Foreigners that have spent New Year's Eve with Spaniards can't understand the fuss about the grapes.

Imagine this. Every TV channel has a alive show from the nearest Main Square. National channels do it from Madrid's Puerta del Sol (and there are webcams, too). Most people watch the clocks in those squares at midnight on TV, but many go to the squares instead, of course.

So far so normal. but then there´s the grapes. We have each a bowl with twelve grapes. They must be counted, you don´t take just a bunch. having more or less than 12 brings bad luck. And at each stroke of the bells at midnight, you eat (or swallow, or try to) one grape. Glulp glulp glulp. (No, that´s not a typo). It is as messy as you think; and then, with the grape juice still trickling down hands and chins, everyone hugs everyone!

Oh, and we normally have dinner and do that with our families, and only then we go out to parties with friends. Being back home before 5 (or 9) in the morning feels like a quiet, early night. That means that with the six-hours time difference, my American friends and me will be going to bed more or les at the same time.

Whatever weird superstitions you follow, have a great night, everyone.

A recent Gaping Void entry quotes John Donne. John Donne.

Hugh McLeod (GapingVoid 's creator) has a good theory on How to be Creative and I'm creating my own theory on exactly the same topic, which is very different from Hugh's but compatible with it. Since I'm so interested in the effect of influences in creativity, I love to find Hugh quoting one of my favourite poets.

I was googling for information on Idir (excellent, beautiful, Algerian music that's excellent for belly dancing) and I found this little one:

"There is no higher form of belonging to a culture than to compose in its language"
Heinrich Böll.

Do I belong to an English-speaking culture? Maybe. A few days ago I told a friend what I write in each language. English is for most of the haikus, for the very bad prose (that I write as a way of avoiding that "oh my God I haven't written anything in ages, I must be going through a block" panic), and for approximately half the prose.

Spanish? Spanish is the motor of about 20% of the haikus, all the free verse, and about half the good prose. So, it´s all very mixed; it has been like that since I started and it will probably stay like that for a long time.

I have a handful of ideas to write about, but I feel as if I was on that day before you know for sure that you have the flu: something is there but it doesn't want to come out.

1. a haiku about flying over olive tree groves. The familiarity of landscapes from a plane.

2. a haiku about winter that is very sunny, very cold, very green. The coldest makes the light brighter.

3. A poem (is this idea too big for a haiku?) or even a short story: do we want to stay friends after having broken up without hard feelings?

This last idea intimidates me because I haven´t written half-decent prose since June, and I haven´t written decent prose with a plot in a year or a bit more. In my experience, even having a complete plot from beginning to end doesn't mean I can write the story. Patience, patience, it will come back, it has to come back. In the meantime, I might read anything by Jeanette Winterson to remind myself of something important.

I can change the story.
I am the story.

I have just found out that Amazon.com gave 60% of their donations last year (donations meant to be for charities and the like, I guess) to the Republican party. That means that I will probably delete (if that's possible) my Amazon wish list. I don't normally buy Amazon because I prefer "real" bookshops.

My reason to boycott Amazon is not that I am antiRepublican (I am, but that's another story) but that I don't like the idea of private funding oif political parties. Businesses shouldn't be giving money to political parties! it's not a question of "here we do things differently". How do we make sure that a government is not going to create policies that benefit their contributors? tell you how: we don't. In Europe that's called corruption.

By now all I will do is just mention it here so that readers can decide if they will continue buying Amazon or not.

In Spain, there is an association called the "Real Academia Española", The "Spanish Royal Academy", which publishes the most prestigious dictionary in the country (sorry, María Moliner). The Academy's opinions are prestigous but not official; that is, contrary to what happens in France with the Academie, the Spanish Academia does not rule about what is "real" Spanish and what isn´t.

Well, the dictionary gives this as the first and sixth definitions in its long entry on poesía, "poetry":

1. Manifestación de la belleza o del sentimiento estético por medio de la palabra, en verso o en prosa.
6. Idealidad, lirismo, cualidad que suscita un sentimiento hondo de belleza, manifiesta o no por medio del lenguaje.

