Abracadabra

2009-06-05T18:46:00.001-07:00

There are these awful predictions about the crash of writing and proper compensation.

Earlier, a writer would reach for a publisher, or auto publish his words. And sell them.

Now, they say none of that may work.

So a new business model should be created, but nobody knows clearly what it should be.

One thinks about it in silence, when this should be a group business.

How, then? I fear that if I publish my solitary feeling of loss, no light will show.

So I remain silent, and slowly succumb.

Antartica penguins

2008-01-25T15:58:00.000-08:00

They are the owners of the place; us intruders look on, while global warming melts the blue ice into the quiet waters in the wind. It is cold, the skin folds into itself. Only the eyes, the eyes.

One walks into the moon like rocks. Not a shrub around, some remnants of sea weed speak of some green, some red brown, some yellow ochre. And the birds flying and then back to hatch the white eggs inside crevasses. The inadequate shoes sink into the snow and mold the muddy roads. And us, the intruders, come close together in this sensation of

Sense, meaning

2007-12-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-03T07:06:00.000-08:00

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

2007-09-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-29T06:00:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

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

Sex outsourcing

2007-02-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

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.

Christmas confusions

2006-12-24T09:44:00.000-08:00

In the end, the Christmas best is the chance and the will to look into my wife's eyes.

One mind, ten faces

2006-12-22T16:42:00.000-08:00

Christmas is here. I pray, I reach out to God.
But I read Joseph Campbell on the schizophrenia of religion.
The question of being a child before God, even though you may be 60. That is where churches seem to drive it all.
Where should you be?
There is a sense of autonomy that makes people wish to stare steadfast in the eyes of God. "See? I'm me!"
Yet this child, this Christmas.
So carols come in pretty, yes.
So the gifts, the giving, the kisses, yes.
So this question of the interior facets. The many faces. The provision of masks, of personae.
Who are you tonight? Whom are you with? A mask for each you.
Perhaps growth is finally to be one with all.
Finally, one person, not a child, a beggar, not a powerful me, before this God.
For God is taught so differently. Christmas has so many cards at play.
This God should be one. Always. Perhaps.
Perhaps I could always be one, the same. Not a thousand faces nor a thousand facets.
But the year is past. Time is today.
And you come to pass by this second.
Your second, my heart. Now.

Tools make

2006-08-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

Some comitees search for unanimity on the future, in order to decree it fulfilled.
Other comitees decide on sharing tools in order that people work their fulfillment.
I know that appropiate tools may work.
I bet on tools that empower, like networking.
So stop discussions, reject attempts at defining every possible twist of words.
And decide on risking the sharing of tools.
Then wait and see. There just might be some happiness around the corner.
And there will be, of course, crime.
But all in all, you cannot control it all.
So risk, bet, and step aside to give a look.
In order. In empowerment. In a gust of freedom.

Lady at the gymn

2006-08-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

Twenty minutes to go. Step up, step down, step up, no look, no glance. She´s curving her back. A bit of skin, a trap of lust, a silent flash of hair across her eyes. Step up, step down. Ten more to go. Heartbeats up, must slow rate. A charming sigh, a bend, a crushing of the knee against the floor. Step up, step down, I worry about my heart, just my heart in strain. No looks, no contact, she might learn. Just nine more to go. And there, she tilts, she is in blue, she's just up from bed, no false color on her eyelids, and there they are those charming wrinkles of life and wisdom. Step up, step down, just eight more to go. What would it be if it was just gymn and no lust? Step up, step down. She might notice I look. No look. She knows. I'm sure she feels my restraint. Just seven more, just five more, just no more, no more, no more. And yet.

Fernando Debesa

2006-06-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Fernando, saw your death mask tonight. Clean face, after 95 full years. Openness, nervousness, long fingers, tremour in the way you heard and the way you gave your words forth. Suddenly, probably by night, you stepped aside and wrote, wrote, produced. In the morning the work was half done. More polish, more perfection, more depth coming from your conversations, from the way you looked at others, at me, at my generation, trying to grasp, to empathize, the glow of your eyes varying from wet to more shiny and then showing your passion for the wealth of life in every one. So today you died. Your books, the homage of your kind, the applause of those who do not believe you were anything but an artist, which you were, will probably carry your heart to heaven. Oh so peaceful you lied there, in the cold winter night, with loving faces around saying the Sorrowful Mysteries, finally the Fifth Mystery, the death of Christ. Our Father, Our Lady, this valley of sorrows, the future life in full. There you lied. Silent. And my prayers soothed you, or at least made you feel the meaning of those chats we had, those discovering chats when I was so presumptous as to believe I was teaching you something new. When you were showing me, really, how to listen and change, atune.

Innovation Journalism

2006-04-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

I am in Stanford University. Today an Innovation Journalism seminar ends. See www.innovationjournalism.org. I'm probably the oldest guy around. It feels good, experience is a good thing. I have lived through most of the changes that are now having us wonder at how the future will be. I came here to understand, but I leave with less things clear and a bunch of new friends. From Sweden, Finland, Spain... We do not know how blogging will change the media. We do not know how money will be made in the communications industry. We know not how China and India will invade this Western dominated world. We do not know how South America will include or exclude itself from the affair. Sorry, no solutions. Yet.

