Colored Feathers

前に　・　Forward

2009-08-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

despite the night
despite the sun
despite darkness and light
despite dreams and awakenings
despite lights crossing the sky
despite cold, and rain and hot
despite walking alone
despite the live air and fluorescent light
despite leaving dreams in dreaming
despite even hope...

Forward.
Always forward.

夜でも
日でも
暗がりと光でも
夢と現でも
空で稲妻が光っても
寒さと雨と暑さでも
一人で歩いても
生きる空気と電気でも
夢を夢に置いても
期待まででも…

前に
いつも、前に

yoru demo
hi demo
kuragari to hikari demo
yume to utsutsu demo
sora de inazuma ga hikattemo
samusa to ame to atsusa demo
hitori de aruite mo
ikiru kuuki to denki demo
yume o yume ni oitemo
kitai made demo...

mae ni.
itsumo, mae ni

To Meg

2009-07-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

To Meg. Happy birthday, guapa.

The shepherd sighs while taking his hair out of his face. He pauses his work to redo his ponytail and look at children playing in the grass off in the distance. His son has the dark blond hair of his mother, but his daughter got his red hair. He loves them as he loves the soil he lives in.

He has always lived there, green grass meadows till the eyes can reach, till the forest in the east and the mountains in the west. A traveler came once to sell things from a far “city”, supposedly something a lot bigger than the union of all the hamlets he knew.

It’s not that he didn’t believed in cities, he just didn’t see why someone would want to live with so many people, without this space. This soil was made to be worked on days and to be sung about in nights, with a nice fire and the good voices of women singing.

Especially his wife. He turned his head around, looking for her, and saw her with other women, chatting while carrying some vegetables from Peter. She’s the finest woman he could find. She was raised on the next hamlet, almost a day apart by foot. She had wide hips, breasts nice and not too big, and the face of an angel. This years toughened her face, but that strength just added to the love he felt for her.

Then two childish voices interrupt his thoughts, he looks to his children, standing before him.

- Dad, tell me brother there are places beyond those mountains! -

- Why thou ask me that all of a sudden? -

- He’s calling me a liar! I’m not a liar! -

- Of course not. Rob, your sister is right, there are people beyond those mountains. -

- Have thou ever seen them, dad? - asks the boy

- Well, no. But I knew a man who told me about them. -

- But he could be lying -

- Thou cannot believe just what thou can see, Rob. -

- See? - says Rob's sister

- And thou cannot believe everything, Meg -

The girl frowns. She's stubborn as a rock, but he still loves her.

- I will show thou. - she says - I will go there and see what kind of people is there. I will get a husband there and my children will keep traveling to show other people that there are other places! -

- Haha! Sure, Meg. But don't go too fast. Thou are still too little to walk that far.-

-Very well, dad, I will wait. But I will go. Do not forget!-

- Aye, aye, and thou do not forget where you were born -

- Of course not - she says, very serious - me children will know too. We will not forget anything.-

- Let's play travelers! - says Rob, and starts running, stopping and waiting for his sister

- Yeah, I'm Meg the Traveler, and thou are Rob, the Companion -

- Why can not I be the traveler? -

- Because you are smaller, of course -

Their chat gets lost in the distance, while he feels his wife's hands on his shoulders.

- What were they talking about? - she asks

- Children's fantasies -

Crossing the border

2009-07-22T13:48:00.001-07:00

It's here? This is not the same mark of the other stations, could it be the end of this climbing? That seems like a temple... I'm gonna check.

I go towards a couple, ascending too, and ask:

- あの、すみませんが、ここは道の終わりですか。
- はい。
- どうもありがとう。
Once confirmed, I dub a little with the camera, maybe a minute. When I'm finished, the guy gets near, indicating his camera.

- あの、すみません…
- はい、もちろんです。
I try to take a photo, but the flash is not good enough, so I say:
- たぶん私のカメラで写真を撮れます。
- はい。
I take a photo, then they take mine. After a reverence, I say:
- あなた方のメールを書いてください。写真を送ります。
- ええ！本当に？
- はい、もちろんです。- I answer, laughing.
Once I have their mail, I keep walking towards everybody is joining. There's still not a sign of light in the sky, if I had a watch I could guess how much we have to wait. Anyway, they say it's beautiful the sunrise from here, so I'll wait.

The cold is intense, and now that I'm not walking, without the movement warming my body, it gets worse. If I come back, I gotta bring something to avoid the wind, instead of just a sweater. This' really cold! Of course, with the rain before and the sweat in the T under... I take out another T from the backpack. It's wet too, but I take off the sweater and quickly wear the second T and the sweater again. It doesn't make a great difference, but it'll do something more than in the backpack. I get a hot chocolate from the vending machine and I use it mainly to warm my hands while I look around. There are wooden benches for people who climb here can wait, I guess is usual to arrive at night. Actually, there's a little wooden building, probably a store, and it seems there's people sleeping in bedrolls. It seems I'm the only westerner here, all the rest japanese. A few talk with a low voice. One of them takes a camp-kitchen and prepares some instant noodles. A couple of girls talk and laugh seeing their photos, one with her camera, the other one with her cell phone. Slowly the chocolate loses heat and I end it, so I keep the can in the backpack - no trash cans around, I'll find somewhere in the coming back - and I rub my fingers to keep them warm.

The wait gets long, the wind, thought not so strong to be dangerous or really upsetting, makes ice from the wet in my sweater, and sometimes a little voice whispers "It's just a sunrise, come down and you'll be warm at least", but I always think "Come on, I've came here and I'm not gonna see the sunrise? No way." And I wait.

Like if they had a sixth sense, the japanese start standing, one by one, each one like with an internal clock, and get to the viewing point. I do the same and look for a place between their heads. It's not difficult, since they still keep a certain respectful distance from the persons next to them. Slowly, very slowly, the sky begins to clear. There's thick clouds, so the sun's not visible at first, but the sky takes a gradient from a dark blue, clearing bit by bit, to the black at our back. The gradient slips so slowly that it's almost not changing, but cloud start coloring with purple shades, violet, pink, orange... until they become yellow and bright white and the first ray of sunlight gets over them. I can't help but smile while holding my breath. I remind myself to take the camera and some photos, and I do, but not too many maybe. Anyway, it's to be here, seeing it with my own two eyes what I really like, not through the camera's screen.

While the sun gets high I can't think about anything, just let this feeling filling me, the feeling that everything's fine. There's no God looking after us, looking after each one, but this sunrise, this mountain from we're seeing it, makes it unimportant. Things keep working, keep going forward. The sun falls everyday exhausted, but everyday gets up again. The rain, the storm from yesterday, the cold and the wind, the tireness... they lose importance before this moments. Before the result.

I think it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Plastic and glass

2009-07-13T04:57:00.001-07:00

Tape one.
[silence]
Most people think that hackers just get into data fortress like banks' and companies', and steal the money that they earned so hardly. It's no wonder, since media are saying that and, although they're not as well-informed as they pretend, who read them don't know that. Probably that's why they keep reading' em. Actually that's nothing but rumors, inexact, half-lie, full-lie... You can't believe more than you can see and hear by yourself. With garantees, I mean. If it's to believe, you could believe you're life is just a virtual reality simulation designed to deceive you... Actually, that could be true, although that wouldn't change a thing since you'll keep thinking "real" your virtual life.

¿Nonsense? Look, recently I just ended a virtual training system to Ares, a private security company. In those systems you gotta grad the sense feedback to avoid clipping the user. Two years ago some motherfucker modify the code of a similar program and six persons died. They're brains believed they were burning and made the rest of the body get into a shock. Virtual realities are more dangerous than people know. But if they knew, they wouldn't buy it.

But remember it. I never connect without my own capper, to limit the feedback. The risk is there, is like going around fucking without condom... maybe nothing happens, but maybe you end up dying from AIDS.

You know? My father told me that before it was only one AIDS, or that was believed. When they got the first cure it began to be more AIDS' classes. Or maybe there were all the time but they didn't realize till then. Anyway, what can you expect? It's what viruses do: they mutate. Some people say it's a world's weapon, to reduce the human population. In my opinion, the world couldn't care less about how many bugs got on it, or it would have been a really big natural disaster. Mankind has always try to adapt its environment, instead of adapting itself. Maybe that's one of the things that differentiates us from animals. You just got to ask your fathers how things were when they were children. When my father was a child, fruits were cultivated out of fields. Huge areas of soil with trees and that stuff. Now you have this hydroponic tanks and his fields now can be used to have buildings, stores and those things to be used by people.

