Loosing the green

Hello

There is nothing like a score card, the greatest invention since the appearance of the black thread. It is amazing how in a glance you can visualize the results of thousands of people of your company in a simple and colorful matrix. The yellow means that you have been working but not hard enough. You need to double efforts. The supervisor explains some external and inevitable circumstances who affected the otherwise perfect performance. The Director looks at him and says nothing. He expects a better result next month, quarter or period. “This is just a warning” seems to express with his blue eyes. The color of the fresh blood is the red. Passion, courage and love are its meanings, however in the universe of the score card red means failure, delay and danger. Red is the color of the incompetence. The supervisor explained that these other areas did not provide their part in the process, “we are a system after all”. They are red because the internal or external world have put in front of them unavoidable obstacles which nevertheless with titanic struggles the team wes able to overcome to achieve the current results, undoubtedly insufficient but impossible for anyone else. The Director speaks this time a couple of words which can be translated as unacceptable failure. The supervisor is marked, in a couple of weeks he will leave the company side by side with a couple of security guards. No body liked him anyway. The new supervisor is even more handsome.

The final supervisor does not express a word. He is just leaning in his chair, looking at the score card projected in the meeting room. The walls are of bleach white, the lines of the furniture are straight and clean. The only light abandons a invisible device behind the audience and spread its digital beam to them. Bit by bit the scorecard is built. This supervisor’s project is green which means simply perfection. Nobody asks anything to him. He is about to explain how he lead his team in the attainment of such grandiose accomplishment when the Director moves his hand commanding to go to the next line. The supervisor retracts his proud smile for a second and then smiles again. This is what was expected, a job well done is why the company pays him. The supervisor gets home in his BMW, his wife and children are sleep. He turns his computer for a couple of minutes, he will not disturb anyone and he cannot go to bed this early. His team is still working at the office. What the world would do without post its?, he thinks while browsing in the emails he is receiving from China. A flawless “post it” is a way of saving humanity. In each of the houses in his block in this wonderful suburb faint lights can be seen through the windows as luminescent evidence that computers are still on. The score card should be green, the crystal screen is the only light, and this is such a wonderful life.

Read each other soon!

Inchoate

This is still an inchoate week. The word means something that is partially in existence or operation. Today is Tuesday so we can say that this week is just the beginning of something. We ignore what is going to be the final balance. Inchoate is full of expectations; however the word implies more an unfinished characteristic than a work in progress status. This entrance was inchoate yesterday and only today, Wednesday, I have the strength to end.
Finally San Luis (my hometown by adoption) was on the news today, in the front page of one of the most important news papers: “Marcelo de los Santos (the Governor of the state) inaugurated it; he mentioned it proudly in his annual inform; and six months later, the shinning new high way is impassable”. There was a picture with the note that demonstrates the text. This is not unusual in Mexico, the unusual thing is to have it in the front page. Bad luck?
San Luis was also mentioned last week in the news it was the city from where the defunct Secretary of State started his fatal flight, his inchoate return to home.
Apparently, San Luis is becoming famous, maybe it should remain in anonymity.

The Barasala
Last weekend I went to a Barasala. This is a Hindu cradle party. My inseparable Queen of the Desert came with me. As she barely leaves her palace, when we went to buy a present for the little child, she was trying to take with her all the indispensable items that cannot be found among the perennial sands where she lives. When I finally took away from her the pair of motorcycles brakes we were almost late and without a present: -We do not even have a motorcycle- I said, -With motorcycles one never knows- she responded cryptically and put them back in the shelf.
We choose a nice toy and begun our march to the party. The evening was cold and dark. The lamps of the car drilled the shadows as wood drills gray iron. In this problematic environment it was within the logical expectations to have problems to reach the party precinct. I had troubles. A bad turn transformed our peaceful joyride into a Blair Project 3 (with a vengeance), at least from the perspective of the Desert Queen. She is used to see the golden sand illuminated by the pale moon every nigh for miles and miles therefore to feel herself trapped in the obscure embracement of enormous trees was certainly disturbing. –Are you crazy??!! Do you even know where are we going? Oh, now we are going to be killed here!! This is a disaster!! I want to get out of the car!- among all the calamities she prognosticated she said something that hastily inflamed the delicate combustible of manliness – You need to call someone and ask for directions- She said, and all the sudden the car was deadly quiet. Only the whisper of the pneumatics surfing the black asphalt could be heard. What happened next, I will write tomorrow.