Hindsight and Goethe

2006-02-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

"Ye bring with you glad days and happy faces.

Ah, many dear, dear shades arise with you;

Like some old tale that Time but half erases,

First Love draws near to me and Friendship too."

Faust, Dedication.

Summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Time extended. Thoughts pervasive. Vacations.

One's own life, past, perhaps future.

Suddenly, breakfast with Goethe.

A stumble into this stanza.

A fast vision. Then, the shared autobiography, basically, a common experience made anew.

Death and industry

2006-02-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

Astounding, Claire Marie White,
http://whitellama.blogspot.com, a British historian/journalist has invited the world to participate in a retreat conmemorating 12 years of the Rwanda massacre. Reading the history and research the initiative publishes in http://www.mdonkin.f2s.com/neveragain/index.php/Kivu_retreat I came upon the name Dominique Lemmonier, a French arms trader and his history. I then checked a Wiki discussion on the responsibilities of governments and private arms traders in French wikipedia where M. Lemmonier is mentioned. Finally, to my horror, I read that the Los Angeles, U.S.A. arms company Ducommun has acquired Miltec Corporation, one of the parties involved in providing the arms used in the genocide. So I checked who were the new arms dealers and how they saw themselves. A real encyclical letter is provided by the smiling CEO of Decommun, Joseph Berenato, in http://www.ducommun.com/ceo.html A taste of the world to come? How far away we are from these dealings in the common world!

2006-02-01T16:32:00.001-08:00

After a blogger meeting...
A breakthrough. Never had been in one, since the times of BBS. Old times.
Loved to realize how all are anxious to communicate, to share, to give. For free.
I realize that private lives are not so shared; that not necessarily a blogger is an exhibitionist, though he may be. So I can be spontaneous, and careful. I can share and not expose myself... too much.
Loved to see the breaking of new worlds, something in the eyes. Loved to see how many more women there were. Why is this?

Fasceted lives

2006-01-28T07:06:00.000-08:00

Being everyone to everybody, a pauline dictum, seems wrong. Carries you to "nicities", tensions, the stress of that smile in Chirac, the anger after an appropiate but not a true answer.
But who am I to react? The struggle to unify the social and the personal being seems urgent, more urgent in this creative, bombarded age. I will survive. The I will survive. Will change, but will survive. The trouble is finding the I, of keeping that stomach feeling in spite of the great stress of change, of varied intercourses, of the race behind the question "Did you know?".

Junction confusion.

2006-01-12T14:44:00.000-08:00

Macworld this week has finished with this new horizon: all Intel. To those old Mac II fans this sounds weird. Just as today Nikon announced this digital only camera industry they want to become.
Old lovers of F 10 and Mac II feel their pillars crack.
Or at least, sink into the ocean depths as the remnants of an old civilization just when the new one is not at all well understood.
There is an emotion that goes with technologies. An emotion that must sink in as the new Apple become Intel driven.
So, to come to grips with these fleeting emotions.
That is learning.

Summer Christmas Midnight Catholic Mass

2005-12-25T15:47:00.000-08:00

Beneath the Andes Mountains, a warm 77º F day, 8 pm, 2.000 people under the starless sky. The Spanish and Chilean folk songs sounding of gaiety and warmth. Silence and listening. Closeness at those nearby. It would seem this spirit would embrace the world. Not enough chairs to go around, the younger giving their seats to the elderly. And suddenly, it would seem that the road to truth is mystery. And a warm thanks for that love, that myth, pours over the crowd. What a bite of peace, of common peace. An endless canon.

Population slowdown and polygamy

2005-12-23T17:12:00.000-08:00

Singapore Lee Kuan Yew has said that monogamy is an Occidental invention and that polygamy should be the rule. Probably, as a way to correct Asia's descending birth rates. On the other hand, it is so tempting to say that the human race --just as our brother primates--, has been essentially polygamous throughout most of its 200.000 years. And, to be sure, monogamous men and women are usually having a hard time keeping their for life exclusive sexual contract. So I start to daydream about the pleasures of having two or three wives. And suddenly the danger of such an enterprise, the psychological cost of it appears. But I would like to try a polygamous family life. And am alert as to Lee Kuan Yew's personal course and love life.

Diversity and cohesion

2005-12-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

Beside the swimming pool

After being a reader and generally afraid to commit my thoughts to a particular idea, since ideas rub each other and change each other and force its thinkers to declare themselves wrong--what a horrible experience, to proclaim an idea and then submit one's head to public scorn-- I find this way to intellectual bravery.
So, hiding behind a surname, I can dare to try out ideas, evaluate thoughts, interpret reality. And this writing forces me to some kind of cohesion, rigor, searching. So here I go. At 63, an essayer.