rules, interpretations, symbolisms, etc. And I want to believe there's something beyond; that in the death, like the Scorsesian Christ says: “Is not a door which closes. It is a door which opens.”

I have schizophrenic chats with my dear departed. I talk to them and try to imagine what would they answer. But maybe I'm not imagining! I believe there's something stuck in the Mexican collective subconscious that relates strongly with death. And this goes much more farther that the stereotype.

I've heard all kinds of ghost stories. When I was little I had the obsession of listening this kind of tales and then stayed up all night. Now I beg for those sleep hours lost. But those hours of insomnia where no lost time. Those where hours in which I imagined what I've had heard, in images. They where also hours of reflexion and premature analysis. Many of the stories that worried me the most and disturbed me where the ones that had to do with visits of my dead relatives.

A few weeks ago, I was walking to my apartment. The noise of the city has become overwhelming considering the great amount of stories and characters moving and acting inside my head. It was then when it happened; something I see as someone's visit. Or at least I want to relate it with someone's visit. I was walking a block away from my destiny, when a jogging woman with her dog crossed my way. The dog was a white boxer with a black stain on its right eye. I starred at the dog 'cause I simply can't ignore those animals. When they turned to their sidewalk and I kept going straight, that dog turned its head and saw me. And when we were looking at each other, the dog didn't look to the front anymore. It kept looking at me and I did the same. The dog didn't jog with its owner anymore, he just looked at me, and you could see nostalgia in its look. Those things that you just feel. And that way we walked for a whole block, it kept ignoring the jogging, and I stayed fascinated by the experience.

I have a picture which I wanted to publish here, but I didn't find it. In this picture I appear incarnated in a 4-year-old boy next to a hallway to the patio of a middle-class house. I appeared with a smile that I haven't seen on me in any other picture until now: because those were the times in which the emotions flowed without filters. And behind me, with a nostalgic and heavy look, watching me, was El Pirata, my fisrt dog: a white boxer with a black stain on its right eye.

I think that if someone had taken my picture a few weeks ago, while that happened, I would've repeated that pure and genuine smile.

Oxide

It hit me today. Since april 2007 (approximately) I haven't directed any project. I haven't been away from the production environment, from the set, from the headaches, from the adrenaline. But it's not the same. Definitely. Today that I'm 100% into inspiration and writing, into creation in paper, I feel that need to direct.

I feel that strong need, as if it was heroine (I haven't tried it but "Take the best orgasm you've ever had, multiply it times a million, and you're not even close..." sounds like it's good) to have my fix; to organize a work group, my crew; to go through the script with the writer and actors; to spend long hours writing and rewriting my shotlist, because the story I saw in my head at 10pm is not the same as the story I see at 1am; to have my Iñaki's cocktail (coca-cola and redbull) in the morning and drink coffee all day; to talk with my actors during the shoot, with no other directing tool but my instinct; to see from the viewfinder or the videoassist monitor how all that I imagined comes to life before my eyes... alive, completely organic.

Today it hit me. It's not cool at all. In a couple of weeks I might shoot an experimental short film with a friend, a writer, but it's not the same. That need to experiment, definitely comes from a different, much more different place. Today I heard about a friend that went into production of a short film. Just a couple of weeks ago, he told me about this idea. And now, he already did it. That was a powerful catalyst. And now I feel more needy than ever. I have many words that scream for a metamorphosis. They want to be images, and I have denied that right to them. At the moment I feel comfortable with the workload of my next term, I'll gather a group of actors, a decent cinematographer, a great colorist, and I'll get back to work.

My technique needs to be polished, and my instinct need to mature.

I feel rusty.

Entre Caderas, Corazones y Divagaciones

So, I won't translate this specific post because it is too personal a message to have something lost in translation. You can, if interested, tell google to translate this... hopefully it'll make sense.
___________________________________________________________________



No tengo idea por qué no puedo sacar suficientes palabras. Es más, no importa si son suficientes o no, pero sí tienen que ser relevantes... no tienen que ser relevantes, tienen que ser urgentes... ¡¿tampoco?! Quizás emotivas... no, eso implica precondicionarte, y eso implica deshonestidad... tienen que ser entrañables... pero mi entraña y tu entraña son diferentes... pero se complementan... te tienen que llegar al corazón... ¡¡¡Carajo!!! Puedo escribir para cine, puedo escribir para televisión, puedo escribir divagaciones, pero nada que te llegue al corazón. ¡No es justo! Quiero regalarte una canción, o mínimo un grito con algo de sentido... no puedo... ¿Cómo llegar a un corazón ingeniero? Es muy complicado para mi corazón caótico.

