When I was maybe eighteen or so I saw a documentary called “When I’m 21”. It showed a handful of homeless Glaswegian teens telling why they were homeless, how was their life before, and what they would like to do either for their 21st birthday, or with their adult life. I knew that homeless children existed but it was something I associated with the Third World or with much bigger towns. I had more surprises; most of the children were out in the streets because their parents had split up, and the parent with whom they had stayed had taken a new partner that didn’t get on with the kid, so the children either ran away or were thrown out (Spain is no paradise, but we still keep such tight concept of family that I’ve never heard of such a situation). I also remember the documentary because the teenagers did their on voiceover and it was my first contact with any variety of English other than Standard British English or Standard American.

This is just an introduction to a poem by Langston Hughes:

Beggar Boy

What is there within this beggar lad
That I can neither hear nor feel nor see,
that I can neither know nor understand
And still calls to me?

Is not he but a shadow in the sun –
A bit of clay, brown, ugly, given life?
And yet he plays upon his flute a wild free tune
As if Fate had not bled him with her knife!

This is just out of a cartoon, seriously. I just bought myself a new blender (one of these days I will start a food blog) and the box had a small sticker that said AN AMERICAN COMPANY. There is of course a little American flag. I look in disbelief, turn the box upside down, and see something a lot more familiar, next to a New Jersey address:
Made and printed in China.

Heh heh. Is the average US shopper supposed to feel better by knowing that their grocery shopping is making someone from New Jersey a millionaire, while the actual work is done in the other side of the world?

On seconds thoughts, the brand has a French-sounding name, and the fact that it is a sticker and not actually part of the box’s design makes me think that the company needed to clarify that they were not French at the time that France decided not to take part in the invasion of Irak, and some people threatened to boycott French products.

For the most part I don’t like the verse in Cornell’s free literary magazines. Too much self-indulgent free verse raping syntax, with a stylistic choice limited to neo-Surrealism or the sort of Realism that dwells on the dirty and unpleasant (in Spanish this is called “Dirty Realism”). I don’t mean that I dislike those styles but that there isn’t enough originality. Sometimes, when the same person gets several poems published in several journals, and I can read them together, they sound a little bit personal, in the sense that the poet has his or her own voice. That rarely happens.

OK, now that I have bashed the next generation of poets I’ll sing the praises of Noah Grossman, who has a few poems that I do like. Especially this one, from a year-old issue of Rainy Day, the undergrads-only literary magazine.

TO DO

lower standards
split infinitives
forget manners
be more submissive

skip my vegetables
read in the dark
say never
call my ex and apologize
for being reasonable.


One of the things I love about it is that I can’t figure out if it is being defeatist or sarcastic. heh.

Cornell has a handful of literary journals, funded by this or that institution, and that means they are free. You find them lying about in corners in Goldwin Smith Halls. Right now I remember Plug, Rainy Day, The Quad and Forword. (I put the links just to b comprehensive but those sites haven't been updated in ages). Plug only publishes poetry, Rainy Day only publishes undergrads, Forword comes from the Women’s Resource Centre so it only publishes writings by women or about women. Otherwise they are not much different from each other.

It surprises me a little bit how the majority of their short stories are about families, or lack of communication, or both. They don’t seem autobiographical (the first-person narrators are often the wrong gender or the wrong generation) but seen as a whole, they show a deep interest in family relationships among people who are for the most part single, childless, living very far away from their families, and whose friends are all in exactly the same situation. In a country in which that is normal, and everyone is geographically so mobile. I think that the equivalent set of Spaniards (say, University students with an amateur inclination for creative writing) never writes about families, but about peer pressure, love, friendship.

It seems everyone writes about what they are missing, abou what thy would like to have, doesn’t it?

Las olas huyen.
El Tiempo todo arrasa.
Mi verso queda.

The waves are rolling
As Time destroys all.
My haiku for you remains.

I’m particularly proud of this one. I took a class on translation that included poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. There was no exam but a portfolio with every torture we could possibly inflict on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60. I did what was required (rhymed translation, literal translation, comparing my own with a published one, and so on). And then I wrote a haiku, my first one in Spanish.

I thought it was fitting. Shakespeare and a handful others were twisting an Italian form for their purposes, messing with the original rhyme scheme, classic topics, and English syntax. Then I go and steal a Japanese form and Shakespeare’s ideas. Who was it that said that every poet is a thief?

Edith Wharton says this in the very first page of The Age of Innocence:

Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

I thought it was on of those flippant generalisations that are not necessarily true, but is impossible to contradict . Like when I say that Seville stepped out of Baroque directly into Surrealism. But yesterday I went to a Paul Winter concert which included a Brazilian Samba band, and the last number had everyone playting together, the Samba ensemble running all over the theatre and a few brave ones (like me) dancing on the aisles. Although, we couldn't dance very well because everyone was in a mad hurry to go! They were leaving in themiddle of the last number! That was so strange and so rude. Seriously, sometimes I don't understand Americans.

It makes me very sad to know that there is a Walmart in Ithaca since Wednesday. I hope Ithacans and the University community ignores it. Please don´t forget, Walmart is evil.