Expression of beauty or of aesthetic feeling through words, in prose or verse.
Idealization, lirical quality, that which provokes a deep feeling of beauty, expressed or not in language

This is nonsense, because it is incomplete. Well, it is a dictionary, not an enciclopedia or a literary manual, but still. The problem is that it does not make sufficiently clear that "beauty" is a quality of the work, not necessarily a quality of the people, objects, or events poetry describes. Let's see. Can we write poetry of the ugly? of course we can. The beginning of the Iliad deals with a man getting very angry with another because on the course of a war, they are fighting about which one gets to keep an enslaved priestess. That is not a pretty topic! If we like the Iliad it is because it shows beautiful language and because it makes familiar things unfamiliar.

Another example. Shakespeare. Richard III. What is there of beauty is a hunchback, a man considered ugly by all other characters, telling the audience how he plans to kill all his relatives becuase the have a better claim to the throne that he has? The words he uses, those original, beautiful-sounding words.

The problem is of course when the poet is not good enough or the circumstances are so close to us that the familiar cannot be made unfamiliar. I don't think Turks or Africans or the children of victims of gender violence would appreciate Othello. But that doesn´t mean that a jealous husband killing his wife is unfit for poetry.

I think that while I´m on holidays I´ll write less than usual for the simple reason that I´m at home, in Spain, and that everything is familiar, so I can´t write about "reverse culture shock", that is, culture shock that our own culture causes us when we come back after a long absence.

But for the last week, the only thing that has surprised me because I had forgotten about it is that most Spaniards and most of my friends are chainsmokers. Bleh.

Something that I missed and that I'm glad to see again is that everyone drinks alcohol, especially with meals. I have lived in two places where people don´t understand that alcohol is no big deal and that it is okay to drink a glass or two everyday/most days rather than all or nothing. In Scotland, the first of those two places, I disliked that people couldn´t drink without getting drunk; in Ithaca, I dislike that alcohol seems to be demonised and that it is not as easily available as I´d like it to be.

Apart from those two little details, meeting relatives and friends and sleeping ten hours a day in my own bed, there isn´t really a lot to tell, I think. I can always talk about poetry, though.

Initially I thought it was plain silly that at Cornell people don’t wish you a happy Christmas but a happy holiday or winter break because they wouldn’t want to assume that you’re Christian. I thought that it was a very silly way of understanding political correctness (bleh). Then when I saw the amounts of Asian (which aren’t often Christian, I guess) and Jewish students, among others, I changed my mind. It makes sense to wish people a happy holiday whatever it is they celebrate. It is more fun, in a way, to have all these different traditions eating nice food and visiting their relatives at the same time even if their reasons to do it are not the same.

So, you really have no excuse. Atheist? Go pagan and celebrate Winter Solstice.

I don´t carry much stuff around,
I value my portability.

That´s the beginning of a song by Ani di Franco. I don´t like too much this particular song but I remembered these two lines because they apply to me.

When I packed to go to Cornell four months ago, I decided not to take with me a book I read once and again and again. It´s Alan Spence's Seasons of the Heart, a collection of 150 in seasonal order (starts in spring and ends in the New Year). I have regretted that because it is a very small book and I missed it. So, now that I´m at home and it´s with me here´s a sample. One for each season.

First warmth of spring
I feel as if
I have been asleep.

Don´t dart away so quick
little lizard
I didn´t mean to scare you.

An apple rotting
just where it fell
the smell of autumn

The winter beach -
children building
snowcastles.

There were several things that I quickly noticed in the first stop of my home-for-the-holidays odyssey (Amsterdam airport)

-Even from the airplane I can see that cars have a sensible size. Meaning they are smallerr than those American monsters.
-Heineken beer ads everywhere.
-Toilets (which I never call restrooms and that are only bathroom if they are in a house, not in a public building) being labelled as LADIES rather than WOMEN. I am aware of the politicall incorrectness of using "Lady", I word I only use in jokes. As in, "I´d use a swearword but I was trying to make you believe I´m a lady". Still, toilets labelled as WOMEN still feel foreign, unfamiliar.