Aunque... calma... creo que lo escucho... late al ritmo de unas hermosas caderas; se exalta al oír la palabra Gaby; y creo que está algo robotizado... automatizado para bombear sangre extra ante tu presencia. Te metiste en mi sistema y lo modificaste irreversiblemente... ingeniero tenías que ser.

El título que hoy te dan es simplemente una certificación redundante a tu capacidad.

Lo único que no lograrás es hacer que mi corazón hable en código binario... lo siento, preciosa... los ingenieros no son tan chingo10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010
10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101000000000000011
111111111111

...

System Error

...

Gaby.exe needed

...

________________________________________________

¡Felicidades en tu graduación, cabrona! Estoy orgullosísimo de tí.



"Es una mujer bonita, la que anduve pretendiendo,
la seguí por ocho meses, y apenas me está queriendo.

Chaparra de mi amor,
no me hagas sufrir ya tanto"

-Ramón Ayala

________________________________________________

Why?

I don’t know how it started. I love porn, like any normal guy. I used to hear things about it being addictive, and that there were this “porn-addiction therapists”. I never got it. Ridiculous, childish, stupid. Another fucking invention to bring paranoia.

Why mess around with sex? It is the most perfect relationship humans can aspire to. That bond, the sudden change of atmosphere it produces. Moods, context, crisis, depression, and the now famous “stress”. All those concepts are minimized almost to the point of extinction if you have a partner. A guy or woman that wishes to share a sexual encounter with you. It is perfect. Rosanna was perfect.

I love sex. Its infinite, hedonistic, magical, and animal values. When both souls share that moment, a strange scent fills the air. And those souls are naked, really naked. They stand side by side: human, vulnerable, and fragile. But sometimes, to some people, sex becomes something infinitely sick, hedonistically nasty, magically perverted, and devolutionary animal. Rosanna embraced sex.

I never understood the almost inherent repulsion to sex and sweat and flesh. People start giving other names to original, beautiful words. “Your thing”; “your private part”. Makes me sick. Penis, vagina, anus, breasts, semen, clitoris. People are constantly trying to dismantle, to castrate all these beautiful, noble words. Suddenly everything related to the coital act becomes dirty, shameful, and overwhelmingly evil. Rosanna was overwhelmed by my appetite.

I love sex, real sex. And real sex introduced its beautiful cousin to me. Her name: amateur pornography. I don’t know when I got into this. I’ve always been attracted to voyeurism. There’s some magnetism when it comes to open windows, open doors. I have to look inside. I’m not the kind of person that will repress any instinctive emotion or action. If they exist, there is a reason. There must be a reason. I’ve followed my gut and my instincts my whole life, and I don’t regret it. Rosanna was my whole life, and I regret it.

Someone enters your life, and something changes. Something primal, deep. I feel that it is a permanent, irreversible change. You leave a door or a window opened and the intruder, voyeurist, peeks in, and enters. But it was fine with me. And Rossana seemed to be ok with me. She seemed happy. Many women spend their days complaining about a fucked up sexual life. It is ridiculous. More ridiculous is a sexual free spirit like Rosanna to betray her essence. The fucking intruder came in, fucked you, and suddenly left. Just like that.

Now I remember. I don’t know why I couldn’t bring another woman to bed, ever again. Everybody looked at me really weird. I felt an outcast, a misfit, a leper. I never had any trouble seducing women. That was, I can say, my only real natural ability. I had the power to lure, to seduce, to entice. And Rossana left, and I guess my powers couldn’t stand the fact of losing her. They vanished.

And since then, every night, I would see myself alone, defeated in bed. And I would start jerking off. And my penis would stay flaccid. I would concentrate on her image, on those nights. But there was no contact, with no flesh there is no blood, and with no blood there is no hard on.

One day there she was, in my favorite bar. She never went there! Why the fuck would she come here!? Rossana’s right hand met a male hand that was not mine. The male hand made its way delicately, up her arm to her shoulder, then to the neck, and dived all along her back to her ass. That ass I had caressed, kissed, and adored just a couple of months back.

