Mate ( para martin y felipe)

mi nuevo mate ya esta rodando.

el mecanismo,
perfectamente engrasado,
es de color amarillo.

su corazon humedo
palpita, palpita, palpita,
le rezo por la vida.

con dos manos sostengo el sol,
una ofrenda sagrada;
de su raiz sorbo verdes rayos,
un arbol besando tierra salada.

La libertad y la forja

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/05/09/videos/1178701876.html

A voice

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint" then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. Van Gogh, Honest tea dixit.

My experience with painting is very limited; I am much more familiar with the voice. This summer there is a Van Gogh exhibition in Madrid with mostly paintings from his period in Arles. During this time there he was extremely productive, painting 70 pictures in around 3 months.

I did not know that before going to the exhibit. I also did not remember that he had shoot himself after that intensely productive period. It makes me wonder if he was ever able to silence that voice or if it just grew bigger as his contemporaries stubbornly did not appreciate his paintings.

There are infinitely many possible answers to that voice. As many as people have lived maybe. It makes me wonder what my answer has been, is.

Catalan Elvis

Aniol is one of the friends in Spain that I love the most. He has many virtues but to me, his good heart is the most outstanding one.

In any case, he can also play guitar. And powerfully indeed; Check it out,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIkUayo_PtQ


If you have a band contact him at masca@upf.edu

Glimpses of a country from a sunday newspaper

"Mr. Steger, 51, ... has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.

Yet each day Mr. Steger continues ... working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company... Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.

“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/technology/05rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

"My younger daughter had her kidneys removed and got a kidney transplant... and it could get to the point where she becomes uninsurable at some point in the future and so if that happens and she needs another operation for another half a million dollar, i'd like to be able to afford that." excerpt from the video in the article.


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A competitive gymnast for most of her life, Heather Benjamin has traveled the country and won her share of awards. But last year she developed a fear of jumping... so she talked to a sports psychologist.

“It made such a difference,” she said... “We worked through the fear, and that has let me relax. I would tell anyone that it’s worth it." Heather was 9 at the time.

In the pursuit of college scholarships and top spots on premier travel clubs, the families of young athletes routinely pay for personal strength coaches, conditioning coaches, specialized skill coaches like pitching or hitting instructors, nutritionists and recruiting consultants. Now, the personal sports psychologist has joined the entourage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/sports/05minds.html?hp

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"Middle America; In places like Carpentersville, Ill., where nearly half the population nis now Hispanic, assumptions about life in a small town are being challenged. And to some, a birthday party for a 1-year-old in a public park is a provocative act."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05Immigration-t.html?pagewanted=all

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Palestino

Yo soy demócrata, con eso basta para ser palestino.


Miguel Angel Bastenier

Broken english

This is the first movie by Zoe Cassavetes, John's daughter, who has inherited much of her father's talent for sketching characters very convincinly, to create real conversations and more generally to engage the spectator in some else's everyday life situations. So unsurprisingly, meaning is distilled among white wine and anti-anxiety pills, in brief meetings with strangers in bars, in a walk in the streets of Paris and in what remains unsaid.
I found Parker Posey's acting was good overall and I think she is key in the success of the movie although I frequently felt she was trying to resemble a character that wasn't hers, namely Gena Rowlands in "A woman under the influence".
Situations are beautifully connected with each other and together form a way of telling an uninteresting story that is just an excuse to create those many brief instants, where a phrase, the light, the place or the music is enough.So maybe it's a european movie by an american. Who knows if this means something.
Anyway, one of the best movies I have seen since Once and a more than promising debut.

El chaman

Nada mas volver a espana fui a ver al chaman. Me pregunto que habia pasado. Callado, asentia mientras le contaba como todo habia sido arrasado y como dos murieron. Estas peleando contra el caos, dejale que opere, deja que se lo lleve todo. Yo asentia mecanicamente sin entender demasiado. Ahora tumbate. Puso sus manos en mi cabeza eructando de vez en cuando; movio mis brazos como si el mismo hiciera ejercicios de calentamiento; resoplo mientras colocaba diversas piedras, papeles y telas sobre mi pecho. Finalmente me dijo que me levantara y nos sentamos de nuevo para poder charlar.
Esto es mas grave de lo que pensaba, tienes el subconsciente para freir un huevo. Pense en mis suenos, en los reales y los evaporados. Te voy a dar un tratamiento de choque. Aquello sonaba prometedor, por fin esperanza de ver mas alla de mi historia personal. Vas a tener que parar, cuanto antes, dejalo todo. Le dije que no podia dejar todo a medias. Tenia que terminar... de alguna manera. Aquello era yo. Date tiempo.
Saco varios tarros con liquidos y con ellos fue rellenando un pequeno botecito con cuentagotas. Escribio en un papel las dosis y me dijo que le llamara cuando pasaran dos semanas.

Morirse un poco

Cuando estaba en espana tuve la oportunidad de leer este articulo de Juan Manuel De Prada; un tipo al que no he leido mas alla de articulos pero que es muy respetado como escritor. Politicamente, es un facha redomado pero aqui tenemos la prueba de que hasta los perros sienten. Un articulo sobre la creacion ( artistica) que, segun mi opinion, acierta a comunicar los sinsabores y dolores que acaecen al que intenta hacer de si mismo un objeto de arte y culto. Que lo disfruteis.

http://www.xlsemanal.com/web/firma.php?id_edicion=1507&id_firma=4270

Richard Estes

It turns out that in Spain one can visit the best art during the night. Last wednesday my aunt and I went to see an exhibit by Richard Estes at the Tyssen Museum at 22:00. Yes Fermin, you can still try to catch it if you end up coming down to Madrid and take Yerard a new poster for the collection.
What I found remarkable about the paintings was the unique ability to both give perspectives you would have never thought of and at the same time depict details in an obsesive manner.
I found the motives not essential. Most of the time, it´s urban places known to the spectator and from that point of view it is even more striking; one wonders, was I in the same place? and in fact you were, it is just that you did not pay attention like he did.

I found Estes, a contemporary master of light maybe comparable to Vermeer in his time. People that know, was this statement too much?