Read each other soon!!

Words

My English teacher was aware of how the most subtle combination generates the most profound impact. Not a lot of people know that is not the same to write “blue dog’s eyes” and “eyes of blue dog”. If not the meaning, the feeling that each representation evokes are different. This image extracted from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story has haunted me for years. I was not able to fully understand it until I saw my dog howling in my parents’ room. Its whole body was in the back yard and only his huge head was leaned out the window inside the house. I saw his eyes of despair and melancholy and then I understood what Marquez had written.
What I am trying to explain is that words have a life of their own, their own location in the puzzle of sentences, and even their own time. With this said, I need to confess that I have the necessity to learn more English words, therefore from now on, all the entries are going to be about a word that I need to memorize. I believe this is not going to stop me to write what I want but still I felt obliged to communicate it to my three readers (kisses mum!!!).
From words as a unit or as a universe a lot of references can be made. I will do two. The first one is a movie with Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche. Bee Season (Scott McGehee, David Siegel; 2005) is a story of a little girl who finds love in words. His father, Gere, never paid her much attention until one day she decides to participate in the US National spelling contest (As a note for non US people: Spelling Bee is how the participants are named). Gere is a Jewish university professor that is also intrigued by words, and he starts teaching his daughter not only for the contest, but also how to interpret the kabbalah and some esoteric texts. This instruction is labyrinthine to the point, that some Jewish believe that the real name of God (not Jehovah or Yahweh) is hidden somewhere. And the one capable of discover that name, would be granted with immense wisdom. The little girl finds in words the way to unite her family, because family is also a word. However, she does not forget that word’s true value resides in the action or object which they represent. Bee Season is a decent film with decent acting, its main value resides in its portray of the power of words and a narration of a family that should be happy but it is not.
The second reference is about a survey elaborated in the framework of the 550 anniversary of the movable types print. A web site asked web surfers to suggest and vote for their favorite Spanish word. The number one word was Amor (love) followed by freedom, peace and life and then the first word that was selected because of the word itself was: Azahar. It means a small flower but its sound is just gorgeous. Words that come from Arabic language are fascinating in Spanish. Actually, the word I propose was Almohada (pillow) which has a similar sound but a much profound meaning. Of course it was not even in the top 25. To me Almohada is the place of our nightmares and dreams, where we lean our head to awaken our thoughts, where we make our decisions, where we share our tears, where we start many voyages, and where we catch a brand new day.
Words are much more that letters are things and thoughts and they also sound cute.
Reach each other soon!!!

Absences

When I was child I used to observe the empty desks in my classroom. It was an amusing game to imagine the children that should occupy them. Sometimes, the desk was always untaken. Without small hands to dirt it and without a small body to bring it to life. Other times, I knew the abasent child: Tom “the obese”, Jorge “the chocorrol” (French roll), Tomas “the fried potato”, Pedro “the four eyes”. Nicknames are but literary expressions of both infants’ cruelty and imagination. I used to think about the reason of their absence. The stories could be as complicated as they being abducted by a parallel dimension or as simple as they going with their parents to buy a new pair of shoes.
At one point of the day the curtains were swayed by the air and a warm ray of sunlight rested softly in the clean and empty seat while children laugh and play near to it. The desk looked as it were in a totally different part though, far way from that classroom, school and world. Its life was somewhere else.
In those days I learnt by instinct what an absence means. Not the cross teachers used in the attendance list to certify the ephemeral inexistence, an absence is the untold joke, the missed shake hands and the not played game.
Absence is to grant space with a silent voice while shouting off the speech of life.
I remember the empty seat of my friend in first grade. The one I met again 12 years later. We were again in the same classroom but we could not sit in the same places.
Empty places modify everything with their absences if they last long enough. Vacuum can be as powerful as matter.
This is not a pompous mood for Monday, I know, but sometimes future absences can anchor future melancholy.