He says a lot of animal species have been lost by it, but I think "well, if nobody tried to tame'em then they weren't useful enough", you know? At least they got their codes. I knew a guy who worked on the first genetic simulator. When they decided to put it on work, the first thing I thought was "casts are coming back" Imagine: you'll be able to reprogram your children's dna to erase sickness' risks, malformations or ease their growing. In a few generations, when it'd become normal, the rich'll allways be the more attractive, agile, proportionate... We'll be second class citizens, you'll see.

At least we can expect to win enough money to get into that club. I mean, dna is dna, the potential to be a genius is in every single child, the rich people will be able to buy the result, of course. Anyway, better live our life. There's enough competeviness already.
Hey, that light's flashing.

[end of tape]

The psicologist

2009-07-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

- Black wings, clouds of feathers, flying or falling, I'm not sure. Feeling of lost. I don't know what, but I lost something. I'm looking for something in that cloud of black feathers. I hear shouts far away. Someone is furious. It has something to do with revenge, but I don't know why. I got the impression of having been betrayed and deceived, but I think it would have been... well, God, and that cannot be. In that time is when I wake up. -
- Often, dreams are but message from our subconscious mind - says the psicologist - Of course, it's not the words, but the message is neither in the images, but in concepts, in emotions. Let's start from the begining: those were black wings, ¿does the black color has any particular meaning for you? -
- No. Well, it's the color for funerals... -
- Yes, but that's a social meaning, unless you feel that they were black because somebody just died. -
- No, I don't think so. It's just how they were. -
- Well, then the wings. ¿Do you think they could mean freedom? Maybe the contradiction between having wings and been falling is a warning from your mind. Maybe something you want to do, you think you can, actually is not possible. -
- Well... -
- In fact, if you think about it, it'll make sense with the furious shouts that you were hearing and the idea of someone superior betraying you. Maybe something exterior forced you to try, maybe an authority figure, maybe trustworthy at the same time, like a father, or a teacher...-
- Actually I don't think... I mean, that doesn't make really sense. -
- You know, David? It's surprising how often and how intense some persons deny they're own feelings just because they're politically or socially incorrect. Honestly, the conflict between what a person feels and what a person wants to feel is dangerous for that person. It's necesary to face those conflicts. Because of that, I want you to think about it and analyze your emotions, specially about figures of moral or social authority, and the influence, good or bad, that they have on you. Let's talk about it the next time, ok? -
The psicologist gets up, ending the conversation.
- Allright. - says the boy, getting up and feeling a little upset. - I'll think about it. - The man walks him to the door, with the hand on the boy's shoulder and promises of improvement half-listened, while the boy thinks "why everybody pretend they know what I think instead of just listen?"
When the boy has left, the psicologist walks thoughtful to his desk, distractely touching his white beard. He sits on the desk, evaluating his impressions and, after a few moments, he takes the phone and dial. He takes a deep breath while sounds the phone at the other side.
- Yes? -
- Yves? -
- May I ask who's calling? -
- Morpheus -
A few seconds pass
- What happens? -
- I request a watch. The name is David Crow, 17 years old, I can pass by later and deliver more information. -
- One moment. -
Again some seconds pass while the sound of a keyboard slips through the phone.
- Can you come by at 19:30? Mr Yves would like you to join him for dinner... -
"So he wants to talk face to face.", thinks the white-bearded man.
- I'll be there. -

Travel

2009-06-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

It's just a dream... Just a dream with black wings... Wings... Feathers... Black feathers scattering all around... Flying surrounded by a cloud of black feathers... Not flying, falling. I'm falling. Where I'm falling to? Why? I just wanted... I don't remember what I wanted. Something like freedom, something like knowledge, something like truth.
Weren't white? the feathers... Wasn't golden, my hair?
Shorter... Darker...The wind blows around me... Or maybe I'm just falling
Darkness surround me... cold... oblivion...

Warm, humid, dark, quiet... Don't want to. Don't want to. Just want the sweetened voices, the beat. Tu-tum, tu-tum.
Light, eyes sore, even tightly closed they sore. Handled like a... thing. Cold. Cold, dry air, and hurting light, and separated from the beat, and the sweetened voices...

- It's ok, Mary. It's all done now. Here he is. - The doctor puts the baby in his mother's arms. - You just had a son, Mr. Crow. Had you decided on the name? -
- David - says the father, half answering the doctor, half greeting his son.

Summer break

2009-06-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

I walk the corridor followed by the laughs celebrating the long waited summer break. Everywhere I look I just see smiling faces, jokes, laugh, joy, kissing couples...
I hate this. These same idiots have been laughing at me the whole fucking year, and now they are celebrating. It makes me sick.
I close the room’s door. I share this room with an empty-head that thinks university is all about parties, that comes, when he comes, soon before the sun. And this kind of people is receiving education at this university.
I lock the door, open the closet and take out the bag. I wish I could have get one of those rifles soldiers carry, but I have a hunting rifle and it’s not half bad. I open the window and place the tripod on the desk. Stable, precise... I open the aim and look through it. It’s not like in movies, I don’t see their faces clearly, but I have the cross and I put that over their heads. One after another.
Ok, I put the rifle on the bed and take the ammunition out of the box. I load the rifle, then I put a first bullet into the chamber. I use the chair to block the door and have more time and put the ammo box on the desk. I prepare again and start looking for the first one.
There he is, with her bitch, his cool sports club jacket... First one.
.
After the bang those idiots look around as if they could discover me. Not a chance. Let’s go for the second one...

This short story is inspired by other story I readed in the past, but I don’t remember clearly, nor do I remember who wrote. If any of you know whose original idea is, please tell me so I can give the author the right recognition.
The other inspiring fact in writing this is what I think is a serious problem. Of course I’m talking about students killing their classmates, but I got a suggestion.
As they’re seen, at least here in Spain, it seems that in their countries these people is been seen as victims of media, violent movies, violent songs, violent videogames...
With all due respect: this is bullshit.
Human beings are social animals, and one trait we got to help us being in society is that is hard (for a healthy mind) to get to kill another person. The guilt is too hard to deal with, and thus the mere act of planning other human being’s death requires a somewhat damaged mind. “Empathy”, that thing that makes us able to put ourselves in other person’s shoes, also tells our subsconscient “if he has been killed, you, who are a human being just like him, also can be killed”. This is not new, armies know that and that’s why enemy soldiers are never called “enemy soldiers”. To call them “soldiers” is to put them at the same level as our soldiers, so they could feel empathy to their enemies. So we call them “enemies”, “commies”, “charlies”...
So, we’re not prepared to deal with the guilt of killing another human being. Then we do, and our subsconcious mind tells us we’re not human, we’re not sane, we’re bad, we’re guilty. But then we tell ourselves “It’s not my fault. It’s that movie’s” or that song’s, or that videogame’s. And everyone is going to help us believe in that. After all, is our fault as killers, our parents and teachers’ fault as educators, our classmates’ as... well, classmates, and so on. “It’s society’s fault” is another way of deny our own responsability by blaming the whole society. “Since it’s the whole society against my efforts as educator, what could I have done?” I don’t know. Maybe have a little compassion to that introvert, shy, solitary classmate. Maybe having talk to him, help him being part of the group, help him not being the outcast everyone laughs at. Maybe realize he wasn’t that outcast, but that he felt like it. Realize that one of my pupils seem constantly and increasingly angered. Realize that my son seems to hate too much people with too much intensity. I know is hard, is very hard, but that’s the responsability we have. And the name of this game, the thing that is easing some young people to become killers, is a generalized avoidance of responsability.
Get real, people. Songs don’t make healthy persons into killers. Videogames don’t make healthy people into thieves. Movies don’t make healthy people into rapers.

If you’re reading this, and you’re thinking about killing your classmates, your girlfriend (or your boyfriend), or your teachers... you can write. Maybe it'll help you deal with those emotions.

To anybody concerned about this, please comment. One of the worse things we can do to avoid something bad to happen is to not talk about it.

Funny, huh?

2009-06-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

It's funny how a simple call can be. Real funny, an unanswered call seems a so good answer.

Yeah, it's so funny I just can't laugh.

Now I'm just tired. Just that. It's that what makes me feel alone. Unwanted. Unliked.

Tomorrow I'll be as smiling as always, as hard, as indifferent. Maybe a little more cynical. Maybe a little more ironic. Maybe a little more suspicious. A little less prone to believe in my own delusions.

Mirages. So many times things we want, things we believe we can reach are just mirages. Not meant for us. Eventually, people end up being satisfied with what one has. Dreams are forgotten. Wishes are forgotten. The things we wanted when we were young are thrown away like useless cards in this game. Precious, beautiful cards.

But they're simply not meant for us, not for what we wanted them to. So we throw them away and try to forget all things we wanted in our live, and we never had. And we'll never had.