Evil.

Evil

EVIL.

This is not a cycle, but two disconnected poems about the same person.

Alone, out at dawn.
The icy wind wraps me up
While my friends sleep.

Salgo sola, al amanecer.
El viento gélido me envuelve
Mientras mis amigos duermen.

Snow melts in the air.
Under her coat, she shivers.
Seagulls around us.

La nieve se funde en el aire.
Bajo su abrigo, ella tirita.
Gaviotas a nuestro alrededor.

At the right age for “best friends” I didn’t have any. Now I have three. One of them is gone to Paris for the weekend courtesy of her employers. I hope it’s not very cold there.

No, it's not I love Google. It's I google love. Let's sing the praises of Google and its glorious incorporation into postmodern love.

Tien Tran from Cornell's MFA program in Creative Writing wrote:

So I googled you.
I'm not obsessed I swear.

And about a year ago I wrote:

Feeling fresh and new.
She thought she'd never need him.
Now she googles his name.
Un sentimiento nuevo.
Ella pensó que nunca lo necesitaría.
Y ahora busca en Google el nombre de él

No, it's not autobiographical. And I've no idea if Tien's poem is or not, and I don't care. Google is here. No ex-lover will ever be really, truly, definitely over and gone, because you know that if you wanted, you could just google for him (or her). And they never have to know about it, which is the best part.

Confess. You are dying to google someone's name right now. Go ahead.

I have said in another entry that I dislike the American habit of eating anything, anytime, anywhere. I didn't know that people ate out of designated areas: Olin Library has just started a campaign to avoid that. I have seen screen savers with ants and roaches eating a book spilled with coke.

And now I get an email asking graduate students if we want a job in a food patrol. That is the way they call it. Food patrol.

Let's see. I don't doubt that the library needs that. I don't want rats and the like eating the crumbs that other students leave lying about. But I'm so surprised at the behaviour of my fellow students. Does it take that long to go to the Libe Cafe and eat your sandwich there or what? The fact that there is no space in Libe Cafe is NOT an excuse. Yesterday there weren't any seats in Libe, so I took my sandwich and walked fifty steps to Willard Straight Hall; not exactly a marathon. My suspicion is that people don't eat their lunches at their laptop because they don't have time to take a break, but that their oral fixation or their gluttony is too strong and they are taking sweeties.

My suggestion is that they take the food patrol to Ithaca's kindergartens and teach the wee kids some manners before they're grown and it's too late. Please.

Ninety miles an hour.
I look at you as I drive.
Love’s a dangerous thing.

A 120 por hora,
Te miro mientras conduzco.
El amor es peligroso.

People notice that I’m not just translating words, but whole poems and concepts, when they read this one. Some people like it, some hate it and say that translations should “feel” translated-not-adapted. But that leaves me in an awkward position when I compose in both languages at the same time and both halves are “the original”.

In Spain most hairdresser’s are called like the owner. A last name tends to indicate a man, while women use their first names. There are very few exceptions. Here in Ithaca there is another ongoing theme.

Hair A’ffayre (or some other horrible spelling). The Mane Event. Hair It Is.

Is there an end to the amount of very bad puns you can do about hair? And, does this happen in the whole country or just here?

Such simple beauty,
orange blossom, perfect scent.
your flavour’s subtle.
What a miracle it would be
to hear you sing!

Belleza simple,
azahar, perfecto aroma.
Tu sabor, sutil.
¡Qué milagro sería
que nos pudieras cantar!

This is a very, very odd one because the syllable count fits in both languages.

When I say in the UK that I come from Seville, people smile and say, “oh, like the oranges”. Orange trees grow on the sidewalks, but their fruit is inedible. The sweet ones are in groves just outside town. All types have a pearly-white star-shaped blossom that makes the whole city smell from March to May as if it had taken a bath and then sprayed on a generous dose of the perfume the gods wear on very special occasions.

I miss that madly, although the bottle of Carmen perfume that I got for Christmas helps a bit.

Sometimes it is a bureaucratic nightmare out of Asterix’s Maddening House to be a Spaniard in the US because the person behind the counter, who is supposed to give you money or an ID card or permission for something important, cannot take the concept of the Spanish double surname.

My name is Eugenia Andino Lucas. You would have thought that means Nia A. Lucas, right? Well, no. It’s more like Nia Andino (L). Everyone in Spain has two surnames. If your father is called Juan Perez Casas and your mother is called María López Nevado, you will be called José Pérez López. As you see women never, ever, take their husbands names. And that is exactly the way it should be in the rest of the world.

So. Since having so many names is a bit long, most people drop the second (the mother’s) especially if the first one is not very common. Like, if you were called Anna Morningstar Smith you’d informally forget about the Smith. If it was the other way around, you’d always be Anna Smith Morningstar. In normal conditions I would drop the Lucas like I always do in Spain unless asked. But here I have to fill in so much official paperwork that asks very clearly that I don’t drop a name or put a hyphen where there isn’t one, that I end up confusing every bank clerk and University administrative in bank.