We read each other tomorrow.

Cartoon Image

There are plenty of good ideas which reach certain point and then take the wrong decisions. For instance, you can invite your girlfriend to a movie (good idea) and then you chose a semi porno film (bad idea). You are planning to have calm vacations and then you chose to go to Las Vegas. You want to quit smoking and then you start drinking whiskey instead. I’m not going to write about depressing things today, it is Friday. These examples are felicitous enough to make my point.

Morning shows in the US are an ebullient evidence of good ideas going wrong. It is enormously reasonable to have a fun way to start the morning, give some news with a friendly tone and start your day with a smile. However, at a point they became complaisant.

The fake smiles of the hosts, the weather man who needs to be also funny; reading the weather is not science but a comical sketch; the ephemeral invitees that speak for thirty seconds, the over-recycled jokes, their soft voice when they comment a tragedy. Host’s palette of emotions is restricted by the commercial value of each gesture. Dichotomy is not a marketing strategy: “our product is the only one that can help you”. Therefore morning shows cannot afford to be controversial. Obtuse stories and ambiguous commentaries that always are finalized with a boring joke. Laughing at the end of each segment remembers the audience that their life is better because they are looking the show. Of course if you are happy you can go to buy some health insurance, minivan or whatever makes you happier.

Movie stars and singers are also there, still speaking for just a minute, a brief pause between Blue Cross and the local advertisements which have the true staring roles of the show. No real questions, please promote your movie, or your disk while we get a couple of viewers who for some reason are willing to watch 40 minutes of commercials and other 20 of fatuous reports, just to watch for a few seconds to their favorite idol.

How difficult is to sell minutes if you have Zack Efron or Keith Urban in a hermetically hidden part of the oversized TV program? How difficult is to sell minutes when you have elicit stories like “the banana diet”? How difficult is to sell minutes if you have 10 seconds of traffic report?

Morning shows are cartoon monsters that eat time and neurons. There is no question why satirical programs as the Simpsons find a vast field to harvest in them.

Watching any “Good Morning!” show is to continue sleep. And there are too many things to do at dawn.

Like planning how many beers we are going to drink at night.

Read each other next week!

What women want

On year 2000, Nancy Meyers directed this movie with Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. It is about a man who for some ambigous reason can hear women thoughts. The movie fails in many aspects (not in the box office that is for sure) one of them is in portraying women’s ability of thinking in more than 1 thing at onece. This single fact would have made impossible for Mel Gibson to understand them. Hear thoughts is impossible anyway, screenwriters Josh Goldsmith, Cathy Yuspa, Diane Drake may have argued.

The conclusion of the movie shows that what women want is to be loved and listened. Any man able to do this will win their heart for sure. Even the heart of Helen Hunt who play a beautifull, successful, intelligent woman.

Reality is much more fierce that this. The answer of what women want, however, lies in another movie. Meet the Parents (Jay Roach, 2008) Well, the answer it is not exactly in this half funny movie (I can hear the crowd insulting me because most people think it is hilarious, sorry guys) but in the song that Randy Newman wrote for it.

The name of the song is “A fool in love”. With this acrid sense of humor that only rockers have. Newman is able to portray the situation of a man who is in love. The first stanza of the song is very illustrative:”Give me a man/who is gentle and kind/and I will show you a looser/now give me man/who takes what he wants/ohhh how exciting/so the poet says” It is sang with a Broadway musical style and in the final part, when it is talking about the aggressive man, the tone and chorus (even some in counter point) emerge as an apotheosis.

Randy Newman is not being naive at all, which is amazing if you think about the movie. He is being completely honest and unveils the mystery of what women wants. I would like to talk further about this song, but I do not have anymore space. I will deconstruct it in the next entry. I hate sequential entries.

Read each other soon!!