Sometimes I feel alone and I'd like a girl to hug. And to be hugged. To share just that. Maybe just that, not a relationship, not a romantic love, just someone who feels just like this, who need just this, just like me, right now, and be each other's comfort.

But that's not what I feel right now. Maybe tomorrow I'll do, but now I just can't feel I'd believe it. I just can't believe I'll feel comforted in that hug.

I just can't believe anything's gonna change. And if nothing changes... if nothing improves... then all dreams, all wishes are better if forgotten.

But that's now, and tomorrow, or the next day, or the next one or a day in the future, eventually, I'll be again thinking I'll reach one of those mirages and it'll be real.

Funny how the state of mind can change. From up to down, from down to up. "Better". Just like a song I recently heard. What's "better". "Better than now"?, "Better than I use to be"?.

Sometimes "good" means "not think this is the best I have left in my life. Everything better than this is in my past, nothing better is in my future" And if not thinking that is good... I wonder if it's really good, or just what I can reach.

What I think I can reach, I mean. It's just tiredness. Nothing more.

Tomorrow I'll be "better"

So funny.

Love for love

2009-05-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Amar por amar
Original - Spanish

To love without unrestrainted is complicated. We all illusion. We all think "this time it'll be good". We all err.

And each time we make a mistake it weights some more. Each time we think "this time'l be good" is stronger the voice that says, ironic "it's not the first time I hear that". Illusion have with her the fear. The fear to make another mistake, to think that attraction is love, friendship is love, miss someone is love... And you end up thinking that illusions are just useful for you to feel you've lost something you didn't ever had.

So you walk slower and slower. Each time you try to be more sure before doing anything. And, as somebody said, who doesn't do anything unplanned will do few things wrong, but he'll do just few things. Just as we advance slowly, carefully not to hurt again our hearts with those feelings of lost. To avoid giving more strength to that demon who keeps saying "it's not the first time I hear that", who whispers each time you miss the sensation of hugging somebody at night, to feel your hands together, your lips touching, your breath caressing while sleeping...
And that demon is always there, waiting in the dark croners of the room, prepared to whisper when you're alone and only you can hear him. Prepared to convince you that is useless to believe in love, in that one day you'll meet somebody, that time you'll say "this time it'll be good" and it'll be true.
He tries to make you decide that the last time you thought "this time it'll be good" is not in the future, it won't be true but in the past. To make you think "Nobody'll fool me again"

Love for love...
All of us love in exchange for something. For example, to be love back.

First hand information

2009-05-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

- Want to know the truth? - asks the man. He's somewhat attractive, but his smile is too sharp to be really nice, and his eyes too intense to help but think in a predator.
- I'll tell you some. Actually, Christ is not like they've told you. Think about it. Do you really think his speech is for God? Maybe you do, after all that's what they try to teach you. It's what they want you to interpret from the Bible. But look at it with a more critical eye. It's cut and adapted, and written years after Jesuschrist's death. There's still hints, however, and those hints are what are going to give you another interpretation. One that no priest would happily admit: Jessuchrist wanted the people to stop being so focus on divinity.
To Jesus it was more important humanity than God. More precisely, he cared more for the activity of people with other people than with God. "Love each other as I've loved you", he used to say. This means "without restraints", "understanding each other". Jesus didn't had his ability to forgive out of ingenuity or out of a piety out of mortal limits, but out of his ability to be in other person's shoes and understand why they did what they did. And despite that, there was people who he considered unforgivable. You think I'm lying? Remember how he talked about the jew priests? Probably what he hated the most, or what he liked the less, if you don't want to think he could hate too. What he most hated, as I was saying, were the behaviour of those priests, to whom he refered as pharisees. A lot of people thinks that "pharisee" is just a nickname he gave'em, but that only shows how little they care about truth.
Listen, the pharisee was a jew sect that joined at the same time the political and the religious power, about a century and a half before J.C. The sadducee, other sect, opposed'em and not just verbally, there were deaths, men, women, anyone.
But I'm losing my point. Jesus called pharisees to those priests out of their hypocrisy, the same that original pharisee had, pretending to be following the divine precepts when they only followed their own whims. JC absolutely disliked hypocrisy, and the greed those men showed. Not greed for material objects, that he could understand and that's not so dangerous. After all, you can always get more so some people have a lot and the rest enough. The biggest problem was their greed for power. For been able to manipulate others, may it be through false "divine messages" or with laws and the strength of soldiers. He hated that deeply.
And that "son of God" stuff? With the lot of times he said that all of us are sons of God, and he was been serious. He wasn't more a son of God that anybody else. But sure, he really was charismatic, and goodwilling. And people admired that more than they can now. In those times life was harder, more ruthless, you couldn't live long without becoming ruthless yourself, but he did. And again thanks to his ability to understand. The irony is that when he said everyone is son of God, his followers persisted that he was, just him in literal sense, althought the rest could be figuratively.
And the change in laws? Specifically to commandments, as other laws were result more from the need of a certain hygiene and keep good manners more that from a real divine will. Even when commandments are good manners to live in community. Well, all but the love God over everything else, that is a little useless and more directed to feed the authority of priests, who always have believed they're closer to God. But remember the most important: "Love one another"
As I say, Jesus was more humanist than a religious man. By far.
So, in short, if you wanna follow the priests, go ahead, let them manipulate you. If you wanna follow Christ, be good with others and work for their happiness, and for your own, that's not a sin. And if you wanna follow God... Well, if you wanna follow God you better find Him, because few have find Him nowadays, and no one of them will fancy or try to manipulate you.
Well - says the man with a smile full of meaning - Godspeed -

F16Jp346

2009-05-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

I get up painfully. I can barely walk. If my master keeps doing this to me I'll end up dying. I can't let him.
I look around, listening. I don't hear anything. It's 17:15. He should still be at the office. I look the creased futon, blood stained. It's my blood. No, I can't let him do this again.
I go towards the door. There's the kitchen, the knifes in the drawer. I choose two of them, one is long, for cooking. The other one is short, to cut meat. I go back to the futon and sit down for wait for him. I cover with it to hide the knives, half-close my eyes and try to calm the pain. At least I can do that. And wait. Waiting and do nothing it's easy for me...

I blink when I hear the key in the lock. Then I pretend to be still resting, while I tight the grip on the knives. I just have to wait for him to get close enough. The door opens, it closes, I hear him taking his shoes off, breathing heavily. Then I hear his steps on the floor, and his voice.
- Where's my slave? huh? -
I got to control myself just to not say anything. I notice my pulse and breathing increasing. Fear. He sees me when he gets to the corner of the room and smiles while taking his jacket off. He gets closer and closer still smiling and he squats, just a few centimeters away.
- So here's my little bitch... -
Now. I launch my hands to him, with the knives. A mere instant before they find his neck I see his surprised expression.
But I can't move.
He looks my knives, close, very close, but my arms didn't streched. All my joints blocked. I can't breath. My body is paralized. Is like my consciousness give up and locks itself in a little core in my head. I hear a voice that is not mine, but my lips are what are moving.
- Emotional overload. It's recommended to recover the system from a safe point. -
I see his face getting closer, breathing hard, swallowing. He got scared.
- No. No. Shut down.-
Everything goes black.

What will happen tomorrow?

2009-05-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

The scent drives him forward, but now he's alone. Should he be with his partners this should be different, the race'd be different, the hunt wouldn't be as long, doubts'd never arise in his head. But that'd be if his partners were with him.

Even then, instinct forced him to keep running, even with his dry throat and the cold and humid air in his lungs, his blood know what's he's looking for, and makes him run forward.

He's ran much time since he left the pack behind, and loneliness came to cool his skin, replacing the heat that felt flowing within his partners in the hunt. That heat of his brother's blood, calling them, talking them. The move as dancing. A dance bound to kill a being to feed another. The dance that every creature tries to dance, but just him and his partners really felt. The union. The freedom. He could have died for anyone of them, in any moment. He don't really thinks in the irony in his situation, in how things change, but inside he knows it. He accepts it so deeply, so honestly, that he don't even notice.
And while he keeps running, sometimes he must stop, sniffing the air, almost feeling its flavor, and then he keeps running.

Finally he gets to the final place. A deer with long legs and huge eyes look at him, in the other side of a little glade. The fatigue has finally stopped her, willing or resigned to see the end of the story directly.

He gets near step by step, their eyes don't leave even for an instant. The deer, a wonderful animal, healthy, shouldn't be here. Just the weak, the ill, should be. But she got lost. An error that saves the rest, and doom her. In her eyes there's fear, the insecurity before what's going to happen.