And the one thing that made me think "yes, I´m in Spain" was people smoking out of designated areas. I hate it, I hate it when people go "oh, yes, we´re back in Spain"..... "because in this country of ours...." when anything goes wrong. There is efficient and inefficient people everywhere. And the girl that complained of the bus making a bumpy route from the plane to the airport has never taken TCAT´s number 16, of that I´m sure.

I should have warned about this some days ago, but I guess that it´s stll ok. I won´t be able to send any jewelry orders before January 12th, because I´ve come home for the holidays and I don´t have the stuff with me.

Of course you can still go to the jewelry's website, you have thre weeks to make up your mind about which pairs you want to get then. Heh.

About six months ago, still in Spain, I told a friend that I needed three things to feel at home in a town. I need trees on the streets, a river that looks pretty and a café or somewhere similar that makes me feel like being a regular. All three can be found in the last three towns I have lived and neither was in the town where I grew up and that I hate to this day.

Ithaca has all three (the gorges count as rivers) but still doesn’t feel like it could ever be home. But then, Universities in the middle of nowhere don’t count as real towns.

Sometimes, only sometimes, rhymed poetry is good even when the rhymes are not just hard and clever. Seamus Heaney manages to rhyme “me” and “be” , and I still want to be him when I grow up. For the time being I think I will just translate him. Which is appropriate because his best work is his translation of Beowulf.

My mother thinks the word “scaffolding”, in English, is funny, so this is for her.

Scaffolding.
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding:

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done,
showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
old bridges breaking between you and me,

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,
Confident that we have built our wall.

Andamios.
En una obra, los albañiles al principio
miman los andamios del futuro edificio.

Clavan y fijan tornillos y barras,
aprietan y montan las tuercas y amarras.

No importa que al final quitemos todo eso,
queremos ver los muros de ladrillo y yeso.

Así que mi vida, si a veces sientes
que rompo las cuerdas que hacia mí tiendes

No te asustes. Cae el andamio, solamente.
para que tranquila, cruces el puente.

I know the phrase should be “at” a University. But if people live in a town, in Paris or in Tokyo, I live in a University. I think it’s weird and it’s a reason why I wouldn’t like to stay here indefinitely, even if it is useful.

Like this one, for example. My laptop opens windows that say that something is wrong, and I panic. I phone the University’s computer helpdesk service, even if I don’t think they can do anything about it, but just in case. See, it’s my laptop. And my problem. And it is the job of the person on the phone to help me solve it? I mean, why? He didn’t sell me the computer, so why should he?

Also, from a Spanish point of view, it’s surprising that the man was patient, helpful and polite through my computer illiteracy. Spaniards at the other side of an “official” counter or phone can be a nightmare. Se aceptan chistes de funcionarios.

Blue sky, blinding snow.
A lovely orchid withered
Left out in the cold.

Cielo azul, nieve cegadora.
Una orquídea preciosa se marchitó
Cuando la dejaron a la intemperie.

Heh. This is the closest I’ve been to a poem about teenage angst and what I remember of the nightmare of my teens.

Cartoons drawn in the back of business cards

You can still download Hugh McLeod's excellent How To Be Creative here. In my view, the best thing about it is the balance between the "I do my Art for myself and it's too personal to show it to anyone" and the "fuck Bohemia, we´re in it for the money"

Tus blancas manos.
Envueltas en mi cinturón.
Sé que te duelen.

Your white hands wrapped by my belt.
I know they hurt.

Hmm… this is an odd one. I wrote it in the last page of a novel five months ago and forgot completely about it until I picked up the book again the other week. No, no one particular inspired it, how dare you ask.

Most of my haikus are first in English and then in translation because syllable count is easier that way; Spanish words are too long for really good haiku. In exceptions like this one, the English translation always ends up a bit too short.