I was there just drinking my pain away. But I never had the balls to get up and talk to her. The beer cans became all kinds of weird words and symbols. The couple, Rossana and the guy of the hand, left. I paid and followed them.

They were touching each other as they walked. The motherfucker would not keep his hands to himself. But he didn’t know her, he didn’t know where she liked to be touched. I knew.

I watched the paint peeling off the walls, the roof, my skin started peeling off my body. Waves of cockroaches started invading the house, slowly first, massively later. I got used to share everything with them. Yeah I was not alone...

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Latex

And after a devil-sized drinking reunion, just in the middle of Downtown Vancouver, I saw them again. A reunion that, according to me was not going to happen, because of my weakness and lack of sleep. It was a Friday after school. All week long I had been surviving with the help of coffee and in a constant state of zombiefication which I still don’t understand. I really didn’t have great amounts of work, there was simply something inside me that made my movements weak and clumsy, and my walking slow and confused. There were moments in which I simply stayed lost in a white, blue, green, or black limb of my laptop’s screen.

Ok, after that devil-sized drinking reunion just in the middle of Downtown Vancouver, I saw them again. And I say devil-sized because it really was. In fact, every drinking reunion in Vancouver on Friday is, irremediably, devil-sized. If the responsibilities end at 4 p.m. or earlier, at that time we are in the most-voted bar asking for the first pitcher. That night we started a bit before 4 p.m. in one of the cheapest bars of the area. There were all kinds of chats. That we’re so fucked; That we all need to sleep; That we should go to Vancouver Island next weekend; That there are some motherfucker friends with black vibes; That I am a socialist and that if I inspired my look in Che Guevara. They’re writers but oh, they sure talk.

Well, after that devil-sized drinking reunion in the middle of Downtown Vancouver I saw them again. I’ve already seen them a few weeks ago. It was Saturday or Sunday, there’s no other way. But in a Saturday or Sunday I realized that Vancouver was a city of condoms. Just like that. There were condoms everywhere. There was a pink one stuck on a fence by the Waterfront; There was a yellow one thrown on the street on the way to a pizza place that sells 2 slices and a coke for $3.50. There were many others thrown all around in Gastown, transparent, rotten, fresh. They were everywhere, like Saba in Y Tu Mamá También. But there was one that got my attention. It was in Melville St. It was a condom in an intense yellow color that looked as if it was just dumped on the sidewalk, with the ring bending towards the street, dripping semen. The semen strained by a small crack in the pavement. For me, it was like an image taken from The Wall.

Then, after that devil-sized drinking reunion in the middle of Downtown Vancouver I saw them again. There they revealed before me, in a road parallel to mine. Everybody walking around Downtown, stepping on them, kicking them, dragging them along, and suppressing them. They were there, but they didn’t move. People moved them. They didn’t let them establish their condomistic colony. Among those streets under construction, the condoms were victims of uncountable abuses.

But, when turning left on Melville, I had no choice but to stop and admire. From a crack in the pavement, close to the sidewalk, came a thin green stem that ended in a strange flower. On top of the flower was, clean, with no bothers, a condom in an intense yellow color.

Weekends (Or Cheap Plagiarism Of A Spanish Song)

Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays,
At night, always at night,
That precious, neon light,
I try and try, and always fail.

In I go, out I’m not, rush,
It’s not a drug, it’s another kind,
It may be fate, may be my mind,
Out no more, I now just hush.

I’d love to say I’m sober,
It might not be the right word,
Or it might be, well it might not,
I’m here now, please don’t bother.

In trying, oh! In trying,
Great moments I’ve wasted,
If I could just not regret it,
Peace I might be finding.

So bring out the show,
Flesh and sweat and lights and magic,
No remorse nor guilt nor logic,
There’s no point in feeling low.
___________________________________

20-line(¿?) poem for Style class at VFS.

I Don´t Regret Yesterday

I´ve heard that the night is pure magic, and that a goblin invites you to a dreamworld.

A creature beyond good and evil. Maybe it´s the spirit of the great loners. The spirit of the Allan Poes, the Van Goghs, the Sabatos, the Travis Bickles... It´s an entity I haven´t met nor seen yet. But it´s there. I can sense it. I know it is by my side when I fall asleep. I know he runs away from those beasts of cement, glass, and metal that stand out there, and comes to seek shelter by my side. Those beasts that watch every single step you take inside their territory. Those beasts that transform you. You stop contemplating, and start being contemplated. They are jealous and they are spiteful. And they are magnificent and they are terrible. Maybe the goblin feeds from them. Little by little. Just like a parasite, he goes deep inside the guts of each beast and starts eating their insides.