But he stops. The exhaustion overcame him, and his legs bend under his body. He breaths fatigued, a hiss comes out of his throat with every breath. Bit by bit, the deer gets near, not knowing why. Tilts her head. Her afraid eyes keeps looking in his chaser's while she draws her face near.

She starts when her snout touches what could have been her end, and he seems to wake up. She jumps back and he stops looking her, letting his sight fall to the floor and rest there. The deer walks carefully around him, getting out of the glade's trap, without taking her eyes off him, until at last she gets out with small steps at first and a trot then.

What will happen tomorrow? No one knows. That, maybe, it's all that they have in common.

The wolf closes his eyes.

Bytes

2009-05-18T06:15:00.001-07:00

Original - Spanish

It have been a long time since he felt so bored, so apathic. The face rested on one hand while the other was moving the mouse. He had passed the last two hours browsing the internet aimlessly, from one link to another. His body seemed to be supported more by the use that by the will while one page changed to another. One click more, and for an instant the screen change completely, black background and names written in white, before showing an online store web page. His eyes were the only thing changed, more open. Slowly, his body recover the stance, his face stop resting on his hand while his back draw a line getting his face near the screen. It happened, sure. A lot of names. And in a bigger type, in the center, his own name.
"I'm tired" he thinks "It can't be"
"But if it really happened... How? What'd mean?"
He clicked the previous button of the browser to try to see again that flash of names, but instead the previous page appeared, a google online store results page to buy another computer. He clicked again the same link, but the flash didn't happened. He closed and opened again the browser, even rebooted the computer, but in vain.
Nothing. It could be a random effect, o one depending on the time. It could be a Google's joke, it wouldn't be the first time they show their sense of humor, but it didn't seem like a Google joke. Those are more to travel mouth to mouth, without a doubt is Google... But then, what happened? He heard the apartment's door opening. His father had come. The kid turned his wheelchair with the easiness that gives the practice, opened his room's door and looked.
- Hi, dad -
- Hi, Daniel. How's your day? -
- Fine, dad. -
- I'm having a shower and then we made dinner, ok? -
- Ok, dad. -
Daniel didn't assist to class. His father spent at work most of day, working wxtra hours if he could. Daniel prefer to study at house. Not only it was more convenient, but mathematics and all based on them was easy to him. So easy he didn't needed teachers if he had good books. And he had good ones. Every now and then he went to the university's library to return the readed books and borrow others. Then he talk with classmates or teachers and check anything new on the bibliography. That was his life. Sometimes he thought what was the worth of been able to understand all those things - algebra, mathematics, physics, programming paradigms... - when he couldn't even use his own legs.
When he was little his father had a car accident. His mother died. Daniel's back broke. If he had been kept in the car nothing would have happened, doctors would have treated him and he would have healed. He wouldn't be a sporter, but he could have been able to walk. But his father thought the car was going to explode, so he took his son and wife how he could and took them out of the car. Daniel picture his father with Daniel in one arm next the chest while the other arm was around his mother's body, trying to get them far from the car. But the car didn't explode. Julia, Daniel's mother, was already dead. Daniel won't walk again. He never remembered the accident. His father told him one night, full of whisky. He never had saw him crying before, or since. The next day he didn't seem to remember, so Daniel didn't talk about it, but he also couldn't forget it.
Sometimes, when Daniel was tired, was overcame by the desperation of knowing that even if he get good grades - and it wasn't that good, he wasn't a genius - he'll never have a really independent life. In those moment he jacks on the computer and he let himself in some kind of autopilot. Just like that day, until that flash of names surrounding his own. He was still thinking on that when his father came out of the bathroom and called him to make dinner together. Daniel thought his father did that to not let him feel like a crippled. He also thought that, in part, maybe his father was fighting against the guilt.

After dinner he returned to his room, closed the door, and went back to the screen. There he could forget his immobile legs, so he passed countless hours before it. Throught the plug in the wall he could connect with other places in the world, all without coming out of his room. Computers and internet give him a virtual life to substitute the real one. Sometimes he felt amazed before the immense complexity of communications networks that let him do that. In his head he felt the structure that made them, and then he focus in one and he could picture it as clear as in his university notes. He was good at that - abstraction, modularisation, division and composition of models of thinking, structures - all the world was like that, in a certain way.
A messenger's confirmation message appeared in the screen. Somebody had add his address. Daniel, usually, accepted all request. Some talk, some didn't, some wrote, but it didn't hurt. In the worst case, you just have to select "Block this person" and you solve the problem of a madman, a nuisance or whatever. Just when he clicked the "Ok" button the conversation window opened.

Winged says:
Hi

Archangel says:
Hi. Who are you?

Winged says:
Winged :P

Archangel says:
XDD already guessed that, but I don't know your email

Winged says:
An email address identify no one, actually, does it? I could be using another person's email

Archangel says:
If it's like that, I also could be another person from what you think

Winged says:
precisely, so names actually are not use, right? we're not a name, after all. But another thing. If names were unique, if they identified one and only one person ... but was identify one and only one person?

Archangel says:
dna

Archangel says:
unless they're twins or something

Winged says:
And you'd have to interpret the dna. Besides, even if they're twins, the've grown in different ways. Even with the same dna, a difference in hormones, in the position before the birth, can create a point which difference grows clearer with age, so just dna couldn't tell who is who. You gotta simplify somehow. So, by the moment, you're you and I'm I. And that's all we can say. You know I'll understand when you say "Winged this and Winged that" and you know you'll understand if I say "Archangel this and Atchangel that"

Archangel says:
ok

Winged says:
Don't you think it's marvelous to be able to bend this way the mind? Putting it out of the usual flow of thinking?

Archangel says:
yea

Archangel says:
But if everyone acted according to the complete reality we wouldn't be able to understand anything. It's like a computer. You know about computers?

Winged says:
Yes

Archangel says:
Then imagine us trying to understand a bit stream on its own. We can't. We group them in bytes, double bytes, words, strings... We use interpreters to make that stream something we can see in the screen, like an image. Modularise is neccesary.

Winged says:
Your right. Modularise is neccesary, but understand that it's just a modularisation, just a way to look at reality and not reality itself that's also neccesary.

Winged says:
But that metaphor between computers and real world is interesting. Imagine the real world like a program. Like the result of a programming language. Imagine that something like a stream of data interpreted by a system is what creates and lets us perceive from the most physical things like a car, matter, etc to the more abstract, like the very knowledge, or the physics. Games also have their physics' systems, so it's not harder to imagine. There's expert systems, systems able to certain "learning" limited more by its size than by the programming paradigm they use. Expert systems, ontology systems, neural networks...

Winged says:
Now imagine if someone could see that code and understand

Archangel says:
He could understand the world

Archangel says:
He could make discoveries never made before, because he'd know where to look

Winged says:
Very well. What if he could modify the code?

Archangel says:
He could modify the world

Winged says:
or the way it works

Archangel says:
Yea. But it's just a metaphor, the world is not a program

Winged says:
you think?
Winged says:
Gotta go, but think about it

The window changed, showing the message "Winged is Not connected. He will receive the messages you sent him the next time he connects"

Daniel slowly turned off the computer,
Nonsense! "Think about it"? Nonsense!

Daniel opened the sheets and then he used his arms to move from the wheelchair to the bed, to put his unsensitive legs under the blanket and to cover himself.

He closed his eyes, but he couldn't stop thinking about the posibilities of someone that could see that code.
If thing were like that, god would be the best programmer in the word.
Literally

Who wants to live forever?

2009-05-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

The shadow stands there, between those stones

Theres no time for us

Names and years fill the place with the memory of tears and goodbyes

Theres no place for us

A red rose is in the white hand of the man, two lonely tears try to get out of his eyes

What is this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away

His lips move, his voice whispers too low for us to hear what he’s saying

From us

He raise his head, look in the sky for words while keeping his lips tight

Who wants to live forever?

The night sky remain silent, renuent to give him the words his looking for

Who wants to live forever?

The moonlight, painfully bright, shines over a few clouds

There’s no chance for us

The wind pass throught the trees’ branches, but it doesn’t whisper words, it’s just wind

It’s all decided for us

"Our time together came to its end", he says

This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us

"There’s a lot of time in my life, however, and I don’t deceive you, I’ve never done"

Who wants to live forever?

"Well, actually I did"

Who wants to live forever?

"You wouldn’t have let yourself to love a monster if I had told you I am"

Who dares to love forever?