The immigration papers. The student card. The discount cards at the supermarkets. The bank. The credit card. Social security. Each time I have to use them someone goes “no, you’re not in the list”. I sigh and say that maybe they have filed me under one of the other two or three possible combinations.

It isn’t as bad as trying to get a Social Security number in the UK… no that I think about it, I’ll tell that story on another day.

1.
“Presos del suelo”,
Me envidian si patino.
¡Mira cómo vuelo!
(Grafitti anónimo en el puente de Chapina)

“Prisoners of the ground”
They envy me when I skate
Watch me fly!

2.
Sobre el río, paz verde,
Cruzan tres flechas.
Piraguas blancas.

On the river, green stillness,
Three arrows crossing.
White kayaks.

3.
Los siete puentes
abrazando la ciudad,
a todos nosotros.

Our seven bridges
Hugging the city,
hugging us all.

4.
Jardines del Cristina.
Mi abuelo no está.
Pero yo sí.
Cristina Gardens.
My grandfather’s gone.
But here I am.

5.
Niebla y gorrillas.
Siete de la mañana,
Lunes de frío.

Beggars on heroin.
Fog, seven a. m.
As cold as Mondays can be.

A cycle to compensate for the lak of poetry of the last few days. I don’t know if this piece improves when you know the things I am talking about. Just in case: Seville appears conventionally in maps with the river flowing from left to right, which means that the north is to the left, and in a bad horror movie this quirkiness was mentioned as an example of the fact that nothing works logically in my hometown.

And there’s just no way in which the translation can express it, but the last one is not sympathetic to the beggars, but to the University students they harass every morning.

The back cover of my edition of Tristram Shandy quotes Dr Johnson. “Nothing odd will do long; Tristram Shandy did not last”. He was wrong because the 20th and 21st centuries have rediscovered the originality of that book. But it is an idea held by many critics. My father has more than 20 years experience working in radio and TV shows, so he knew what he was talking about when he said of Tron, “There’s nothing more outdated than yesterday’s avant-garde”.

I saw Tron as a child and I saw it again yesterday. It’s funny, short (what’s this fashion of making movies last no less than two hours?) and it draws on some eternal themes such as the combat of Good against Evil, humans against machines, and a small team’s quest to find the villain’s headquarters in order to destroy him. The small team includes a Chosen One… at times I thought I was watching an accelerated, early eighties version of both The Matrix and The Lord of The Rings! Still, what had me thinking about the most unpredictable aspects of the creative process is that Tron is a cult movie. Very few people know of it. The special effects look old, but then, so does the first Star Wars. And I have never been much of a Trekkie, but I’ve seen one or two of the earliest films and they seem to have survived quite well.

What makes Star Wars a classic and Tron cult? The problem is, no one has a clue about where the line lies between original enough to be long-lasting (classic) and so avant-garde it will be outdated in the way predicted by my father and Samuel Johnson. We have to use our instinct, create what feels right and hope that the future will treat it well.

Tron also made me curious about the present. What will my grandchildren think of The Matrix?

This is too good. I’m still reading Dickens’s journalism; he wrote an article to criticise a writer who had translated the French version of a fairy tale adding little “moralising” bits about alcohol, tobacco and gambling. As in, the villains are alcoholic and the goodies are teetotallers. Dickens hated it, and he wrote this:

Imagine a Total Abstinence edition of Robinson Crusoe, with the rum left out. Imagine a Peace edition, with the gunpowder left out, and the rum kept in. Imagine a Vegetarian edition, with the goat’s flesh left out. Imagine a Kentucky edition, to introduce a flogging of that ‘tarnal old nigger Friday, twice a week. Imagine an Aborigines Protection Society Edition, to deny the cannibalism and make Robinson embrace the amiable savages whenever they landed. Robinson Crusoe would be “edited” out of his island in a hundred years and the island would be swallowed up in the editorial ocean.

My poor dear Dickens could not imagine that there would be a world in which Coetzee wrote his absolutely wonderful Foe, the story of Crusoe as seen by the woman who was castaway with him in the same island. Nor that The Tempest would stay alive thanks to postcolonial interpretations, that explain how it feels to be seen as Caliban by men who see themselves as Prospero. Nor that cinema would make a feminist out of Jane Austen. Nor that me, a young woman like the ones that get married and have babies in his novels, would analyse to what extent the cases of gender violence in his work resemble what happens in real life.

Well, it is a world in which women vote, an idea he considered the highest pinnacle of nonsense, so maybe it’s just as well he’s not here to see it.

I often call myself a radical feminist, especially when I talk in Spanish, and no, I don’t say it ironically (okay, well, I say it with a wee bit of irony, but just a bit). I bought myself a T-shirt from a site recommended by Elle and I took a photo so that you can see how lovely it looks on me.

Isn’t the earring gorgeous? I call that model “gipsy” and it has sold very well for the last couple of years, although most people prefer the bigger size, which is about one third larger. I have a more detailed photo. Of course I sell many other models.

This is my first piece of creative writing ever. It’s five years old. A professor asked us to do an experiment with automatic writing, that is, writing the first thing that comes to mid, or rather, writing without thinking. The Surrealists liked that. Later on, the professor read a few in class and he read mine with his pretentious “this is poetry so pay attention” intonation, which made me confident in my ability to write as long as I didn’t take myself seriously.