It was surprising for me that friends in Spain asked me if I planned or wished to stay in the United States forever, when I told them I was coming here on an exchange program for one school year. My Spanish friends are so naïve… as they know, thousands of European students spend a year or a semester in a foreign University as part of what we call the Erasmus Program. No one I know has ever asked an Erasmus scholar if they wish to stay in their destination countries; certainly, no one ever asked me back then. Europe is not glamorous enough.

I guess the main difference between my friends and me is that they think of some vague idea of America, something to do with places like Chicago or New York, while my America is a university town. It’s weird how everything in a University town except the tenured professors and the weather is temporary. My guess is that 80% of the Cornell (I don’t mean Ithaca) population will not be here in five years’ time. And of course there is only one thing to do: University life. That’s it. I have lived here for four months and I have not met maybe five people who were not directly connected to the Uni, not including shop-assistants.

I have two answers to my friends who wonder why I don’t dream the American dream. The first one is: how would you feel if Seville University had all the services of a small town and you lived in it? The answer is always a shudder. The second one is: Universities are estaciones de paso, interesting waiting rooms. Being pregnant is, I guess, a wonderful experience, but would you ask a pregnant woman if she was to stay like that forever?

My feet like to sing;
I walk on the snow.
Shhh, shhh, it asks for silence!

I cannot translate this one easily because in Spanish “singing feet” are stinky feet. Any suggestions? Do I leave it as it is?

So, I'm out of it. I think I won't have to be evaluated in any way, paper, essay, exam or presentation, in the next 12 to 15 months. Wow.

Just like in my other exam, the questions were not easy but predictable. And I could get something off my chest at last. Three years ago, maybe more, a professor that shall remain nameless forbid me from using the word "queer" in class discussion because he only knew its meaning as insult, not as a technical term. Of course, a tender, little third-year undergrad didn't dare correct his mistake. This year I have had to use it often and today I have written about the implications of its use as insult and as self-identification. It feels good to be right.

And since we are on the topic of exams, I think that what Elle says about correcting our work is amusing. Complaining about grades in Seville University consists on going to see the professor (no one would ever send an email!) and that's when you say the magic words: I've come to see what I did wrong. I had a professor who once said that was presumptuous and irritating, so I don't know how he'd find Elle's students.

Then the professor tells you what s/he thinks you did wrong. Then you said that it wasn't so bad. Very, very rarely, the professor has given you a grade slightly lower than what you deserve so that you are forced to go there and listen to his advice or corrections. Otherwise, no matter how much you complain, the grade normally stays as it is.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Suzanne Guthrie’s ordination; Suzanne is my friend and also the Episcopal chaplain here at Cornell. See? This is a religion I can believe in, where women are not second-class and ministers can be married and have kids if they want to. But I digress.

I was going to translate something from St. JOhn of the Cross for her, since yesterday it was his day for Catholics and he is very meaningful to both of us, but since I woulnd't want to murder his poetry (not today, at least), I'd do something different. I think she'd like Jeanette Winterson so here you have an introduction to her novels

There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet.

Glittery with frost
The grass puts on a costume:
a late Halloween.

Con purpurina de escarcha
la hierba se disfraza:
Un Halloween tardío.

OK, no, this time I won’t ridicule American politics, I’ll just offer a tiny lesson on good cinema and bad Spanish politics to any American readers out there. Spanish readers should go and read Javier Marías’s column Los Caballeros Negros

In Monty Python’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail , the Black Knight is a baddie that appears in the middle of a forest and loses in a duel. King Arthur doesn’t want to kill him, so he just dismembers the Knight. But the problem is that the Black Knight doesn’t surrender! What’s worse, he keeps saying that HE is going to win the combat and that the King is a coward! After dismounting the Black Knight and cutting off all his limbs, the hero just leaves, unable to bring himself to kill such a defenceless creature. The last thing in the scene is the Black Knight, now only head and trunk, lying on the ground, saying “Hey! Coward! Come back! you’ve given up, so you’ve lost! I want to defeat you properly!”

