suspiro










casi nunca suspiro








¿se da cuenta cómo casi nadie suspira en público? Suspirar es dar muestra de todas nuestras debilidades, es aún más delator que llorar.

Sé que es un compromiso largo, 20 minutos, pero le pido que escuche usted a este señor hablar sobre como la escuela mata la creatividad, es genial, en especial para todos aquellos que tienen problemas con los sistemas escolares.

Si lo prefiere, puede ir a este sitio y escuchar la plática con subtítulos en el idioma que se le antoje.

Lea usted este post fabuloso de Daniel Salinas:


Los reyes magos me trajeron una Kalashnikov.

Y también, si le da por la frivolidad pásele a la Vanity Fair para que vea por qué adoro a A. A. Gill:

"The rut, the great month of agony and ecstasy for the deer, has just begun this morning. It was a full moon last night and the stags won’t eat again till the rut is finished. Then they’ll face the winter with a fraction of their body weight, exhausted and heavy-browed, and with very few of them sated. I’m watching a curtain of rain blow across the loch. It hits your face like gravel thrown by a drunk who’s lost his keys. This is as happy as I ever expect to be."

I must practice my english, por eso escribo así ahora, disculpe usted, es cosa de responsabilidad y de aprender más que de otra cosa.

I had a special outfit that I wore every time I went to the downtown cantinas, its closest relative would be a sack of potatoes, it was a pure wool chuj that I bought from an indian in Chiapas, I still have it in my closet,  it was the safest thing to wear because no one, not even by mistake would want to dance with a woman wearing such a grey harsh outfit, I never wore makeup, had frankenstein shoes and everybody respected me, we all did the same. No woman in our group would dare wear a skirt or a sleeveless blouse if she didn't want to run the risk of being mistaken as a prostitute. But today things are different, the gringos are long gone and  Tijuana people stopped going to the trendy and hip bars in an effort to avoid the mangueras, the poser narcotraficantes, the expensive drinks.  Downtown was taken by surprise a year ago by the local hipsters, Nortec provoked the invasion romanticizing Dandy del sur, and now the whole street is filled with half assed bars, even a darkie café and a club that would be built by the nazis if they ever wanted to have a bar in a concentration camp.

The street now reeks of cute miniskirts and strapless dresses, shorts and trendy boots, kids who get together to flat iron their hair and have perfectly groomed beards, bars that serve tomato pulque and mocha mezcal, even a little darkie coffee shop that has a cine club and probably serves dark chocolate dipped in blood. Melissa and I dress old school, converse, t-shirt, a big jacket, we go inside every little door, we inspect every smelly corner and only have a beer or two, after all, we are doing research, and in almost every bar a student says hello: "Lore", "Profe", "feliz año nuevo". I feel oh so old when I discover 17 year old Checo in the same bar that I'm at. I can only be thankful because at least none of them called me "miss" tonight.

She was 14, I was almost 20 when we met. She moved to Europe, but we never stopped being friends, every time we meet it's like we just saw each other the day before, only now we can see the years in our eyes. We have the most intense conversations, we sit on the sand at the beach, we talk. We have shared cigarettes, beer, but we are being very health conscious lately.

She lived in Amsterdam, then Berlin, then Barcelona, she was in Veracruz for a while, then Mexico City until last month when she came back, but then I was gone and we just met today. She always does the same thing; she calls like if it was nothing, like if she had forgotten a sweater  in my house this morning when we had coffee but in reality we hadn't seen in two years.

Today she said:

--Cásate conmigo y nos vamos juntas a cualquier otro lado.

I thought about it for a moment, how easy would things be if we were lesbians. I laughed.

She told me about the Dutch man and the Russian, the fact that she doesn't like spanish men, I mostly told her about our friends that have been killed, the politics of binational waters, the closing of the shop, my separation.

There are a few persons who will always be our best friends, I've been so lucky, I have been surrounded by amazing people throughout my life, I won't name names. You know who you are.

Vamos que volamos pa guerra civil seguida de golpe militar...

¿No le parece a usted?

Estabamos en un restaurante chino en Mexicali, comíamos pato y camarones, al lado de nosotras había una mesa larga donde una mujer de puffy hair celebraba el fin de año con agujas de pino entre el peinado. Cynthia se levantó al baño, cuando lo hizo sentí la mirada de un hombre sobre mí, levante los ojos hacia los suyos, era un señor gordito, grandote, de ojos duros. Usualmente cuando sorprendo a alguien mirándome, la reacción inmediata es bajar los ojos, mirar a otro lado, hacerse bueyes (sepa usted que yo también puedo tener ojos de piedra), pero con este curioso señor no funcionó la cosa, continué dando cuenta del pato (o de las galletas de almendra, no recuerdo muy bien) y sentí nuevamente la mirada del hombre encima de mí, alzé la vista de nuevo, ya sin bajarla, levanté las cejas como preguntando algo y luego le sonreí, al tipo no le quedó otro remedio que hacer lo mismo.