"But even when I’m a monster, I try not to be more than necessary"

When love must die

"And I wanted to be human, to love you without restraints, to be able to tell you the truth"

But touch my tears with your lips

"But I couldn’t stand the thought of you been afraid from me"

Touch my world with your fingertips

"Now you know I love you, I truly do"

And we can have forever

"But centuries have taught me that even monsters need to love, and be loved"

And we can love forever

"In the future I’ll love again, but I’ll still be loving you, and I think I’ll find something I loved in you in others"

Forever is our today

"So, please remember"

Who wants to live forever?

The hand drops the rose

Who wants to live forever?

"I’ll always love you"

Forever is our today

The rose falls on the tomb

Who waits forever anyway?

The shadow walks away...

“Who wants to live forever”
Written by Brian May
Sang by Queen

Four Hours

2009-05-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

The night was getting colder, autumn was coming and without warning, like usual in that city.

Could it be something more normal, more easily ignorable, than this couple walking in the street? Work, exams, everything gets quietly out of the way, letting them forget, letting this young couple the freedom to enjoy these moments.

Minutes before they had talk about the mutual atraction they felt, but they didn't walk holding hands, they didn't talk like a couple, they didn't behave like a couple. They were talking like friends, about opinions, stories, experiences, some of their own and some listened from friends or relatives. They were talking to know each other, talking and listening. What more can be asked from a converstation, besides be listened and be able to listen?

Step by step, with a relaxed rythm, they walked up the street that lead to the good bye. Probably neither one wanted it to came so fast, because they sat on a public seat just before a clothes store, like if someone, slightly out of his mind, thought it was better to put seats than to keep the sidewalk free for people to walk. In this moment, this two persons are thankful for this seat, seemingly out of place.

Sat in the wood, the girl use her jacket to cover herself. It's cold if you're not walking, after all. But maybe outside everything seems part of a little dance. Probably as recurrent in movies, books, in the very life, that it's not new anymore. Everyone knows how it ends, but doesn't take the interest off. We've lost what they were saying, but it seems more important that the guy have his arm around the girl's shoulders, and that see leans on him.

It's maybe an impulse, maybe something planned, maybe something wished and not repressed. A first kiss on the forehead. Seconds that grow larger while both rest like that, quietly, eyes closed so the images don't distract from the feelings on their skin. Of the feelings under it.

Slow breathing, the hair's smell, the skin's smell, the face's. Very subtle in the cold air bt somehow comforting.

Then another kiss, like a second drop of water that falls, making the fortuity of the first in clear sign of rain coming. And finally the kisses find the lips. They don't come one after another, but they join continuously, removing, if not the existance, the importance of everything else, leaving just their faces, their lips, their tongues, their breath... Just the arms pause that state now and then, like a melody that, one by one, several instruments join, the arms and hands join the action. They hug strongly, needing one another. The guy seem to be repressing himself, divided between not to hurt squeezing her, and the impulse of explain what he feels throught his hands, his fingers, the wish of been nearer than their very skin lets them, like if been touching was too far.

The feeling of fingers on the other's back, the column, the protected space where the lungs and heart are, according the doctors. The feelings and the instinct, according others. Caressing their faces, the neck, the delicate skin in the frontier between the neck, the chin, the ear... The sensations of their tongues caressing each other, their lips, teeth catching their lips like in a game, their mouths expressing what they feel, without need of a language, without need of saying... Long hugs that are neither long or short, but lasting always the same: what they need to last...

Both of them share need and desire, but they also shared the slavery under the time, that goes forward without a word, but knowing it's all said. They stand and walk relaxed, without hurry, but getting near little by little to the place they both know they'll say goodbye. Now they walk holding hands, now they talk less, now they feel more near. It's not the end of a movie, is the beginning of another trip, another path. The birth of a new fact, a new circumstance, preparing to change what was planned.

They part slowly, hugged, caressing the other's skin. They part. The next day have more work, more tests to take just a few hours apart, but that doesn't matter now. Matters what just happened. Matters how it'll grow...

Matter how they'll live it from now on.

A revelation

2009-05-09T01:51:00.000-07:00

- You can be cured. -
The man starts talking. In the street, the moonlight shines over two figures. One, this man. Short, dark hair, everyday clothes - blue jeans, black shoes, gray hood, dark coat - He stands like a man without fear before the other figure. Taller, stronger, somewhat more animal in his movements. Brown hair, needing a haircut, white skin, slim features, dark clothes.
- Will is everything, but not alone. It’s not just to “want” something to happen, you have to feel you’re “making” something to happen. Everyday we see this. Some people is not satisfied with what they do, with their works, with their families, something in their lives is not like they want it to be. And some people accept it, try to endure it, try to live with those things they don’t want in their lives. And some people try to change them. Both can fail, and both can success. One person can come to peace of mind accepting what he can’t change, and changing what he can. But how can we distinguish those two kinds of things? How we know what can we change, and what cannot?
Imagine this: Everything in this world is made from the same... thing. A rock, a tree, a ray of light, the energy that has an object in movement... everything. Since it forms matter, and energy, I can’t call it one or another. And it also forms light, and even today scientist don’t agree if light is matter or wave or energy because it has features of all of them, but now, think of this thing that forms everything. Let’s called it simply “The Thing”, ok?
Now, the way it flows determines what it is, or more precisely, what it forms, a tree, a rock, that stuff. This is hard to imagine? Well, think on this: a couple of centuries before us no one knew about atoms. People saw things as they were, the rock, the tree. Then, they started to imagine little “bricks” forming those things, molecules. And there were molecules of tree, and molecules of rock. And those molecules were formed of atoms, so then they discovered that were atoms of rock, atoms of tree. I know it’s an over simplification, but you really want me to say atoms of silice and carbon linked between them in a specific way? Let’s simplify, because this is just an example.
Let’s continue: you know what “atom” means? It means something like “the bricks that forms everything and it’s form just by itself” It means “undivisible”
But now we know it can be divided. Electrons, neutrons, protons. When we discovered that, again we thought “it can be more bricks, this time we found the real matter that forms everything in our world” But electrons are all the same, and neutrons, and protons. If you have neutrons and protons and electrons in a specific proportion, you have a carbon atom. In another proportion, it’s silice atom. Or hydrogen. Or iron. Or anything. So there’s something that forms everything else, just three different things: electrons, neutrons and protons. But then scientist discovered the quarks, the quans and all those things I’ve only read about, and those things forms the protons, the neutrons, the electrons...
So now we can come back to my theory of a thing that forms all other matter and energy. It’s really so hard to believe? It forms even our souls. If science has taught us something beyond any doubt is this: “the fact that we don’t know it exists, doesn’t mean it don’t exists, just that we haven’t found proof of its existence.” Ok?
So now, think on this: we found the atoms, and we tried to experiment with them, and making something become another. In the stars it’s happenning all the time, hydrogen becomes helio and that stuff. And we, humankind, try to change everything to our will. Alchemist of old times tried to change lead to gold. They didn’t know about “atoms”. And, ironically, now we know that lead atoms and gold atoms are just one neutron away, so if we want to make gold from other material, probably lead is the easiest way.
But back to the topic, when we discovered atoms we tried to understand how we could use that knowledge to change things, to change our reality. Now think, if we find “The Thing”, we’d try to learn to use it to change our reality. But now I tell you that will is the key. Our will to change the way “The Thing” flows. That’s why, when you’re down, everything seems harder, that’s why when you’re full of energy everything seems easier. Will is everything.
When I realized that, when I really realized it, was when I started to try to control my own life. Taking the decisions, assuming full responsability of what I decided, and of what I was going to decide. I thought “from now, I’m my own king, my own god, my own judge. And my only king, my only god, my only judge” And after that, and it felt like a real epiphany, after that everything started to flow a little more like I wanted it to be. And the more I tried, the more it changed. Now, there’s not just our will, and that’s why that shit of “you can get anything if you want it enough” is a big fat lie. Well, at least, if it’s your will against other wills.
But now I tell you, I’ve come to change things just by my own will. And I’m not talking of changing a job. I’ve created blades from air. I’ve even created blades out of nothing, but “The Thing”. I’ve read minds because I understood how “The Thing” forms the minds. Once, I destroyed a person utterly. I dispelled “The Thing” that formed his matter, his mind and his soul, and erased all the memories and all proof of his existence in this world. And all of that just by the power of will. So that’s why I tell you now you can be “cured”. Or more precisely, you can be changed. Changed back to the human being you were.

Talking with you... without you

2009-05-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was just a story, maybe it wasn't what you were feeling in that moment. Since I wasn't there, I don't understand it. Maybe, since I'm still learning that language, I didn't get the right meaning...
But, even if I'm making a mistake, I can't risk not talking.The white skin of the moon is colder than your photos, even when they're not but collections of colors, frozen images of the past, painted by science. But your skin is too far to talk with a hand on it, your eyes are too far to talk looking in them, your neck is too far to hug it and try to make the good feelings dispel the sadness.These past days I didn't write this, I just thought it, I thought you didn't need it. Now I write it because I don't wanna assume you know it, I don't wanna assume it can't help, I don't wanna assume I can't help.