The Spanish opposition has behaved for the last nine months exactly like the Black Knight. They still haven’t realised they lost the elections. Almost two weeks ago (I don’t keep with the news very well these days, with the exams), our former president (ahhh… the delight of that little word "former") was examined by the Committee that is investigating the way all public powers dealt with the terrorists attacks in March. Well, he said, among other things, that there had been a wide conspiracy, grouping together all the known terrorist groups operating worldwide, the Spanish liberal media, and the whole of the Spanish opposition (the guys now in power together with a handful of other parties, we’re talking multi-party system here). So, if the day after attacks, the main liberal newspaper gave the president's version of the events (it had been done by ETA) it was just because they wanted, not because he personally phoned each and every Spanish national media to give that information. And if a few days later the newspaper told the truth (it had been done by a Moroccan extension of Al Qaeda), it was part of a conspiracy to get him out of power. Yeah, right. Leaving aside the fact that now, wanting a government to change thru legal means such as voting for someone else is terrorism. After all, both voters like me and the terrorists that killd people had the same objective, right? Therefore, his party "morally" won the elections. Black Knight, anyone?

OK, I said it. I thought it was fair after the latest posts criticising American things.

This is of no interest if you don't speak Spanish.

Me acabo de enterar de que el estupendo columnista Eduardo Haro Tecglen tiene un blog, o más bien un archivo virtual donde su familia y amigos están subiendo todos sus artículos uno a uno. Todos.

Una vez le preguntaron en el Caiga Quien Caiga si era capaz de escribir una columna sin un solo punto y coma, y no supo qué responder. Desde entonces juego a buscar el punto y coma en sus columnas como el que busca a Wally; yo también soy fan del ";" aunque a veces abuso.

Pues eso, ua cosa más interesante que leer.

I wonder what the average citizen of the United States would think if they knew that in Spain, “American” is a bad thing to be. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we don’t have anything against people born in this country. There is plain old American-in-origin and there is the negative American-in-style.

So if we say that something is “very American”, especially something to do with entertainment, we mean that it is simplistic, even cheesy, and extremely commercial. “Very American” food is too sweet or too rich or too abundant or all three at the same time. Something “American” is always over the top. A fake.

Something similar goes for patriot. Spaniards are not patriots (noun). Ever. Even if the word exists, we don’t use it. Some people are patriotic (adjective), but again, that’s a bad thing to be. I have used it only ironically. You just don’t make a display of being proud of your country, although being proud of your region, which corresponds roughly with American states, is perfectly OK.

I pity all those Americans going on study programs in Spain and getting the third degree on American foreign policy from everyone they meet. Someone should tell them this sort of thing before they cross the ocean.

1
Old feeling made new,
Hands firm on my back.
They show anything’s possible.
Un sentimiento antiguo, renovado.
Unas manos firmes sobre mi espalda.
Muestran que todo es posible.

2
Five rays of light shine,
Your fingers on my cream skin.
Too much of them stings.
Cinco rayos de luz brillan,
Tus dedos sobre mi piel de nata.
En exceso, queman

3
I look at your wrist.
Pink veins through transparent skin.
A road map to love.
Me fijo en tu muñeca.
Venas rosas a través de piel transparente.
Un mapa de carreteras del amor.

4
Cream on my coffee.
Silver on his hands.
Who could give him all those rings?
Nata en mi café
Plata en sus manos.
¿Quién le habrá regalado todos esos anillos?

Most of the time, I don´t write cycles the way you can read them. I reread old stuff and I notice the repetitions of favourite topics. Hands, birds, clouds, The River. (the river in my town is simply The River). If I have more than three poems, I reorganise them in an order that seems to tell something new. Those four little ones are inspired by the hands of three people (1 and 3 is only one person), over a distance of about five months. Even if the cycle is a love poem, number 2 on its own was inspired by someone I deeply dislike bumping into me.

Hands are interesting. I should write more poetry about them, one cycle doesn´t say everything I want to say.

I have studied in three Universities: Seville (Spain), Aberdeen (Scotland) and Cornell (USA). We likes exchange programs, oh yes we do. In each of these universities there is a completely different concept of what a library is and what it is for, and I’m still adapting to the Cornellian model.