I never forgot the piece; later, I wrote it down in several slightly different versions. A couple of phrases and the person I was talking about belong to my teens. Later on I have come to despise any writing that is confessional, intimate, or with a strong look of having been improvised, but the first poem is like the first love, isn’t it?

The original is Spanish, scroll down for the English version.

Tengo frío. El frío me sale de dentro cuando Ángel me mira. Cuando está con las demás, Ángel se ríe, pero conmigo no, cuando está conmigo me hace preguntas, o quizá son preguntas que yo oigo aunque él no las haga, y las contesto y hablo sin parar hasta que las palabras sólidas que salen de mis labios forman una cadena, una espiral alrededor de mis caderas, con púas que me obligan a seguir hablando.
Los ojos de Ángel son telarañas pegajosas que me enredan, y yo lucho, pero no sirve de nada, estoy atrapada y siento cómo me observa, soy su presa. Los ojos de Ángel son espejos de mercurio resbaladizo. Me gustaría entrar en ese lago de mercurio gris venenoso, ahogarme, y poder olvidar este frío.
Pero a Ángel le gusta que yo pase frío.

I´m cold. I feel cold comes from the inside out when Angel looks at me. When he’s with the other girls, Angel laughs, but not with me, when he’s with me he asks me questions, or maybe those are questions that I hear even if he doesn’t ask them, and I answer them and talk incessantly until the solid words that come out of my mouth make a chain, a spiral around my hips, with thorns that force me to keep on talking.

Angel’s eyes are sticky spiderwebs that tangle me, and I struggle, but it’s useless, I’m trapped and I feel ho he stares at me. I’m his prey. Angel’s eyes are mirror of slippery mercury. I would like to walk into that lake of poison, drown and forget this cold.

But Angel likes me to be cold.

When I found out about this, ya.com wouldn't let me post anything and now it is to days outdated, but it doesn’t matter. The Soapbox Girls link to a site that suggested that people who disagree with Bush’s way of ruling the US and other parts of the world showed their discontent by not spending any money yesterday.
What nonsense. I boycott a number of companies that do things I dislike, therefore I don’t give them money so that they can go on doing those things. But applying boycotts to the elections means misunderstanding our role in politics. It means that people are seeing as consumers, and consumers only. Leaving aside the fact that the election may or may not have been fairly won (I think it hasn’t, but that’s just me), it’s incoherent to respond to a purely political problem with a purely economical solution. We are more than the money we make circulate.

Unhappy with the elections’ result? Watch the news. Start a political blog. Get involved in local politics. Volunteer in a non-profit that works in political causes that upset the current government. Make friends with people who don’t vote as you do, listen to them, and then explain to them why they are wrong. Join a political party. For God’s sake, vote, and pester your friends to do the same. If you’re in contact with children, make voting seem a great thing. Wear buttons. Put stickers on visible places. Use your imagination. Be an active citizen, not a passive consumer. And get ready for the next election!

I'm not in the mood to post my own poetry these days. Today I'll tell you a little story.

Once upon a time there was a young woman who had done many different creative things, and almost always as part of a collective. One day she got tired of the well-known faces, thought she needed to find her own voice, and forced herself to change. She moved to a different country where everything, language, climate, all was different. The culture shock was extremely painful, at least that is the way she remembers it. She made few, but good friends. Our of her pain and homesickness she created with their help something beautiful, unique, that at the time seemed small. Being a sincere and original work, it became (relatively) successful.

Björk has done few things that were as good as her first album. Some of her later songs are better than any individual song in "Debut", but as a whole this is probably the best one. And this was back then my favourite song out of it.

one day
it will happen
one day, one day
it will all come true

one day
when you're ready
one day, one day
when you're up to it

the atmosphere
will get lighter
and two suns ready
to shine just for you

I can feel it, I can feel it.

one day
it will happen
one day. one day
it will all make sense

one day, one day
you will blossom
one day, one day
when you're ready

an aeroplane
will curve gracefully
around the volcano
with the eruption that never lets you down

I can feel it, I can feel it.

and the beautifullest
fireworks are burning
in the sky just for you

I can feel it, I can feel i.

one day
one day

I'm on a scholarship that pays me two cheques a year instead of a salary. Thanks to the Spanish private lessons I taught, people buying my jewelry for Christmas gifts, and being generally frugal, the system suits me better than having a little bit of money every couple of weeks.

Being paid to be a student is partly great and partly really bad. I don't know if it is the same everywhere, but I was cultureshocked when knew that in this country, PhD students get paid. At last I could see come true my dream of being a professional student. Isn't that cool?

Well, not really. Because students gets paid in exchang of being "teaching assistants". That is, for teaching. So: undergrads pay ridiculous amounts of money to get to University. Here they are taught by people who are juggling doing courses, teaching courses, and their own research (which is the reason they went to grad school in the first place). And the PhD students are paid a living wage, that is, just about enough money to survive, to do what should be the professors' job.