Yes. The goblin does not run from them. It uses them.

The goblin, a noble loner, gives me company when the dusk starts its round. It leaves me alone, wandering, rambling, and fighting throughout the day. And then, when night falls, it is all magic. And the goblin really invites me to dream.

And the next day the wanderings, the ramblings, and the fighting come back. Again, you are being observed by the beasts of cement, glass, and metal. You give them the chance to feel they rule everything. You realize, in that moment, that someone´s on your side.

And internally, you start smiling. And the green lights are all on. And the best jam for that specific moment of your day, starts playing. And the goblin, alone, works in your favor. And you´ve got the memory of last night´s dreams as undeniable evidence.

And you feel so strong that you think nothing can touch you.

_______________________________________________________________

Actual date of composition: Thursdat April 30 2009
10:50PM

Arrival, Acceptance, Income

A strange landscape filled my visual field. A mixing of rivers, piles of earth, mountains with snowed tops and the Pacific extending towards Japan, Alaska, and a whole lot of other exotic places. Afterwards, the panoramic view ended to open the way to a pack of trees and pines approaching ferociously to the left in first plane. Some shy houses showed themselves too. But the velocity was constant. Stomping.

Immigration. I have no way to prove that I can sustain myself in Canada for a year. They warned me about it during the process. I knew that was one of the things the Canadian government worried about the most. Letter of Acceptance, Proof of Income. How difficult was it to remember both things? For an asshole who had already seen himself filmmaking in Canada, trying to figure out if Halle Berry would take him to bed even if she was drunk, who saw himself building something in another country… A lot.

Like something made on purpose, the line was relatively short. The thing I wanted the most at the moment was time to think what the fuck I could say if they asked me for my proof of income. There was no such a thing. Yes, it existed. But I had too much time. Enough time to reach several possible answers; getting to believe that none of them would work; imagining myself returning to Monterrey with the word SHAME written all over my face and telling my family and friends: “I’ll be leaving ‘til June… they sent me back”, and so later getting drunk; finding myself suddenly beating the shit out of the fucking korean guy with shit-stinking breath that was just behind my back; seeing myself just like that inside a VFS classroom with a bunch of three-year-younger-than-me guys, at least, beating my ass off and me screaming back at them: “We’ll see each other faces in a Mexican studying program, bunch of fucking pussies!”

Proof of income. It came back with immeasurable force. With a force coming from the big claustrophobic room with a line that now seemed eternal to me. Since I got to the line until now, I had walked just a few human spaces, at the most. I’ll be in this line of semi-open-eyed guys for at least another hour and a half. And I have nothing against them, but the fucking korean guy behind me was not the best introduction to oriental people. Proof of income. My fingers started wetting the blessed Letter of Acceptance which I did bring. Fucking shit.

Minutes. Hour and a half. Proof of income. Two hours. Two hours and a half. “Next please”. Oh fuck. Which were the posible answers?! Shit, I wish I could go back with the fucking korean guy with flatulence-stinking breath! “So, why Canada?”,asked the Asian-African-French-weird man who was like an Alfonso Zayas region one. “Well, why not… right?” Stupid. Stupid. Fuck. “Mmm, what are you studying?, replied Alfonso-Pierre-Zayas-Lee-Murphy. “Writing for Film and TV at VFS.” “What is VFS.” Shit. “Anyway, do you have your L-E-T-T-E-R—O-F—A-C-C-E-P-T-A-N-C-E-!-!” Slowly, without taking off my steady look from the unclassifiable guy in front of me, I took out the Letter of Acceptance. “There ya go…” “It’s OK, just wanted to make sure you had it…”

STOMP.
STOMP.
STOMP.

“Welcome to Canada, Mr. Méndez, hope you enjoy Vancouver.”

Outside that place of hell, a great fucking day was receiving me. A taxi driver who was angry with the whole world took me to my apartment. The more I entered the city, the more I realized that everything had been worth it. About the shopping, I better not talk. Tomorrow I’ll give this city the chance to amend. Shit. “Welcome to Canada, Mr. Méndez…” I even believe it, no shit.

