‘tis better

‘tis better to have written and lost, than never to have written at all.

http://www.themostdangerouswritingapp.com

Duff Comfortably Numb

 

Moe’s bar. Interior.

KRUSTY (Cries)

What kind of poison do you serve to a guy whose daughter hates his guts?

MOE

Try a Duff Numb. No flavor, just alcohol.

If

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

‘Just right’

Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along. –Napoleon Hill

Un post por tuit

y un dos tres por mí y todos mis compañeros opinólogos de la tuitósfera.

Es decir.

Escribir un post detrás de cada tuit que publiquemos con la finalidad de echar más basura a la mierda cibernética de información en la que nos sumergimos, regodeándonos del ego.

Por ejemplo:

Después de ver el primer episodio de Black Mirror me dio la sensación de  vivir en la generación de los publicistas, en la que el guión funciona a base de una gran idea que se debe explotar o vender, donde los personajes y la historia caen como la materia y la luz en un hoyo negro, sin escapatoria, perdiendo forma y dimensión, sin contexto real, a merced del plotting device.

Alguien me dijo que eso se llama deux ex machina. Que es la firma de un escritor perezoso, eso de crear personajes no creíbles en sí y fuera de sí para hacer funcionar la trama o la venta o lo que sea.

PD. Post patrocinado por los productores de The Scary Door de Futurama.

 

El señor de la trompeta

Normalmente me molesta el señor de la trompeta que lleva años pasando por la calle donde vivo en la Nápoles, pero hoy no, porque todo lo que parece que viene hacia ti, en realidad sale de ti. Hoy fue distinta mi percepción. Tal vez porque esta vez tocó melodías navideñas (Jingle Bells y Los Peces en el Río), pero fue Jingle Bells que transformó mi percepción y lo que en un principio fue horror de ruido -no es un trompetista de concurso- me incursionó en la rola y sus múltiples usos en soundtracks, escenas de películas y productos de consumo. Me llevó de la mano por el caminito de la imaginación de lo que podría ser la vida del señor de la trompeta, pensando en que tiene que aprenderse las nuevas canciones que se cantan en inglés –qué es eso? WTF?– para tocar en esta época, dejando a un lado las clásicas rancheras. Limpiando y puliendo su trompeta que toca tan imperfectamente junto con un tamborcito. Entonces, que agarra, que llega y que toca la trompeta con la mano derecha y el tamborcito con la izquierda haciéndole la segunda, convirtiéndose en ambidiestro sacando su imperfecta música de temporada, recordándome 1. La Oración de la Rana y el Canto del Grillo, 2. El ruido que tanto le molestaba a Goethe -o lo que podría ser ruido en la Alemania del siglo 18- 4. La imperfección, que tanto me gusta. Ver al señor de la trompeta tratando de aprender nuevas melodías, pero solo dos y no más, porque es tocador itinerante de las calles de las colonias y lo que una casa oye, no lo oye la de 500 metros allá, o verlo guardar su trompeta cuando llega a su cuarto en su casa en el sur de la ciudad –vivirá en el sur de la ciudad?– y su esposa con su pequeña hija que lo acompañan durante sus paseos musicales –sí es su esposa? Es su hija? O serán hermanos? Será su ahijada? Qué serán?– , y yo, la ñora vecina del tercer piso abriendo la ventana y gritando “oyeeeee, oyeeeee” y el wey volteando la cabeza buscando mi voz –dónde? dónde?– quitándose la gorra para ver mejor hacia arriba, y yo soltando un par de billetitos a la hora que el wey me localiza viéndome entre las persianas verticales, “a ver si no se vuelan!”, y ahí van los billetitos cayendo lentamente como no lo hicieron las pruebas de las piedras de diferentes tamaños que tiró Galileo desde la Torre de Pisa para argumentar que todos los cuerpos caen a la misma velocidad o aceleración, independientemente de su peso, siendo la fricción del aire lo que los frena. Así que no haré bolita los billetes para vuelen como vuela la pluma blanca en la introducción de Forrest Gump, pero no tanto, para que esto no sea una película, sino tan solo unos minutos de un par de melodías navideñas en trompeta y tamborcito –Gracias!- De nada!-.