Sadness is a feeling mostly understimated. Everybody thinks "How could I feel sad because of this, when other people have bigger worries, bigger problems?" I remember a strip of Quino, the Argentinian who created, between others, Mafalda. Probably you don't know him, but in one of the strips there was a little boy comparing his thumb with the tower of a far church, and saying "Mafalda, I see my thumb bigger than the church"

"You know why?" she answers

"Of course" says the little boy "'cause it's more important to me"

Maybe a joke like that is not the most usual place to find something philosophical, but it is there. Reading another book, written by a psicologyst (the topic of the book doesn't matter right now, just this) he states, from other persons' testimony, that we feel things according to distance.

We feel sad for other people's worries, pain and problems, that's called "empathy", and probably is what keeps us from doing too much bad to other people: the thought that "they" are "like" us. That we are the same.

But empathy don't keep us from feel sad for ourselves. And that sadness is not an error, is not a crime, not a sin. Even when everybody has, in a bigger or lesser grade, empathy, the ones who have to live with our problems, with our worries, with our sadness, are ourselves. And to know that there's other people sad is not a remedy. Even when we tend to view everything in relative terms, that "their problems are bigger than mine" stuff, the matter at hand is that we have problems.

I too, several times, felt embarrassed thinking how could I be affected so much for some things when I have friends, not just strangers, that have so bigger tragedies in their lives. But I came to understand that emotions are not something we choose. They arise. We just can deal with them. So don't feel bad to yourself for feeling sadness, fury, or any other so called "bad feelings" They're also feelings.

As for the fury there's a wonderful book, "killing monsters", that show us that those "bad" feelings are just something to deal with, just as happiness, just as joy, and that the problem, the real problem, just gets worse if we do nothing. You don't have to feel shame for your feelings. They're there, and that's it. I think I haven't tell you "don't cry", yet. If I do whenever, remind me this. Tears are not shameful. Tears are a way to express feelings. A lot of people is gonna be affected for them, and they'll probably say "don't cry" but that's not what they mean. What they mean is "I don't like seeing you sad", "I want to help you stop being sad"

I wish I were there, with you, everytime you feel like crying. I wish I could put my arm around you and be there while you cry your sadness away, maybe helping you to not feel shame for that sadness. To not feel guilty for that sadness. When a person is too sensitive some people can think she's problematic, she's weak, she's not reliable. I've found a lot of people like that. Some sensitive people try to kill their own feelings to avoid that shame, those words, or the pain that comes. And then the pass the rest of their lives wishing they could feel as freely as they once did. And when I see someone that even today has escaped that fate, I want so bad to avoid her that path...

I wish I could be there when you feel like crying.

And when you feel like laughing.

By now, all I can do is letting you know I'd like to be there, embracing you.

To Shiho

2009-04-29T05:45:00.000-07:00

seed

It's not that there aren't. I think there are a few. But just as the good girls don't stop finding bad guys until they get fed up with them and start thinking that's the only kind of guy there is... Just the same happens with the few men that like the idea of loving somebody, of hugging her, feeling her skin touching theirs, feeling the smell of her hair, closing their eyes and let all the other senses - smell, hear, touch - dominate their world for some instants... Those men find other kind of girls, maybe they're the kind just to not believe in love or relationship or commitment, just to have fun, those girls aren't bad, just inadequate to those guys. Only they don't get it, they don't wanna believe it, they wanna believe those girls can start loving them.
Eventually, reality get throught their fantasies and they realize. And sometimes there are girls that are just... not cruel, but not-caring.

At some point, those few guys start feeling hurted too bad to keep believing in love, and they try to hide those beliefs in a little box and forget about them. Sometimes the ghost of the past visit them, late at night, asking them to believe again. For some people, those ghost stop visiting. Others try to deal with them whatever the way they can. Sometimes you live with them, trying to just respect other people's feelings, not to get advantage of them. Sometimes the loneliness make the temptation hard to resist, but, at least until today, I've can. Sometimes I think I can feel the cold skin of a body lying beside me, whispering in the darkness, deeply sad, that I'm gonna be alone. That the other girls who I could like, who would like to love and feel loved, are too few and to far away to be able to meet one of them. Maybe it's just sadness, maybe just loneliness.

Tired, late at night, waiting for falling asleep, our demons visit us. If you try to forget your past feelings, then they are. If you try to forget you're alone, then they are. But what can you do? Forget what you know? Forget what you were, what you felt? Stop wishing to feel the same once more?

I can't.

From the people of Nazca

2009-04-28T10:31:00.001-07:00

I don't even know her name, I just have a slight idea of where she's from. I guess many people would say she has a strange face, but nice. However, I see what's behind. Her eyes, big and maybe dark blue, maybe black, bright joyful while she smiles with her little mouth, with her flexible and happy lips. Her black hair flows down till her shoulders, under a dark blue T-shirt. My hands grasp her arms and thought they seem from another world on her skin, that don't seem to bother her.

It's like she finds everything funny. Not laughing at something, not using laugh to express despise, but pure joy. Moral is as absent as evil. Laugh pure from happiness.

- I need to fo there - I say.

- Kisses are the portal. Kisses can take you throught the wall and be in our world-

I kiss her lips without a doubt, while she keeps smiling happy, almost laughing, like playing. I kiss them once and again, wet, soft and flexible, with laugh's taste.

And I remember something that hasn't happenned yet. The voice of one of her world, asking me
- Why you fight along us? -

- MFS March 08 contest -

2009-04-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

- I can't understand how my brother prefer to live here - I think, while looking around. The train station it's full of people moving like they were accelerated insects, without looking to each other and avoiding bumping into others almost by magic. Everything seems so disordered... I can't understand how people can like like this; Biochem has its farm far better controlled... Anyway, let's go. I enter the street as I can, between pushes and looks blaming my clumsiness, and I try to walk without bumping into anyone neither upsetting too much, until I find a little alley and I entered a few steps in it. What a relief! At least I don't feel like an apple in the farm's hoppers. I just came and I miss it already.
And then someone turns me like I was a rag and they're two guys who seem to have seen too much war movies
- What...? - BUM What a hit! They just hit me with the butt of a rifle. This guys are armed! I try to raise my hands but they hit me again, and before I know it I'm handcuffed and they carry me to the back of a van that seem for prisoner transport. They throw me inside and one of them comes with me. I don't know if I should say they're mistaken, but I look his face and I think I'llwait till I see the judge, or this people's boss or whoever, he sure will be more reasonable. The door closes and the van starts going. Truth is I'm really nervous with this mad guy staring without blinking and caressing his rifle.
What the fuck! I'm afraid to shit.

Van stops, the guy with me at last take eyes eyes from me and go towards the door, when a shot sounds outside. The guy takes his rifle, but he seem to be thinking if it's a good idea to go out. Then the door's lock blows up, and he seems to decide to charge chasing glory or something. I'll never understand acts like that, I'm shrunken, chest to the floor. He just put his face out the van when another shot sounds and he goes backward, the hand in his belly. And now is when everything becomes fucking surrealist. A mix of girl and cat gets in with a smoking pistol in her hand, she carries me outside without even take out the cuffs, toward a yelloy and orange motorcicle, and without a single word she turns me towards her and kisses me.
- At last I find you. Where have you been? - she says. I try to think a way to explain, but I can't stop thinking what the hell was my brother into...

White

2009-04-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like a white page. Even if it's a virtual page, projection of thousands of series of zeros and ones in a screen, transformed into electrical pulses.

A white page is a good beginning, like Gandalf said, if I remember correctly. It can be written. Maybe that's the problem. It has the potential to be the best story in the world. Any story, written or not, in the world.

But it isn't. It has all the potential, but it isn't anything yet.

Maybe that is the problem.

It doesn't seem true. So much people writing about it and in the end it's true: the writer's block, exists.

- Dear, you need to be a writer to have the writer block... -

- Shut up - I say. She doesn't say anything, but I know she is smiling. She always has fun seeing me like this. Looking over my shoulder the computer's screen, its white virtual page.

I breath deeply, my fingers touch the keyboard.

They withdraw. She let her laugh sound, like a little bell.

- Water. I need water. - I get up and take my bottle to the kitchen. I have a bottle of water in my room since years ago. Of course it isn't always the same one, but always there's one. That way I always can have water nearby. Water is important, it keeps the brain hydrated, it makes it work better... Water's important.