___________________________________________________

Actual date of composition: Wednesday April 22 2009
11:30PM

Intermission

And after the burning sun, the mountains, the cabrito, the INDIO beers, the Camel Natural Flavor, the sewer smell, the many homonym cities, the street entrepreneurs, the circus people from the road junctions, the third-world north side and the elitist south side, the roasted corn smell, the double morality, and the streets named after supposed heroes and clowns of our history…

After the bajo sexto guitar, the accordion, the long-living and unlikely bohemian cantinas, the women that entice but don´t act, the women that act but don´t entice, the women that are not women, the hostile and hard accent, the foreigner´s hate, the non-walkable city, the churches every three blocks, the fuckers, the yuppies, the punks, the misfits, the arid landscape, the assassinations, the rain-caused traffic accidents, the micro homes for large families and the macro homes for pretentious couples…

After many days, weeks, and a couple of months, nesting the trip, the experience, the challenge of exile. Now here I am, halfway through the journey, in a place neither pure anglo-saxon nor Spanish-speaking… Missing the burning sun, the street entrepreneurs, the INDIO beers, the arid landscape, the streets named after the heroes and clowns, the double moral, the Camel Natural Flavor, the foreigner´s hate… … …

The Bodies

Yeshua bar Yosef
Maria
Yose
Mariamne e Mara
Yehuda bar Yeshua

5 names that sound strongly and cause sensations in the believers and not believers. One tomb that was discovered while making the foundation for an apartment building. A material foundation that makes the spiritual foundation tremble.

Jesus son of Joseph
Mary
Joseph (Yose was a tender diminutive for the Yosef’s)
Mary (in Greek) Master
Judas son of Jesus

5 ossuaries, among others, discovered in a family tomb in Jerusalem in 1980. The tomb dates from the 1st century. The Christians say that the names are very common for the Hebrew people. The scientists and historians say that they are, in fact, common, but what’s not common is the combination of all those names in one same family tomb.

It can be possible. It can also not be. It can end with the faith of many. It also may make it stronger. The documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” is important because it’s not for fanatics nor skeptics, it’s for everyone; it’s urgent because we live in a generation in which we have to fight in order to find things that take out the rests of the amazement capacity that we might have; it’s interesting because the testimonies that come from everywhere feel solid and valid.

Of Mariamne e Mara, I rather not say anything. Dan Brown and Hollywood already took care of her vulgar humiliation.

As of me, I’ve always preferred the feet-on-the-ground Jesus. I get along better with Willem Dafoe in “The Last Temptation of Christ” than with “the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” The bible is too suspicious (which makes it no less interesting) and messed up by ecclesiastic authorities, as to be considered word of the Lord and even less, the irrevocable proof of the historic Jesus.

Anyway, I’ve already configured my “Personal Jesus”.

Y Al Final...

No sé que más platicarte cabrón. Ya recordamos todo... ya reímos juntos... espero que te hayas reído. ¿Qué más da de qué platiquemos? ¿Es que acaso necesitamos platicar? Cuántos silencios pasamos juntos, ¿te acuerdas? Horas y horas frente a la tv apagada; frente a las manoseadas fotos que habíamos visto unos minutos antes; acostados, solamente mirando el techo. O mirándonos. Pero el silencio. Qué raro, ¿no? Yo avisé a toda tu familia de este suceso. Avisé a toda mi familia. Y no vino nadie. Bueno, la verdad es que escoger el miércoles no fue buena idea. Pero pues ya... ya se hizo y ahora simplemente a vivirlo. Porque lo estás viviendo, ¿verdad? Lo estás sintiendo. Sí. Seguramente lo sientes. Te ves hermoso, eh. Simplemente eres perfecto. ¿Te acuerdas de la vez que mis sobrinas se peleaban porque cada una pensaba que su respectivo novio era más guapo que el de la otra? ¿Te acuerdas? Y que les dije ya no se peleen cabronas... el más chulo es poncho. ¿Te acuerdas de sus caras? Qué curioso. Y eso que eran las... ¿cómo les llaman? A esas personas, ´mbre... esas personas que les vale madre... que aceptan más cosas... open mainds... ¿verdad? Sí, así les llaman. Se suponía que para el año 2000 iban a haber naves que volaban en vez de carros, y robotinas, y cosas de esas... ¿te acuerdas de los supersónicos? Andaban muy mal. Si hoy por hoy, 2009, no existe ni siquiera la tolerancia... qué chingaos iban a existir naves y robotinas. Pero ¿para qué queremos robotinas, no? ¿A poco no te acuerdas de cuando trapeabas? y que sigilosamente yo esperaba a que terminaras las escaleras para subir corriendo por ellas echando a perder todo tu esfuerzo. Lo hacía porque sabía que te encabronaba realmente. Y sabía que unos simples gritos no bastaban. Me tenías que perseguir y enfrentarme. Tener contacto. Me tocabas. Y luego se te quitaba lo enojado. Me abrazabas. Y ese rojo en tu cara. Ese rojo coraje se convertía súbitamente en rojo sexo. ¿Te acuerdas? Qué cosas, ¿no? El contacto. Putamadre. Lo que lograba el tacto. El sentirnos.

