Sense, meaning

There is a sense in a baptismal rite.

I stood there watching my grandchild being baptized.

Water.

The sense that God cares.

Not that God did not care before baptism.

It is just that it is a reminder, this rite, that we are cared for.

In spite of suffering?

In spite of suffering.

In spite of...

In spite of.

Cared for.

Attention span and paragraphing

Once, the hability to include secondary phrases in a large sentence was a sign of sharpness and good writing. To learn to be rigourous was to translate Cicero or Virgil. Or to follow Bertrand Russell.
Now, I walk out and see the marvelous summer garden with the mountains blueing behind the open trees into the sky.
And then I turn to the thought of being politically independent. And then, perhaps blogging into power.
Someone has lowered the air conditioning. Paula comes in and asks for a coat.
I type.
No photos; there should be.
Nowadays.

Universidad Austral - Valdivia - burning morning

I've talked to them.
Standing in front not of ashes, but of the golden hot,
The destroyer,
The past present in the void
They are crying. They fought, they won, then they burned.
They barely speak, their eyes wide
Their life's work has caught fire. Ashes.

I love my grandchildren, even though they tire me

They come to me, open armed sometimes.
I open my arms. They see my hands are empty, but they still kiss me.
It is better if I bring gifts, though. They encrease their love.
And they come to me, open armed.
My grandchildren.

Forty years off

After 47 years a group of teenage friends meet. They were close. They stare. Will the gaps be skipped over and the eyes stare into known hearts? Which heart shall I vest into their fountains? My sins? My prides? My loves? My selfishness? My questions? My envy? Which questions shall I ask now with answers acknowledged which I then did not? That Bill and Dick would acknowledge their homosexuality and fly away to be free. They are back for this weekend of getting together. Then, back to London, one. The other, to the silent solitude. Shall we boast of our children, our grandchildren? Or relive our deaths? Or just inhale the minted seashore spring, clap, and then forgive each other. Just as the Merciful will, a few years hence, in each of our deaths?

Father

Dear father,
You stay. Gone, you stay. Silent and absent, you stay. Deaf and staring, you stay.
Unexpressive, unsentimental, rude in the arts, practical, bureacrat, provider, burnt out, you stay.
So it is with me and my children. Probably I did my work already, I stay.
Father I remain.
Their father, myself.
Themselves, my self.
As now, my father, gone, is some mine, me.

Synchronism, a difficult bridge to find

She writes to me about the new exoplanet with water and maybe life: "God only toys us around, I do not know what to believe".
It is unimportant, I write back. Only purr in God's arms.
No, she writes back. I cannot. I feel a toy.

Kiss me, love me, just as I love you, I think while I kiss, love and thirst.
Sometimes it happens. Synchronism, sometimes. Completion.
But sometimes it does not. We, toys. We unloved. We.

Close your eyes, purr.
And sometimes one cannot.

Fall leaves

Fall comes, fall leaves
Fall starts, fall closes
Fall becomes, fall breeds
Fall thirsts, fall rains
Fall opens, fall opens, fall opens

Sex outsourcing

Today, a jesuit priest, Felipe Berríos, writes on sex outsourcing in a Saturday Magazine. He goes through the demands building up pressure upon young graduates. No time but for extra curricular sex. And so, no time for family. And if there is family, sex does not become a joy. So it is time for sex outsourcing. Pretty familiar.

Airport people

So humane, airport people. Brisk executives, summer travellers, carts and bags carrying lives and secrets. Comfortable shoes. Mysterious people whom you cannot imagine whence they got the money for their airticket. Tall Swedes. Minuscular Chileans. Some ordered chaos. And somewhere, my daughter, past the lines of judgement, into the secure zone. Waiting for her flight and yet, she knows not I am here. Wishing to clasp her again. As if I had died and she just doesn''t learn the afterlife and present life relationships. Happiness and sobbing. True grief over the distance gap, in spite of the internet, of flickr, of YouTube and skype. Nothing like this doing nothing, but together. The sweet seconds when you were here, all along these years. And now, far, you leave for the cold dark winter London, in jeans.