In Seville, a library is a study room. People often find it so hard to concentrate and study at home that they commute for an hour in and an hour back every day to have some peace and quiet. Sadly, there are so many people wanting to do the same that on exam times (late January to late February; June; September) lines form some minutes before the libraries’ opening time. Many students have the horrible habit of keeping seats for friends. Be at the library at 9.05 am and find maybe one third of the seats taken by a person, and all the rest covered in folders, books and jackets.

In Aberdeen, the library (wow, the library, only one, all the books together, I don’t have to go to the other end of town to borrow a book on Literary Theory that happens to be in the Philosophy Department!!) was a books’ warehouse with very few places to study and just about 20 computers, who were older and much worse than the ones in the computer building. For any Cornellians that may be listening, the Queen Mother’s Library in my mind is about the size of three or four Olin libraries.

In Aberdeen the problem were not study seats, but computers. The computer building was crowded during the day and the computer labs doubled as classrooms. I don’t think I ever saw a laptop in all the time I was there, although there was quite a talk of a laptop loan system to be used in the library. I wonder if that was ever done.

It was so puzzling that people didn’t demand more study space. After all, student flats were often noisy, cold and uncomfortable. I had friends who didn’t even had desks in their rooms; the flat came badly furnished and they couldn’t afford to buy what was missing, so they lived in bed. The computers were a more pressing necessity because no one owned one and we needed them for our essays. So, we would go to the Library in the early evening, borrow a pile of books and take them to the almost-empty computer building, that used student cards as keys.

I needed a laptop to come to Cornell not because I wanted to have one here, but because I needed to make a vast amount of information portable. Then I got here and I saw that the study space was limited, but not very much. I was shocked to see that people would sit in a place, and put their jackets and bags in the one next. Not to save it for a friend, no. Just because they can. And everyone keeps coming and going and making as much noise as they please (why, oh why does Uris Library have such echoing acoustics?). So, people study at home, I guess. Nothing new there. The computers are the really new thing: there is a sprinkling of computers everywhere, but they are clearly not enough for a tenth of the students.

One, two… Does everyone have a laptop? I mean, everyone? When I got mine it felt as if I was spoiling myself, just getting an expensive little toy. Here people are either very rich (graduate students aren’t, of that I’m sure), or they have completely different priorities that we have at home. Or both.

The musicality of the white clouds
Dancing on this friendly sky.

La musicalidad de las nubes blancas
Bailando en este cielo amistoso.

The weather is nothing like this; we don't have night and day anymore, but night and twilight. I miss the sun!

I can’t write anything decent about the naked black branches against the cloudy sky, so I’m going to let Emily Brontë speak for me.

One may guess the power of the north wind blowing
over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the
end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching
their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.

Two fiery dragons:
Boy and girl in raincoats,
Their breath of steam.

Dos feroces dragones:
Un niño y una niña con impermeables,
Su aliento de vapor.

My brother once said “is there anything more pathetic than a takeaway coffee? I mean, to think that you’re so busy you can’t even stop to drink it!”

So, in his honour here it is the only poem I’ve written so far about him. Those two wee ones are him and me, ages 8 and 6 or so.

I’m finally doing something I have criticised in Americans a handful of times. I just bought myself a spill-proof mug.

I don’t like the way people go about carrying paper cups as if the whole campus was their living room, taking their coffees even to class. In my home university, sometimes we take coffees in paper cups… just so that we can go from the cafeteria to the yard. But taking drinks and food to class? I have even seen a classmate do an oral presentation (yes, it was an informal one, but it’s still a presentation) with chewing gum. Please. That’s just bad manners. Food at meal times. No drinks at work. Thank you.

The thing is, I’m spending hours inside an overheated library. I get thirsty, and I don’t want to waste a paper cup every time I need a drink. So I have given up and bought myself a spillproof mug. Now I can make myself a cup of tea anywhere and carry it with me so that I can be rude like everyone else. Yay.

A couple of people, including Elle, have pointed out that my jewelry is cheap. Yes, it is. It is also excellent quality.