¿Y ahora?

Tu gris no puede cambiar. Es gris y ya.

¡Maldito cristal que nos separa!

Quítenlo.

Necesito tocarlo.

Puedo cambiarle el gris. Sé que puedo cambiarle el gris.

¡Quítenlo!

____________

"Y al final,
te ataré con todas mis fuerzas,
mis brazos serán cuerdas
al bailar éste vals..."

- Enrique Bunbury

____________

Dedicado a:

MAMUTH
q.e.p.d.

y

ELÍAS

El No-Sedentarismo (O El Nomadismo Introspectivo)

Hace unos días me topé con un karnal que hace mucho no veía. Quizás fue más la determinación por no llegar a tocar llagas que podían arder, lo que me hizo hablar con él de nimiedades absurdas (acaso hay de otro tipo?). Hablamos del destino, de los planes a futuro, de nuestro presente y nuestro sentir con él. Ensimismados (porque la Providencia sabe que somos capaces de ensimismarnos con cualquier cosa) en estupideces de estas nos tocó decirnos adiós de nuevo.

Si la muerte de un adiós la marca un "Qué pedo, vato?", entonces ambos sabemos que este adiós nació con la longevidad de su lado.

De lo poco rescatable que existió en ese momento -fugaz para nosotros, pero considerable para Cronos- estuvo el saber que mi compadre había decidido lo que muchos hemos querido pero no nos aventamos: ser nómada. Así de sencillo. El "glorioso" día de su graduación iba a agarrar su título, cariñosamente (porque a muchos nos consta el desmadre que fue el poder tener ese papelillo entre las manos) lo iba a enrollar, se dirigiría a su señor padre y se lo ensartaría en el culo. Acto seguido emprendería un sendero que ni él mismo sabría a dónde lo llevaría. Quizás lo haría entonando con voz queda pero inevitablemente audible "Flor de Loto", ó "En Brazos de la Fiebre" o quizás, sólo quizás: "Like a Rolling Stone" (Nunca "Las Piedras Rodantes").

Era la decisión del "no-monterrey", pero también englobaba el "no-ningún lado". No era un berrinche hacia su ciudad. Era un berrinche hacia la estática, hacia el mantenerse inmóvil. Iba a tomar esos conocimientos que aquel papelillo ahora embarrado de mierda paterna decía que tenía y los iba a aplicar no en el basurero de los corporativos, sino en la quietud y pulcredad de los pueblitos. Y yo que a mi compadre siempre le había visto más inclinado hacia la pasividad de una foto, o de un óleo. Simplemente sonreí. (El hijo de puta se atrevía... realmente se atrevía)

Pero "pasividad"... realmente me causa náuseas el hecho de pensar que la "pasividad" es inherente a una foto o un óleo. ¿Quién carajos lo dice? y que poco ojo y cerebro (más el cerebro) para decirlo. Existe la pasividad en la foto como lo puede existir en el cine. Así como también existe el sedentarismo en los viajes como lo existe en la oficina de cualquier pseudo-político.

Pero mi karnal, el hijo de puta iba hacia el nomadismo, el movimiento, la no-pasividad, la vida. Y yo con mi estúpida sonrisa.

PD: Compadre, al escribir esto sigo con esa sonrisa interna. Mis labios no se mueven, de hecho están algo entumidos por la falta de uso (que novedad). Digamos que es el frío.

Pero karnal, esa sonrisa existe porque nunca has dejado de nomadear. Y de hecho, nunca nos permitiste que dejáramos de nomadear contigo.