I'm not part of that system because I'm here on an exchange program. Let's see. The students who are here to learn, not for research (undergrads, vets, architects, law students) came to Cornell because it is good and prestigious and they are willing to pay more than if they went to ABC State University. But I am one of the reasons why Cornell is expensive: those students are paying MY salary. As much as it benefits me, I don't think it's fair.

It would be different in a public education system: my fellowship would be paid by taxes. Then I would teach the kids of the people that pay taxes, not the kids of the people who can afford to pay a private education. Would it be so hard to establish in Spain a system for funding researchers that was halfway between the American and the Spanish ones?

I can’t believe that with this masses of snow I haven’t thought of posting this yet. It is the end of James Joyce’s “The Dead”, the story that closes “Dubliners”.

Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Here I am, reading Dickens’s journalism too see if he comments on any cases of domestic violence (it’s so much fun! and to think that I get paid to do this!) and I see an article that starts by complaining of London’s ugliness when compared with other European capitals, and the shabbiness of its inhabitants compared to Europeans. And talking of women he says:

Next Easter (…) look at the bonnets at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero.

It makes me a bit homesick. Mantillas are gorgeous, and Dickens is right, no hat in the world can be more elegant than a creamy-white lace mantilla, although I have never worn one and they look uncomfortable.

I thought I knew about snow. What I didn’t know was that if snow melts and then the temperatures drop, you get a layer of ice on the sidewalks. I guess that if I slipped I’d break something.

Walking around the puddles reminds me of The Thin Ice by Pink Floyd. I don´t like the introduction, so I'm skipping it.

Ooooh Babe
Ooooh Baby Blue
Ooooh Babe
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear stained eyes
Don't be surprised, when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.

OK, I wouldn't like to be disrespectful or hurt anybody, but there it goes.

Yesterday I borrowed Triumph of the Will from the library and the record says that I am the fourth borrower this month. Yes, during the holidays. Are there lot of History majors studying during the break or it is just that we all are too morbid?

I saw the doumentary out of curiosity. I cannot watch it without remembering that the German war industry was first tested during the Spanish Civil War. The documentary takes place in 1934 and two years later, German planes did the first bombing over civillians ever. And it was in Gernika, Basque Country, Spain.

Maybe even more people should see Triumph of Will, after all. So that we don't forget.

I prefer theme blogs to any others. I have the impression there are three types of blogs: thematic, the ones with random interesting links, and journals on a blog format. Unless the journaler is a friend of mine, I’m only interested in thematic blogs.

Blogging is like any other sort of writing. Write what you like, write for yourself, but since you are doing it in public, always think of who you’d like your readers to be. Colleagues? Prospective employers? Your friends? Children? Avid fans of Anime? Good. Now that you have it, write a blog for them.

Suzanne has a blog now and I’m glad because I think it will be very useful. Since she is the Episcopal chaplain here at Cornell, there is a group of people who are already interested in things she has to tell. It’s not that her blog will be more interesting than this one or that one, or that she will get more readers or a higher Googlerank than someone else. It’s that she knows who she is writing for.

Good luck, Suzanne!

The spring semester (spring? WHAT spring?) starts this week. I’m going to say this here to see if I believe it:

I’m not going to be examined or even graded in the next nine months!

It is the first time in twenty years that I will not have to be evaluated in the near future. I mean, I still have to work, of course, but without any exams or deadlines until September. Wow. The deadline in September is the application for a scholarship and if it is anything like the one two years ago, the stress will make up for the freedom of the next six months. But in the meantime, you can find me in the library, having fun because I work for myself and not for an assignment.

So, I have a blog and as far as I know I have maybe five regular readers. Maybe twenty occasional ones. In google terms, I don't exist. But still, a reason to have this blog is that anyone with an internet connection is a potential reader of my haikus.

I don't care about being published. I don't care about making a living out of my writing. I care about being read, and Hugh at Gapingvoid makes a very good point about it.

And if you haven't done so yet, go and download his How to Be Creative.

Flowing to the edge,
Water falls fearless.
It’s not gravity, it’s trust:
The riverbed and the sea
Catch it every time.

Al fluir hasta el borde,
el agua se deja caer sin miedo.
No es la gravedad, es confianza.
El cauce del río y el mar
siempre la cogen al vuelo.

To me, tankas are for when an idea is too long for a haiku to express. If haiku are, in theory, 5-7-5, tankas are 5-7-5-7-7 syllables long. I said “in theory” so don’t tell me that this one is two syllables too short. Spaniards think the word is a big joke because “tanga” in Spain means thong, the underwear.

When I was a child there was a popular, comic song in Spain, that went something like "Con mi chandal y mis tacones,
arreglá pero informal" (click here for full lyrics in Spanish) Meaning: in my tracksuit and stilettos, dressy but casual. It is (was?) common to see working class Spanish women, especially full-time moms doing their shopping, wearing worn-out sports clothes and good shoes.

Here in Ithaca necessity makes me wear my woollen trousers because it is too cold for jeans. I don't like the effect of my winter boots together with my winter clothes: I am the reverse of the woman in the song. Dressed-up clothes and sporty shoes. But since I cannot afford color coordination either (coat, scarf, hat, gloves, sweater, socks, and shoes in bright and clashing colours) it doesn't really matter.