Let's see. The hooks are nickel-free, some of them silver-plated and some in steel. Most of the beads are glass, some of them Bohemian glass or Murano. Bohemia is just a quality. Murano glass actually looks different, all the beads are done by hand and they have tiny designs inside or on the surface. Some earrings are also done with gemstones: jade, lapis, coral, and a few others.

If the prices are cheap it is because I have been selling jewelry for about nine years. Nine years of buying materials in bulk let me keep the prices down now. Besides, I keep the prices as low as I can because the aim is selling to students. Everything clear now? Good.

Now you can go and take a look at the shop.

Art is exactly like snow.

There is a tree, a pine maybe. It's always there, identical to all the other millions of pine trees, which means you don't see it anymore. Day after day. Until the morning of your first snowfall, when you go out and go, "Wow! Look at that!" and get your camera and take a few pictures of it. Your first snowfall and your first snow-covered tree. Of course, a few months later snowy trees are just another part of the landscape, but you still keep the first picture and the memory of that "Wow!".

I'm not suggesting that you should write weather poetry. A diferent example: You like the guy with the green eyes and when he looks at you you feel stupid. Do you want to write about it? Cool. Just remember that there are a million green-eyed beauties out there and a corresponding million potential poets feeling shy (except when they are alone with pen and paper, which is the ONLY moment in which they should be feeling self-conscious). Write about it. This time you, not the weather, is the one that adds the special effects. And when you finish, re-read it and think: does it sound as if it was the first time ever that someone feels like this? Does it feel as if no one had described gree eyes ever before? Is this the love equivalent of the first snowfall in the life of the reader?

I will not die yet.
I still don’t have a haiku
describing your smile.

No voy a morir todavía.
Aún no tengo un haiku
que describa tu sonrisa

Some of the best composers of haikus (and other composers who would not have been known otherwise) have “death haiku” attributed to them. Either because they suffered a long illness or because they had an intuition, they wrote a poem or two about how it felt to know that they would die very soon. I have no plans of dying, don’t worry: this little one is the consequence of an overdose of Neil Gaiman comics with Death on them.

And actually, my favourite death haiku is not a haiku at all. It's a
novel

Which roughly translates as "freedom, my ass".

I just found out that in the USA, which I had been told was a free country (smirk), it is illegal to show pictures of the coffins of the soldiers killed in Irak as they com to this country to be buried. Apparently someone lost her jjob for filtering photos to the Seattle Times.

I'm not surprised, and I wouldn't like to see those pictures if they were available. It's just that free countries don't do this sort of thing. It takes this sort of thing to make a very skeptical, ironic European patriotic.

A little lesson on Catholicism: every day of the year is dedicated to one or more
saints, and if someone's name coincides with the saint-of-the-day, they celebrate
it, like a sort of second-class birthday. December 3rd, yesterday, was my Da's saint's day, and
this is a little gift for him, a song he will like, only that it is a bit adapted to
make it more appropriate for the day. Since I am going home for the holidays in
less than three weeks, he is given me ground to land quite literally.

Amo tu suelo, y aqui me quedo para beber.
Lo que me diste
Y lo que espero:
dias de miel.
Para tomar vuelo como el viento,
para empujar como la mar,
para volver a tomar aliento,
dame de ti
Tierra.

Javier
Ruibal. (who else!?)

I love your ground and here I'll stay to drink.
What you gave me,
and what I hope for:
Honey days.
To start flying, like the wind.
to push, like the sea.
to catch my breath again
I want from you
ground.

Can anybody explain to me why some elevators, like the ones in Mann Library, have electricity sockets? Is anybody going to use a laptop there, or what?

I don’t care if you have exams or term papers. It’s Friday. Go out. Have fun. Find love. It;s an order.

Dance with your eyes closed.
The smell, the music, the heat
Are all you need to see.
Baila con los ojos cerrados.
El olor, la música, el calor
son todo lo que necesitas ver.

I like your blond skin
I want your blond smile.
I’m looking for some blonde fun.
Me gusta tu rubia piel
Me atrae tu rubia sonrisa
Quiero divertirme rubiamente

“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (W. B. Yeats)
Do I dance better if you watch?
¿Cómo distinguir el baile de la bailarina?
¿Bailo mejor cuando me miras?