Al volver Cynthia le conté la historia, yo no entendía el comportamiento del hombre hasta que ella me dijo:

--He must think we're lesbians.

Solté la risa, pues si: llenas de tierra del desierto, despeinadas, sin maquillar, una gringa y una mexicana cenando, hablando, sonriendo. Éramos la única mesa sin hombre en todo el restaurante.

El temblor en Mexicali, grabado por Cynthia.



Le aviso que  el 22  se inaugura una exhibición de videos de Doña Cynthia Hooper en el Center for Land use Iterpretation (CLUI), así es, podrá usted ver los videos de las bellas formas en las aguas negras de Punta Bandera, los campos quemados del Valle Imperial, las tormentas de arena en el All American Canal, las casas connstruidas con puertas de garage y más. La dirección es la que sigue:


9331 Venice Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232

El CLUI  está al ladito de ese lugar mamonsísimo donde explotan los hipsters L.A.eños, el Museum of Jurassic Technnology, que todo mundo recomienda, pero ¿qué le puedo decir? lo mejor para mí fue ver el retrato de Laika, la escalera y el baño, que también era muy lindo, y útil, por cierto.

Somehow it has become normal: los muertos son el mismo, sólo cambia el método, el calibre.

El ahorcado, el balaceado, el encobijado, el pozoleado, el colgado, el decapitado, el torturado, el acribillado, el descuartizado, el calcinado, el secuestrado, el enteipado, el levantado. Deberíamos tener nuestra propia lotería.

Podría llamarme Lorena Manecilla.

Una película me hizo descubrir que me gustan las caras de bestia.





Me pregunto si la suerte tiene una balanza, si lo bueno se pesa en kilo o en libra. Ni hablar de karmas y cosas intangibles.  Y lo malo siempre pesa más, a nadie le gusta cargarlo.



No puedo alegar pesimismo estos días, sería una desgraciada.

Un día le contaré las cosas que me traen esperanzada, agradecida, contentilla, con sonrisas escondidas entre la ridiculez de mis cuasi middle age brackets. No es que a usted le importe, pero ya me conoce.

¿A qué hora entro hoy a trabajar?

sepa.

Lo que sé es que hoy considero afortunados a los enfermos, los obesos, los que pueden quedarse todo el día en la cama sin culpa.

My shoulders hurt even though I didn't do any of the driving, even though I had soft beds every night and didn't have to wake up to the face of an ugly boxer in the morning. Yes, I dislike unknown dogs and they usually dislike me, could be a territorial thing, I don't know.

I am way too fronteriza to leave this place, but I am just so tired of everything.

And we saw the Salton Sea (again) and went to the end of the Welton-Moahak Canal (all the way to the delta of the Colorado River), and discovered the wetlands filled with ducks in between the desert dunes, and sometimes we got so lost that we had to stop at a sticky internet café in the middle of nowhere just to check google earth because the places that we were looking for weren't even in maps.

We experienced a 5.8 earthquake in the middle of a cotton field.

We had way too much night.

And good food, and even a good mojito.

I didn't care if my clothes were dirty, dusty, if my hair was all over the place. I didn't wear any make up most of the time.

I missed my daughter.

Es lo único, en todo el mundo, que extraño últimamente.

Untrue, I also miss my students, even the little fresita girls and the manguera boys, and the geeks that have suddenly become such good readers and even writers.

And I can not believe I have to go back to school again tomorrow, for office work and pointless meetings and bad coffee, when all I want is a hot shower and to forget the horrors of the LA-Tijuana bus...

And finish the last chapter of that book that I stole from ________ that morning after the party. I plan on leaving it on the book shelve again one of these days, I will go to the upstairs bathroom and leave it in an odd place, so ________ thinks there's a duende in the house.

...

There is a sense of intimacy when you read something that you were a part of, when you read in spanish ink a phrase that was said to you once, when you were a little younger and he was a little less famous, and you know the characters and you recognize his voice in the text. It's a weird sense of pride.

But you hate to admit that he was a much better writer then.

Although, he is still the master of the frases geniales... what a way to finish a sentence, which reminds me: there are things I will never do right

Me hacía mucha falta estar en casa.