So, today I go to church, where most people don't dress up, but some do. And I see a friend I won't mention in case she is shy wearing a nice dark green suit and snow shoes. She wasn't the only one, but the first one I noticed. Heavy winter boots everywhere, together with nice clothes. Well, you want to look good but you don't want your feet to get frozen or wet or slip on the ice, right?

I may be dressed-up and casual (and a fashion disaster) like the woman in the song, but at least I'm not alone. heh.

Sit here by the stream.
We’ll watch it flow and drink beer.
The forest whispers.

Siéntate aquí, junto al arroyo.
Veremos el agua correr y beberemos cerveza.
El bosque susurra.

Beer doesn’t seem a very poetry-worthy subject, and “wine” fitted the syllable count, but this is a haiku for someone special and it wouldn’t be right if I invited him to anything else.

He and his fiancée (who happens to be my cousin and one of my best friends) are looking for a flat to buy. Best of luck to them.

OK, this is a rant. Be warned. There it goes.

I hate porn. No, actually, hate is not the word. I find porn disgusting. Revolting.

I might be wrong thinking that the word would be a better place if the porn industry disappeared tomorrow (not, I’m not wrong, but this is just for the sake of argument). But things get to record peaks of hypocrisy when the local video rental calls its porn section “ADULT”. The caps are theirs: “Foreign, ADULT, Cult Classics, New Releases”.

Excuse me? If ADULT films are porn, what do we call the non-porn movies that are not suitable for kids? Besides, emphasizing its adult audience tries to deny both the fact that porn is ridiculously easy for teenagers to get and the existence of childhood pornography.

I wouldn’t be less offended if the video rental announced a porn section. In capitals and red ink. At least that would be more honest, and truer to its meaning (after all, “pornography” means “description or depiction of prostitution”)

I went to Olin Library to borrow a movie and I saw that the DVD shelves were practically empty; in part it is so because the few of us that are here before the beginning of the term don't have classes, but it is also because we are few and lonely.

I'll watch a movie today or tomorrow that I wouldn't see if more of my friends were already back in town...

I bought a portable CD the other day and the warranty says: “This warranty does not cover … damage due to acts of God, accident, misuse, negligence, commercial use, or modification of…”

Since warranties are interpreted to mean fabrication defects and nothing else, and the are no mentions of terrorist attacks or natural disasters on the warranty, I take it that “acts of God” refers to that. What a quaint expression to find in a legal context!! I remember that in Law School we talked of caso fortuito (what cannot be foreseen) and fuerza mayor (what cannot be prevented), which are very dry, but certainly more descriptive and accurate.

Glasgow, color de arena,
Con pocos árboles.
La gente canta:
“Bienvenidos a la fábrica del asombro”
Y yo,
A veces canto, a veces me río.

Glasgow, sand-coloured,
with so few trees.
People sing:
“Welcome to the factory of amazement”
And I,
sometimes I sing, sometimes I laugh.

Here the Spanish version comes first because I wrote it first. I have just five or six poems in free verse and the Spanish version is always the first one. I think this is the earliest free verse I ever wrote… and I composed it on the bus back from Edinburgh.

One of my professors had a postcard pinned to the wall at his office that said “The best thing in Edinburgh… the Glasgow train”. That is a bit extreme, and town rivalries are silly, but I definitely prefer Glasgow to anywhere else in Scotland.

1
Sun-soaked golden clouds.
Smiles in a friendly accent.
Glasgow’s Hope Street blooms.

Nubes doradas envueltas en sol.
Sonrisas con un acento amistoso.
En Glasgow, Hope Street florece.

2
Playing “O Sole Mio"
Violins in the rain.
I threw a few coins.

Tocan “O Sole Mio”
los violines, bajo la lluvia.
Les dejo algo de suelto.

3
Sun coming through my eyelids,
Glaswegian kiss
As I lie on the grass.

El sol me atraviesa los párpados
Un beso glasgoviano
tumbada en la hierba.

4
Surfer piper.
His glasses dye the world red.
He’s hypnotised me.

El gaitero con ropa surfera,
Con gafas de sol que tiñen todo de rojo.
Me ha hipnotizado.

One of these days I will go back to Scotland and I’ll stay there. I can’t explain why I like it so much; all I know is that Glasgow feels like home. A very odd one, but still.
My friend Devon has also lived in Glasgow, and now she is on holidays there (arggh, I’m so envious!). And this is for her.

Now that I’m back and settled again, the jewelry shop is open again. Orders sent worldwide.

Yesterday I took a closer look at the beads shop down at the Commons and it has absolutely wonderful stuff. Little beads with all sorts of colours and finishes that would be perfect for “gipsies” (link), and bigger ones in different colours and shapes. It’s good to know that I have a supplier so near. For the time being, that means that I can take more specific special orders than before. And "available in such and such colour" is a lot looser than it was up to now, but I don't plan to design anything new unless I get orders.

Next time a Spaniard talks about the national lack of efficiency I'll bite their head off.