Dawn sets the sky on fire.
Day comes to stop all parties.
Survivors crawl out.
El amanecer prende fuego al cielo.
El día llega para acabar con todas las fiestas.
Los supervivientes se van, arrastrándose.

This cycle needs a title more imaginative than The Friday Cycle. Any suggestions?

Disclaimer: Yeats is definitely not one of my Dantes, but that line was screaming to be stolen.

One tree in the desert,
A tall man waiting.
He has never seen the flowers.

Un árbol en el desierto,
Un hombre alto que espera.
Nunca ha visto las flores.

Flower woman asks an innocent question.
A green smile and no answer.

Mujer-flor hace una pregunta inocente.
Una sonrisa verde, y ninguna respuesta.

Two of my oldest, disconnected, but about the same person.

I have discovered through a long route that there is an excellent collection of children’s literature and a good collection of comics in Uris Library. I have quickly borrowed everything by Neil Gaiman that wasn’t taken yet. That was really unexpected, since our University libraries are more technical, and what I wonder, do we have those books in the library for the Popular Culture Studies types or simply because it is good that I can take Roald Dahl’s Matilda or Gaiman’s Preludes and Nocturnes as comfort reading after a hard day of Derrida?

(Mental picture of Cultural Studies clever one doing a dissertation on the influence of French Deconstructionism in contemporary comic writers).

Let's try to get some beauty, something productive, out of the tragedy.

Here you have a gallery of works of Robert Mapplethorpe. In case you're using a public computer, there's both the pretty ones with flowers and such and the absolutely gorgeous ones with nude bodies. I don't think any of them is shocking or pornographic, they are the "tamer" nudes. Enjoy.

After knowing that the atmosphere in Mars is less that 1% as dense as the Earth’s, so even the fastest winds can hardly be felt at all.
Wild, fast and pointless.
Looking for a cheap love cure.
Like the winds in Mars.

Cuando supe que la atmósfera de Marte tiene menos del 1% de densidad que la de la Tierra, por lo que los vientos huracanados ni se sienten.
Rápido, salvaje, sin sentido.
Buscando un vulgar remedio amoroso.
Como los vientos de Marte.

This summer I attended a sort of conference for poets, publishers and other interested people. During a meal that mixed professionals with amateurs, someone said what tells apart the bad amateurs from the promising ones:

Lots of young people write poetry. They are easy to sort out because the mediocre ones stop writing when they get into a steady relationship.

Which fits nicely into the usual male-oriented explanations of the creative impulse as something nearly sexual. I haven’t had the opportunity to see if it applies to me, but I doubt it. Not because I believe I am above mediocrity, but because I think I write faster and better when I have an audience. Heh.

Yesterday I had an exam; it wasn't exactly easy, but it was so predictable. The professor had given us three or four sample exams from previous years, and some of the questions were repeated. A couple of the questions yesterday were along the lines of “What is the main point in such and such essay/article/book/author?”

I love that. An exam in a Spanish University would never be like that. I have a friend here who was an exchange student in my University last year, taking classes in History and in Psychology. She was surprised at something I take for granted: in Spain, the questions are not just hard, they are obscure and unpredictable. I once took a course on International Relations and after nine months of discussing general principles and practical cases, one of the questions in the final exam asked us to give a list of international treatises and dates. The idea is that if you know the trivial, hard or obscure you must know the general and easy. Today, another professor gave us a list of likely exam questions that said that we would have to pick three prompt-quotes out of "12 or so". Such a degree of freedom would be unacceptable in Spain: we might even skip studying a unit or two! (gasp)

I have often thought that Spanish Universities have such high dropout rates because getting into University is too easy and students are lazy, apathetic and irresponsible. I have only now realised that they often fail exams that don’t test what the course teaches. That’s a good reason to make anyone apathetic.

(In case you’re wondering, I didn’t have a clue about the question on treatises, left it blank, got a C because the rest of my work compensated that, and dropped out of Law School one year later).