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Sunday, November 14th, 2010
 A new story from Jorge López, a walk through his neighborhood in Santiago.
It all happened in Providencia
by Jorge López
On the metro, at Manuel Montt station. An old woman is having trouble trying to get off, unable to find a handhold anywhere. The train brakes and the woman steadies herself against me. I hold her up, I give her my hand. Hold on, I say. She grips my hand firmly and smiles at me. Thank you, you’re very kind. I hold her up and help her move up until she’s able to get to the exit. She again thanks me. Have a good day, I say. You too, young man.
That’s all it would have been, one event in the course of the day, if it weren’t for a voice -- grave, reproachful -- inside the train car as the doors closed.
-- That lady’s too old to be fooling anybody.
The light at the corner of Guardia Vieja and 11 de Septiembre is red; a few pedestrians are waiting to cross. I’m watching, my earphones on, a bit cut off from the world. In the few seconds of silence between the end of one song and the beginning of the next, I overhear a bit of conversation between two of them, perhaps a mother and her daughter.
-- Well, it was just that poor-person smell!
The way poverty smells. It hurts me, it moves me to hear that; what moves me the most is that I recognize it, I see its reflection in myself. I too have spoken of the odor “of poor people,†always doing an embarrassed double-take, I who work with poor people, it has nothing to do with poverty.
I’m walking along Providencia, GalerÃa Drugstore is one of those over-designed, over-priced shops. One of the customers is saying to the woman at the counter:
-- You know, I have to make so many adjustments when I come by here, I live up in La Dehesa, I never come down here...
I leave the store quickly, almost automatically.
Night is falling on a rainy day. A man on the sidewalk, a drunkard, a homeless man I’m sure, sheltered by the eaves of the Portal Lyon. It’s not unusual to see homeless around here. Today it is cold, and he is not even covered by the customary cardboard boxes. I move a bit closer and notice the smell of spilt wine. So drunk he cannot stand up, I guess. But it’s not the ordinary box wine. Shards of glass are glittering on the sidewalk, I step carefully trying to avoid them. Did he throw the bottle down after he drank the last drops? Did somebody smash the bottle against him? I don’t see any blood, he appears to be conscious, sitting, doesn’t seem to be hurt. I don’t ask him what happened, just go on my way, don’t get involved.
I’m as much to blame as anyone, only thinking of how to get home without getting wet, the few more blocks remaining, perhaps the McDonald’s on my street will still be open.
At what point did we lose our solidarity, our understanding? We shut ourselves off so coarsely from the world. When did this moment come?
posted afternoon of November 14th, 2010: 3 responses
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Reading Rivera Letelier is putting me in mind of Faulkner or Saramago. His sentences have a dense lushness, a gentle rhythm that allows the mind to wander and then pulls it back in to the flow of the syntax. (This effect is really heightened for me by the sentences being in a language I don't fully understand -- I find myself reading over several times, first to establish the rhythm, then slower, to get a fuller understanding of the meaning, then over, slowly the rhythm and the narrative come into sync for me.)
posted afternoon of November 14th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, November 12th, 2010
 At the forefront of Mexican literature stands Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who lived from 1651 to 1695; her birthday has been National Book Day in Mexico since 1979.
Dime vencedor Rapaz,
vencido de mi constancia,
¿Qué ha sacado tu arrogancia
de alterar mi firme paz?
Que aunque de vencer capaz
es la punta de tu arpón
el más duro corazón
¿qué importa el tiro violento,
si a pesar del vencimiento
queda viva la razón?
 Tell me Rapacious conqueror
conquered by my persistence --
Where has your arrogance gone,
how will you disrupt my solid grace?
Now even though you conquer
with the tip of your harpoon
the hardest heart
What matters this violent rage
if in spite of your conquest
reason lives on?
↻...done
posted evening of November 12th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Lead ions collide in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN,
generating temperatures a million times hotter than the heart of the sun
and producing a quark-gluon plasma.
posted morning of November 11th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Your wallpaper search is over: this picture by Roland and Julia Seitre is all you will ever need for desktop background. (Select, of course, for it to be "tiled" rather than "stretched".)