American, or more especifically US Airways, make it so hard to come to Ithaca. Too many things don't go as planned. In August they lost one of my suitcases. In December, the first of my three flights as delayed which made me be home about five hours later than I was supposed to, taking one extra plane along the way. Four take-offs with a sinus headache. Ouch.

This time my flight to Ithaca was cancelled and they fitted a handful of us in the following one. And then that one was delayed. The airplane meal had been disgusting as usual, and the only vegan food in the whole of Philadelphia Airport seemed to be the Chinese restaurant's rice.

Fortunately I had a good book (although not long enough to last me the whole trip), an mp3 player, and masses of bitter chocolate, including my father's unbelievable homemade chocolate bar with candy ginger pieces. Ñam.

Heaven, I´m in heaven... no, no, I'm not dancing cheek to cheek. But English people think I do live in paradise.

This morning I saw there was a TV show called "Paradise Kitchen". And I thought it was either about a kitchen with all sorts of cool gadgets and thirty different knives for thirty different functions (that would be my paradise kitchen), or maybe about Caribbean food. Something tropical. And it turns out to be a show about an English woman who lives in Cazalla de la Sierra, a village close to mine.

The show is kind of OK. The English woman's versions of Andalusian dishes seem authentic, although I don't like the excess "folklore": the men on horseback, the traditional holidays, the open displays of religion and that sort of thing that the guiris want to find when they come to my country. But that's secondary when I think that for some guiris I live in paradise, to the point that when I lived in Scotland people told me I was crazy for leaving this country for theirs.

Tonight I will be going back to Cornell. I'll be there in a bit more than one day. I'll miss the palm trees.

I like to have a small car because when I'm in Spain I live in Seville's metropolitan area. The University is downtown. Parking in the daytime is the sixth circle of Hell and I need something that turns well and parks easily.

But for the last couple of years, the fashion of SUVs has come to my town. A SUV means two things to me: they take 30% more time and space that I do to stop after braking (which in the City of Traffic Lights and Roundabouts is a dangerous thing), and when one of them is in front of me, I have more or less tha same visibility I´d do with a bus. Zero. Seville´s traffic makes it impossible to overtake a SUV safely.

At least in Spain there is a variety of car sizes; going to Cornell, it was surprising to see that no one had small cars, and that roughly one half of the vehicles were the cursed SUVs (SUV are not cars, they're trucks in disguise). And then there were the pick-ups, the last extreme. Too ridiculous to be hated.

But yesterday I was looking for a parking space close to the University and I saw two pick-ups. In Seville. With drivers, no passengers, not carrying anything heavy. Looking new: it´s not as if you have to drive through mud and snow in the biggest city in Southern Spain. PLEASE

According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, minivans are 10 times safer than SUVs in a crash. That is more an opinion column, here you have an article that's more informative

I know I could find this with a Google search, but I´m too lazy. I feel ike buying one or two T-shirts with feminist slogans because my One Angry Girl tees are staring to wear out. My favorite ones there are Practice guilt-free food consumption and the logo. (I love I Resist but only because it´s pink)

I could buy myself identical copies of my old T-shirts, but before doing that I wanted to ask for recommendations of other brands. I prefer color to white tees, and I don't like offensive slogans (no swearwords, for example).

This is not a surprise for me but here it goes, to compensate the recent posts on poetry.

If I wanted to go to Glasgow tomorrow and stay there forever I need a valid photo ID. My Spanish ID card, a driving license or a passport. Any is fine. That's it.

To go back to the US on Tuesday I need:
-My passport.
-A visa, which is an extra page on the passport.
-They will give me a little form to fill in. Part of it is attached to my passport.
-My I-20 form. It says:
who I am;
not just the fact that I am a student but on what school;
my major;
how long my course of study will last;
who funds me, and how much money they´re giving me.
-A bank statement. The bit on finantial support in the I-20 might not be enough for the immigration people at the airport.
-the letter that my home University sent me a year ago to notify that I had received the sholarship. Again, the bit on my field of study on the I-20 might not be enough.
-I should have something that I can download & print from a University website, further proof of the fact that I am studying at Cornell.

Is all that truly necessary? Will the world be a better place if people have to get six or seven different litle bits of paper if they say they want to spend more than a few weeks in a country? I don't think so. But then, I'm an idealist.

I am fighting the impulse to write a phrase-by-phrase commentary and review of Gut Symmetries, the Jeanette Winterson book I've just started. It is a love story between two experts in quantum physics, man and woman, and his wife: the unmarried woman has an affair with both members of the marriage, separately, and she is the narrator so she has a tendency to mix talk of quantum physics and the concepts of space and time and the planets and other weird stuff with... the bits that in normal novels is the plot.

It is very quotable, like everything Winterson writes. But I think I have talked enough of poetry lately so I will leave the quotes for when I finish the book.

En el Vaticano
Las escaleras.
Nunca pensé que el mármol
pudiera volar.

The Vatican stairs.
I never knew that marble
Could learn how to fly.

This is another one that I wrote and then forgot. The Spanish version, one of my very, very few Spanish originals, doesn´t have four lines, but three lines and a title. And the place I´m describing looks like this .