I listen the gradual change of tone in the water pouring inside the bottle. I guess it changes because the amount of air yet inside, that changes the size of the sounding board and, therefore, the sound, and water almost spills by thinking this kind of things.

I drink a gulp that comes freshly down my throat and I try to picture it filtering throught my body until humify the brain.

"Humify"? Does that word exists?

When I return with my water bottle she's looking the screen. Turn towards me and then she looks at it again.

- I was reading what you wrote. - The weird thing is I don't feel even a slight laugh in her voice.

- I didn't wrote anything, ha ha - I say, in a monotone voice. I get pissed off by being like this. It's assumed that writers write.

- Therefore you're not writer. - she says, bitter as always, while I sit again in front of the computer. I see its brilliant white and I drink again.

When I realize, several seconds, maybe minutes, have passed, looking the white page like an idiot, mesmerized by its very void. I turn the chair around and bend the body, head between the knees while expiring quietly. I massage my eyes, trying to examine the inside of my head, it's a way of talk, but there's nothing but a white, round, empty room. It's like I were sitting there, looking dazed at the walls. Or the wall, since it's round there's just one, I guess.

I feel her hands in my shoulders.

- Come on. You're tired. Let's go to bed. - She draws her mouth near my neck, I feel the tickles that make her wavy hair and I feel somehow her nose, barely rubbing my skin. - When you've rested everything'll be better. -

- I don't wanna rest. - I say, but I can't help but thinking it's the voice of a sulking child, angered with himself - I wanna write. It's just I haven't any ideas! -

- There's nothing wrong about not being a writer, you know? Most people's not, and everything's right. Sometimes you gotta accept what you are, or what you are not, that's easier. -

- Why? - I ask

- Why, what? -

It seems a stupid's dialogue.

- Why it's easier accept what you're not than accept what you are. -

- Because it's easier to realize what you're not than to realize what you are. There's too many things you can be, and too many aspects in each person. You say you wanna be a writer, but how many kind of writers are there? A novelist? An essayist? A Wilde, a Gibson, a Dante, a Milton? You could want to write like Gaiman o like Stephen King, but each one of them is not just what they are as writers, and what they are beside writers have its influence in the way they write... Everything's more complicated than it seems. Everything's more complicated than people can accept, that's why they simplify it. Like in computers. -

- Computers. -

- Yeah. A complex program is not a single flow of instructions, right? You divide it, you make functions, classes, types of data... You find similar functions and you adapt them, you copy them, reduce them. You transform everything in manageable pieces 'cause it'd be impossible to a mind to develop a really complex system atom by atom. You divide everything so your mind's able to grasp it. -

- I understand. -

- Yeah. It's like this computer. You see a white screen. But that white screen it's made of thousands of bright dots, each one feed by a different amount of electricity, so it has a particular color. Each color is a bits array, but you don't work with bits but with bytes, kilobytes, megas... A line has infinite points, but if you see it like infinite dots you can't work with it. So you see it like a line, even when you know it's infinite dots. -

- Complexity - I vaguely feel my eyes unfocusing towards the ceiling's void. Of the millions of particles that make the ceiling, bricks, concrete and steel, the building... and beyond... But all join in buildings, cities, countries... All in modules made with parts made with parts...

Listening to world's breathing

2009-04-06T05:15:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

You can't help but sight in this place, in this way. Grass growing in the wet soil, air filled of its smell. The sky over us, the weight of her head on mi chest, the softness of her skin, hidden under cotton and wool but still so near, so easy to feel...
The wind moves her hair, tickling my nose. Mi own breath move it away in a quiet laugh. She moves a little, maybe asleep, maybe just easy this way, hugged. I feel her fingers moving over my skin, under my shirt. The air is getting colder but I don't feel cold, I just press a little her body, inside my arms. Sometimes I gotta resist to not try and getting her inside me by hugging her. It's like if being skin against skin were too far. I look the grass, so brightly green it's hard to believe, and the sky so blue that you couldn't think it's other color. Colors are so bright in here! So alive! The grass' green, the sky's blu, the cliff's black, maybe just brown darkened by this gray, green, blue sea...
Waves breath, long meters under us, like if the very world were asleep beside us... It's so easy to imagine just this place exist... So nice that wish, for it to be eternal in a long moment...

Rutine

2009-04-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

Shower is between the best inventions ever done. Water, hot or cold, hit your skin and slips in a wonderful way. It relax or awakes you just with a turn of the tap and change the water's temperature. You can focus on the sensation of water hitting you and ignoring the problems that are fighting for your attention inside your head. I wish there were antispam filters for the mind...
He came out of the shower and wipe himself while going to the only room of the little appartment, all-in-one, living room, bedroom, dinning room... In his parents' old house that were separate rooms, and here it was just a few square meters. Everybody lived like this nowdays, so he wasn't bother by that for a long time. The changes began in the previous generation, now everyone used their independency, the more stable was a contract with a company, and wasn't much stable. Companies tried to keep their employees depending on the employees. Those with a low education level were easier to subsitute, so they didn't bother in keeping them. The more formation, more experience, more titles you had, the better you were look after, but other companies also throw their offers, so eventually someone increases the bid and the employee changes company. This man in particular even wrote an article about the changes that proffesional life would bring to society. With all those changes: contract, company, apartment... renting would be the most popular. The frequency of residence change would make difficult to have too many things, so it would be less and in less space, less weight. Now almost no one had paper books, all were in electronic format. Laptops used to see television, rent movies online, read... Since there were less things to keep, houses didn't need so much space, so many closets or shelves. People was more free, or that said the commercials and optimistic journalists.
The other side of that coin was that with all those changes most people wouldn't look for stable relationships, the marriages would drop, the birth rate... At the end something balanced the others. The old people so cared by politicians end up dying, "solving" the sanity expenses (althought were the polititians who tried to get the merit of the economic resurgence)
Those weren't bad ideas, but he wasn't the only person able to look beyond a few years, and in that time almost everybody wrote their own ideas in the internet. Few became famous, and of these, most got it trought marketing companies and publishing houses.
Of course, none of these things worry this man. He was looking himself in the mirror, looking his hands making correctly the necktie's knot, despite with all the times he had did it was like seeing birds in the park. You see moving, but you don't need to tell them what to do. No there wasn't too many birds, of course, but when this man was a little boy it was normal. Nowdays parks are inside commercial centers, with clothing stores to teens, parks and toy shops for children, shops for their parents...
That man end getting ready, he took the jacket, throw a last look to his own reflection while setting up, and went out. Another work day, another life day. Another day to enterntain with until night. Until all those thoughts nobody wanted to hear in their heads.