(picture removed. You can view it at the Seitres' website. However do not download it for personal use without asking their permission.)
posted evening of November 10th, 2010: 3 responses
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Oh my God what a fantastic performance. Here are the Texas Tornados covering ? and the Mysterians:
Thanks for the link, Aaron!
posted evening of November 10th, 2010: Respond
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Doing a little more research about Rivera Letelier's book: I was apparently imprecise in calling it an homage to Parra's poem. It looks like both the poem and the book are based on the life of a real historical figure named Domingo Zárate Vega who preached imminent apocalypse in the Elqui Valley of the 1930's. (I am hedging a bit because I'm not finding much primary source material about Zárate Vega on the internets. But multiple pages about the book and about the poem make reference to their being based on real history. An article in the Patagonia Times states that Rivera Letelier "researched the actual existence of the Christ of Elqui for his book and includes a bibliography at the end to avoid accusations of plagiarism" -- I am not finding this bibliography in my copy, which is disappointing and confusing.) From the same Patagonia Times article, a beautiful anecdote about how Rivera Letelier, who grew up in a lower-class family and initally worked as a miner, came to his writing career:
Rivera Letelier began to write when he was 21 years old “because of hunger.†Listening to the radio with an empty stomach, he heard the announcement of a poetry competition whose award was a dinner in a luxurious hotel. He wrote a four-page love poem and won the meal.
I'd love to read that poem, and I wonder if Rivera Letelier has written an autobiography...
 Update: a little information about Zárate Vega in this post from Loruka, who lives in La Serena.
posted afternoon of November 10th, 2010: 1 response
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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Another Saramago epigraph from El libro de los consejos -- at the front of his Small Memories is the line, "Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste/(roughly) Allow the child you were to carry you." The first time I've been able to find a lead suggesting affirmatively that these quotations are actual quotations from somewhere else, not invented by Saramago -- this line takes me to Juan Pedro Villa-Isaza's blog
Casi un objeto, which gives some context for it:
Mientras no alcances la verdad, no podrás corregirla. Pero si no la corriges, no la alcanzarás. Mientras tanto, no te resignes.*
Déjate llevar por el niño que fuiste.
As long as you do not know the truth, you will not be able to alter it. But if you do not alter it, you will never be able to reach it. Still, do not resign yourself. Allow the child you were to carry you.
(Also, Googling for the original Portuguese rendering of this quote "Deixa-te levar pela criança que foste" leads me to a 2006 interview with Saramago, where he talks about his life and his writing process.) ..."llevar/levar" can also mean "to lead" -- indeed that appears to be the primary meaning in Portuguese; a better rendering of this line might be "Let yourself be led by the child you were." *... and now I am remembering that this line is the epigraph for The History of the Siege of Lisbon... and am back to thinking the whole thing is Saramago's invention.
posted evening of November 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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The Daily Mail publishes some breathtaking photos of the chrysina jewel scarab from Costa Rica. The photographer is Roland Seitre; at his web site you can find much more extraordinary nature photography.
 One other photo from Seitre's site: Baby rhino!
↻...done
posted evening of November 9th, 2010: Respond
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 I bought a book last night on the strength of its cover -- The magnificent cover photo (a still from Buñuel's Simon of the Desert) made me pick it up and read the back cover, made me buy the book and start reading... It is an homage to NÃcanor Parra's Sermones y prédicas del Cristo de Elqui, about a young man from Chile's Elqui Valley who discovers that he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Very dry humor and lovely prose.
Here is a bit of linguistic confusion I found entertaining -- early in the novel the narrator is talking about Christ's difficulties with his good-for-nothing apostles, who are always stuffing themselves, guzzling liquor and smoking -- he compares this with the Messiah's ascetic ways using a quick shift from third to first person, which is made more subtle and confusing by Spanish's imperfect tense. In Spanish, the first person singular imperfect and the third person singular imperfect are usually (maybe always?) the same. So when Letelier writes
Él, por su parte, que debÃa ser luz para el mundo, no fumaba ni bebÃa. Con un vaso de vino al almuerzo, como exhortaba en sus prédicas, era suficiente. Y apenas probaba la comida, porque entre mis pecados, que también los tengo, mis hermanos, nunca figuró la gula. Tanto asà que a veces, por el simple motivo de que se olvidaba de hacerlo, se pasaba dÃas completos sin ingerir alimentos.
The first sentence is obviously the narrator speaking, because its subject is "Él". The second sentence is still referring to Christ in the third person, speaking of "sus prédicas". The beginning of the third sentence looks like it is still doing so until we get to "mis pecados" and "los tengo", and realize Christ is speaking now. Then in the fourth sentence we are back to third person as evidenced by the use of "se" instead of "me" -- I found it surprising what a small proportion of the words in this passage distinguish between the two voices.
posted afternoon of November 9th, 2010: 3 responses
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