In Spain, we know Santa and some people get gifts for Christmas, but the authentic tradition is the Three Wise Men, who bring us gifts tonight, so we get them when we wake up on the morning of January the 6th. I´m not getting any gifts (I think) but just today Cornell´s cinema has made public its screenings for the next two months and there are lots and lots of interesting films.

There is a short cycle of erotic cinema, including something directed by Vincent Gallo (if it is half as good and weird as Buffalo 66, I can't wait). And one Spanish movie, "My mother likes women", that I didn´t catch my attention when it was released in Spain, but that was before I discovered Leonor Watling. There´s also The Godfather, that I haven´t seen yet, and Goodfellas, that I have seen at least four or five times and that I will probably see again. There´s a chance to see the taxi driver in Collateral in a leading role (playing Ray Charles, no less). Phew. Lots and lots of really good stuff.

For reasons that are too long to explain, I bought my plane ticket to go to Cornell August 2004-July 2005 instead of coming back home for Christmas. In the end of course I came home, but that's wasn't the initial plan. I could not pick my own travel agency because that ticket was part of the benefits in my exchange program.

So I went to the travel agency that the University had picked and they told me that due to mysterious computer reasons the return could not be later than May 21, 2005. I wanted to stay in Ithaca two more months and they said that I would have to try to change the ticket, that I would have to negociate directly with US Airways, that they did not know if I would be charged fines and that the later, the better. Beautiful.

Today I phoned the travel agency and they told me that they would solve it on the phone, and they did. No extra charges, no nothing. The problem is that they said that my old plane ticket that says very plainly "not valid after May 21" is the only one I need to fly on July 17th.

If that isn't true I think I'm going to kill someone.

The Elusive Poet heard one of my most recent poems and he liked it so much that he said it reminded him of Pablo Neruda. That is one of the most flattering things anyone has ever said about my poetry; Neruda is one of my big influences, or more than that, one of the writers that make me feel angry he got there before I did. I would like to be better than him and some of my poems scream "I hate neruda because I am not him". Why did he have to say "I want to do to you what spring does to cherry trees"?? Didn't he know that line was mine?

I thought I would post the poem my friend liked. But I´m not ready yet. So here is the first poem by Neruda I ever heard (the translation, as usual, is mine). This is what my father fed me on as a baby, for which I am grateful.

15
I like you when you´re silent ´cos it makes you look distant
and you hear me from afar and my voice doesn´t touch you.
It looks as if your eyes had fled from your face
and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things that are filled with my soul
you spring out from things, full of the soul of me.
Dream butterfly, you resemble my soul,
and you resemble the word "melancholy".

I like you when you´re silent and you´re kind of distante.
and you are kind of like whiny, butterfly in whispers,
and you hear me from afar and my voice doesn´t reach you:
let me be silent in that silence of yours.

Let me talk to you in your silence, too
clear as a lamp, simple as a ring,
you are like the night, silent and constelated
Your silence is starry, so faraway and simple.

I like you when you're silent 'cos it makes you look distant
distant and painful as if you had died.
one word then, one smile is enough
and I´m happy, happy it isn´t true.

What I like the most about The Art of Noise (a band that's halfway between New Age and techno) is their name. The lyrics to The Holy Egoism of Genius are good, too. Nevertheless, I don't think that being misanthropic comes with being a genius; it's just that being geniuses are bastards we notice more than we do when Johnny Jones is a bastard.

Anyway, here you have the lyrics.

Debussy didn't believe in god. He didn't believe in the Establishment. He didn't believe in bourgeois convention. He didn't believe in Beethoven or Wagner. He believed in... Debussy.

Debussy understood that a work of art, or an effort to create beauty, was always regarded by some people as a personal attack.

He hated to appear in public. Hated to conduct. Hated to play the piano at concerts. He preferred cats to people.

No one was ever sure whether the spites with which Debussy armed his volatile senibilities were activated by a savage insensitivity, or by the holy egoism of genius.

1.
The man out of reach.
Generosity in her eyes.
She denies herself.

El hombre inalcanzable.
Generosidad en los ojos de ella.
Se niega a sí misma.

2
Watercolour fish drink red wine and play.
Envy kills the passer-by.

Peces de acuarela beben vino tinto y juegan.
La envidia mata a alguien que pasa por allí.

3
Using a blunt knife
In a place that’s no longer mine.
Teeth bite my belly.

Usando un cuchillo sin afilar
En un lugar que ya no es mío.
Dientes me muerden en la barriga.

4
The world spins around hot metal,
Not around the ice crystals inside me.

El mundo gira alrededor de metal al rojo,
Y no alrededor de los cristales de hielo dentro de mí.

This is the first cycle I ever wrote. I had a 30-hour-long New Year’s party two years ago today, and I wrote or drafted all these poems, individually, either then or the day after. I re-read them and noticed that they were about a feeling of outside-looking-in that was opposite to how I was actually feeling back then.

Happy New Year. May you never feel outside, looking in. And may you never have ice crystals inside.

(by the way, yesterday the party finished some time between 9 and 10 in the morning)

I didn´t give a source when I said Amazon is financing the Republican party. I found it in a Mark Morford's column, and there is more information in Buy Blue.