Porcelain

2009-04-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

Porcelain dolls always have this somehow cold look. Those slightly smiling cold lips, those glittering eyes... They're like elegant doors closed, with the sensation that there's somebody spying you throught the keyhole, with a secret and frightening intention...
- Do you like her? - The old voice of this grandma wakes me up from my sinister thoughts. She's alone, or almost. Her sons don't visit her, they live in other state, I think, but she didn't want to go with them and them didn't wanted her to. So here I am, trying to disimulate I'm not really a volunteer.
- No. Well, I mean... -
- It's alright, child. No need to worry. Not everyone shares the same tastes. So, want to drink something? Coffee, tea? -
- Oh! I don't want to be a nuisance. I'm here to help if I can, after all. -
- Help? Ha! Child, I have been living alone since my husband, God keeps him in His glory, left me. I'm not so old I can't live alone. -
- But... I thought... I mean, in the volunteer program... -
- I registered there, but it wasn't out of need. I don't need someone to help me stand, or cleaning myself, thanks to God. I just want some company every once in a while, you know? -
- Oh! -
- Yes. Come on then, sit down. - She sits on the big armchair, and I do in the couch. Not knowing what to say, I look again to the dolls in the shelf. There must be a hundred, or more. All with the same look in their eyes.
- I like those dolls. They're very useful, in their own way. My little children. They help me feeling young. -
- How? -
- How? ha ha! Child, you'll know. You'll know. But first, tell me something about you. How was your name, again? -
- Laura. Laura Miles. -
- Oh! Yes, it's a beautiful name. So, Laura, my child, tell me about you. -
-I spend the next couple of hours talking about my life. My parents, the school, the things I say when someone ask me what I wanna be after college... She listen, smiling. Sometimes saying things like "Aha, wonderful" and that stuff. Then I stop talking and she says
- Wonderful, my child. I'm enjoying this afternoon, but it's going to be dark soon, and you should get home before that. But before you go... - She turns around and takes another of those porcelain dolls. She's dressed with a simple blue dress. Mrs Morris sits next to me in the coach.
- This one is for you, my child. Don't say anything, this will help you understand why I love this dolls so much. Take it. I'm sure it will look wonderfully on your bed.
-I take it, a bit reluctantly. But how can I say no? It's just a doll, after all.
Later, after having dinner, I go to my room and look the doll I put on the desk. It's a bit odd. Its eyes don't glitter, and its lips and skin don't have that caracteristic look of porcelain. It could be a simple plastic doll, apart from the weight. I put it on a shelf, next to my textbooks.
...
At last, today is the last time I have to come here. Mrs Morris is kind and all, but I still don't like that house. Actually, I think that place has something to do with my cought. Since I were there the first time, I cought, I have headaches and even my joints hurt. Maybe I got a virus or something. I don't understand how that old woman can live there. And there's the dolls thing. All those dolls. Everytime I see them it's like they were trying to get my attention, with those awfully cold eyes... If they weren't just dolls, I'd swear I feel their eyes stinging like splinters. Even the one I have in my room, the one Mrs Morris gave me, it's beginning to be as bad. I think it's getting more glittering each day, and colder. I can't understand how I thought it was like a plastic doll. It's porcelain all right. When I'm in my room I gotta put that thing to the wall or I think I feel those eyes too, staring at me.
But that's gonna disappear. Today is the last day of this "volunteering". At least if I were a volunteer, but this is punishment 'cause that little joke. How could I know it was gonna be him the first in crossing that door, anyway? It should have been the history teacher.
Anyway, I'm here and I knock the door. Mrs Morris don't make me wait. She never does, anyway. She smiles and welcomes me. As I enter, I notice a cake on the table. She sees where I'm looking to, and speaks.
- You told me today was gonna be the last day you were to come here, so I thought it would be nice to have something special. -
- Oh! You didn't have to worry! Anyway, I can come back once in a while, despite not being in the volunteer group! - Well, at least I could, I think, if I wanted to.
- No, no. - She says - You're too young to be wasting your time with an old woman like me. You have to live the life of the young, pretty girl you are. And now, sit down and let's eat that cake. I made it myself. -
She now starts monologuing about how she enjoys to cook, specially sweet things, that there are enough bad things in the world to not eat cakes, and confections, and things... And I let her talk, nodding from time to time. If I just hadn't these cough attacks, and the headache, I think I could have enjoyed that last afternoon with Mrs Morris. Anyway, tomorrow I can sleep in late. Maybe that can take this damn pain out of my head and bones...
...
The old woman has wet eyes while Mrs Miles tells her about her daughter's death. "It seemed a normal flu" she's saying. "But something wasn't normal. Young people don't die of a flu, not these days after all."
After some time trying to comfort her, the old woman asks:
- I gave Laura one of my porcelain dolls. I thought she could like it. Now... I, well, I hope you don't mind me asking this, but I would like to take that doll back with me, to my house, as a memory of the time I could be with her. She was so special, you know... -
With tears in her cheeks, Mrs Miles nod, and stands. Together, the two women go upstairs and enter the room. Then Mrs Miles can't keep walking and after some tears more, she says she'll wait out of the room. Mrs Norris nod, and enter the room. She take the doll as she knew exactly where it was. The two women go back the living room, and Mrs Norris says goodbye to her before going out of the house. She rises the doll and look into its eyes.
- Now you understand, right, Laura? Yes, my child. That's why. -
Then she put her lips over the doll's mouth. To anyone it would seem like an old woman kissing a porcelain doll, but they wouldn't be able to see that Mrs Norris was inspiring. If instead of a doll were a baby, she would have been sucking the air out of his little lungs.
She sighs and smile.
- Nothing like this to keep you healthy, my child. Now let's go. I have the perfect place for you in my house... -Mrs Norris start walking towards her house. And I would be crazy if I say she looked a bit younger.
But she did.

Water and sand

2009-03-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

Original - Spanish

And before me, the sea.
I wonder what path should I take. Night is dark, moonlight barley gets through the clouds, and the water is guessed, like a whispering shadow, veining here and there bu dim white strips of spray.
The beach's sand seem gray, I feel it fresh and humid under my naked feet. I look the coastline on my right, stretching towards the horizon until be lost in the darkness.
I look back for a moment, towards the promenade's lights. The little town, filled with tourists like every summer, now seems lonely, in mid september.
What's happening to my mind? I almost don't do anything but decide to enter in the sea and swim towards the deep shadows of this night when sand gets my attention, sand, and walking on its wet surface towards it mixes with darkness...
May it be because both paths are unknown?
Beach seems to be smiling, it seems misterious and known at the same time. What will be in it? What could I find in the path, if I keep in it?
Kisses? Caresses? Whispers in the darkness? A breathing in my chest?

And on the other side of this sea of shadows?
Dark reefs? Other beaches? Other lives? Just the cold and wet hug of the shadow, perhaps?
Maybe there'll be lights inside the concrete blocks, maybe'll be happiness in this beach, just beyond that first turn made by the sea...
But my feet are already walking in the water.
Shadows meander, climbing to my knees, leaving strips of spray when they go back, taking it again every time they come up, with every step. I keep looking the beach, and the sea. The sea and the beach. Will I find this same sand in the other side? Will this one be here yet when I'll come back?
Will I come back?

Two unknown paths in places without paths.
Sand and water.
Water or sand.

Stars behind, earth below

2009-03-27T06:26:00.001-07:00

Original - Spanish

Too much time has passed

while I was seeking guide in the stars.

Too many times I've waited for her call

while just air I felt under my feet,

and then, looking around,

I see in the mirror that time didn't waited,

that opened doors closed,

that phones stopped ringing,

tired of not been answered,

and that travelers of the past

won't come back.

You can say it anyway you want,

but to look for answers

in the stars

just distracts you from the path.

A last attempt I've tried

to get the attention

of the star I was born under...

But still doesn't answer,

and custom, and looking awake,

have keep me away from getting lost again

listening in vain, looking for an answer.

Now is the soil what I feel under my feet,

step by step, I feel my toes on the dark earth,

full of hidden lives, still unborned.

Hidden seeds, heat, humidity, nourishment...

Everything's ready to raise,

just waiting for the time.

It's over to hide behind walls,

getting lost reading and imagining

what is beyond, and what could be but is not?

I'll go to see, but not to look.

I'm not searching, but I'm willing to find.

The sky now is just world's background.

Sun is a teacher illuminating the dark.

Moon is and old friend pointing new perspectives,

leaving half-truths and half-fantasies.

I embrace the earth

and feel that they feel it was about time,

that they're glad.

It's over the keeping inside the inside

and outside the outside.

Now inside and outside

is just something temporary.

Things from inside will go outside,

things from outside will come inside.

No more barriers,

just lintels and open doors.

I don't exchange outside by inside,

I don't leave the inside.

I just want everything,

despite not wanting anything.

It's difficult to explain:

is travel between worlds,

changing when my wind decides.

Decide my own path.

It's not looking to the others and their wishes,

neither to oppose nor to follow them.

If I walk the path other want me to, ok.

If he doesn't want me to, ok.

Decisions and that's all.

Nothing more to see,

just a man,

with the stars behind,

and the earth below.

Four rusted footprints

2009-03-26T07:24:00.001-07:00

Original - Spanish

Water keeps falling over the footprints behind us. At the beginning, the raindrops' humidity darkened the soil, but bit by bit the soil became clay, and the footprints that were clearly defined now are blurred. The time, the wind and rain keeps eroding them. I wonder if they'll disappear, or if they already disappeared and it's just my imagination what puts them before my eyes. Despite the footprints disapearance, they were there, weren't they? The fact doesn't disappear, just its consequences...

Bit by bit the footprints will rust, the color became more reddish and ruined, and will become old with this city. Our four footprints, between the ruins of the buildings surrounding us, our four footprints gone from the place they were, but that we'll remember as long as our mind keeps working.

How will we remember them? We'll come to think that it was a mistake to take that path? Finally they brought us to we didn't think they would.

And now?

Now it's time to left this footprints, and walk making new ones. Let this footprint become blurred, let them disappear along with the time, let's keep them in out memory and let's keep walking.

Four rusted footprints behind us. How many to make?

Colored Feathers

前に ・ Forward

To Meg

Crossing the border

Plastic and glass

The psicologist

Travel

Summer break

Funny, huh?

Love for love

First hand information

F16Jp346

What will happen tomorrow?

Bytes

Who wants to live forever?

Four Hours

A revelation

Talking with you... without you

To Shiho

From the people of Nazca

- MFS March 08 contest -

White

Listening to world's breathing

Rutine

Porcelain

Water and sand

Stars behind, earth below

Four rusted footprints

前に　・　Forward