Her 8-sided mirror

She fucking pisses me off.

The neighbor fucking pisses me off.

Her 8-sided octagonal mirror really fucking pisses me off, you know, the one that’s hanging there in her dining room with her brand new fake-vintage-style chairs, and her dresser slash display case with its glass doors and mirrored back, which she’s stuffed full to bursting with that cute brass star which she must have bought down at the San Angel Saturday market way back when all those supposedly handmade arts and crafts from Tlaquepaque were still in vogue back in 1998, right next to the designer mini-speakers connected to her Mac which she’s always sitting in front of, her back turned to me, fixating on her smartphone while the glowing screen of her Mac lights her up but also illuminates those impossibly psychedelic colors of her African marigolds, those weird flowers they call flor de muertos, “flower of the dead”, in Mexico, with that bizarre Aztec name, cempazúchitl, and the way it’s lighting up her face, she looks a little like a corpse herself, a sexy corpse, but the truth is, it’s not her Mac screen that makes her look so bright, but the energy-efficient earth-friendly hundred million watt lightbulb in her ergonomically-designed lamp that helps me be a Peeping Tom – just like Leon-O of the Thundercats – who can see across great distances with his ‘Sight beyond Sight’ – so I can stare at her when she’s wearing her flesh-colored mini thong (is it there? or isn’t it?) coming out of her bathroom and going into her bedroom, her back turned just like Jennifer Aniston in that film with Vince Vaughan and then she slowly turns around, 45 degrees, just so she can stop and stare at herself in the mirror built into her door, with me all the while staring at her from my kitchen as she’s staring at herself while she puts on her all-black outfit, and she’s gotta be thinking, “girl, you are sooo hot,” and me going, “she’s gotta be some kind of high-class call girl?”, that’s sure as hell what I’m thinking, the kind of logical conclusion which occurs to people who fucking hate octagonal mirrors and designer speakers which every morning, come rain or shine, are blasting out jazz and/or some more contemporary tunes which actually sound like music as they leak into my ears, and all the way inside my nocturnal owl mind, still half-asleep at 10 in the morning, so, yeah, I gotta admit, maybe the problem isn’t the neighbor, maybe it’s me, cause how fucking many times have I come out of my bathroom going to my bedroom to put on the exact same clothes as she’s wearing? How many times have I put on the music and how many neighbors think the exact same things about me that I’m thinking about her, how much she fucking pisses me off, but maybe I’m the one that’s pissing everyone off, needing, sure as shit, to fucking piss off someone, which is really just another way, isn’t it, of needing to…flow. To just let it all go. Even though I figure that to have a house, or a place you call home, that’s something that takes years to put together, putting a table here, hanging a painting there, something you pick up over time, from some people who come, or others who stay behind, it doesn’t all happen in one day after making that big move, the one where everything gets written down in a list, each thing in its own place, starting with that kitchy brass ‘handmade’ star from Tlaquepaque that’s been oh-so-carefully positioned in a place of honor over the display case slash dresser with those little glass doors that ever seem to protect anything important, and its fake wood-grain surface that’s really nothing but machine-stamped cardboard, and finally, and always, her goddamn built-in octagonal mirror, the one she’s always staring into like the narcissist she is, the one where I can see my own reflection right now, staring back at me with that Mona Lisa smile, my own face telling me who-do-you-think-you’re-fucking-kidding, who-do-you-think-you’re-looking-at-anyway?

The neighbor.

But…

I’m the neighbor, too.

originally published on September 4, 2016
original text “Su espejo octagonal” by Adriana Degetau
collaborative translation by Miguel Tejada-Flores