El camino marcado

Muy pocos desconocen la trama principal de Hansel y Gretel. Los niños que marcan su camino con migajas para poderlo encontrar de regreso. Para esos pequeños, no sólo significaba la única forma de volver a casa también significa una prueba de su existencia. Nada hay en el mundo que compruebe que uno ha pasado por aquí a no ser esas boronas que dejamos por la vida. En la mayoría de las ocasiones las esposas desconocen estos profundos significados filosóficos y por ello toman a mal el transitar, de los siempre pensantes esposos, de la alacena hasta el sofá en dónde se desarrolla el partido estelar del fin de semana y la estela de partículas que lo comprueba.
-¡Llevate un plato!- dice una
-¡Ya estas ensuciando el sofa!- grita la otra
El hecho es que no entienden que esas papas o palomitas regadas en la sala son la única prueba de que hemos sido testigos de una derrota o triunfo de nuestro esquipo favorito.
Tan mundanas como son, se pierden en la forma e ignoran el profundo significado de la borona en la recien labada alfombra o la mancha de salsa en el cojín de terciopelo. Y es que la grandeza no les está permitida a todos. Y ellas so pretexto de que habrán de limpiar más tarde quieren interrumpir esa catarsis de emoción y existencia. ¿Se puede pelear una guerra sin bajas? ¿Se puede ganar una batalla sin pérdidas? Ese cacahute que rueda para esconderse a la sombra de la pata del sofá, esa fritura que se esconde entre las comisuras del repaldo y el asiento, son despojos inevitables así como una prueba igualmente inevitable de que existimos al mismo tiempo que nuestro partido, nuestro encuentro.
Todo esto no lo entienden nuestros personales capullitos de alelí y lo reducen a un simple monólogo de orden y limpieza.
El día que Hansel y Gretel perdieron sus migajas en el bosque, llegaron al pie de la casa de una bruja que los capturo para comerlos. Ese es el olvido.
Donde haya espectadores enfrente de una televisión habrá migajas que confirmen nuestra existencia y la existencia de ese momento, las mismas migajas que nos traeran de regreso. Eso no lo entienden nuestras esposas quienes piensan que el recogedor, los platos y la aspiradora son las las pruebas de su valia. Para ellas, un lugar limpio es una prueba de que existen. Y así vamos por la vida el destrodos y el eros siguiendose en círculos el luno al otro hasta que se encuentran y en un beso perdonan la existencia y la muerte.
Al final Hansel y Gretel regresan a su padre, el mismo que ha permitido que se fueran. Ellos lo perdonan y viven felices.
Las mujeres limpian y los hombre ensucian. Mientras ambos se sigan perdonando seguira habiendo partidos de fin de semana y cenas de discupa todos los días. Las migajas que dejamos en el corazón son la mejor prueba de nuestra existencia.

Nos estamos leyendo

Todavía no encuentro lo que he estado buscando

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C8MDTF66

La mirada acusadora

El logro de un espacio en la residencia familiar en ocasiones es una misión imposible. Por alguna razón las esposas piensan que el marido es una máquina inanimada cuyo único objetivo en la vida es hacer algo. Lo que sea. Cuando lo ven a uno sentado con un libro en el regazo o de plano tendido en la cama. Las amorosas cónyuges sufren horrores. He aquí que puede uno estar tranquilamente sentado, entonces, como si nada, pasa la consorte y de reojo te ve. No dice nada y la mirada furtiva quizás te pase desapercibida. Después de 5 minutos vuelve a pasar. A lo mejor se le olvidó revisar si había papel de baño (posiblemente se acabo en los 5 minutos que estuvo ausente), quizás noto una arruga de 1 micrómetro en la sábana de la cama, o un movimiento milimétrico en los libros de la repisa. Todo esto, lo sabemos, son desperfectos de la mayor magnitud que exigen ser arreglados a la brevedad. Cuando nuestros personales capullitos de alelí efectúan esta tarea urgente se vuelven hacia dónde estamos y en esta ocasión nos lanzan una mirada que ya raya en el intento de asesinato. Pero calladas, (sólo lo suficiente para no molestar a los vecinos) arreglan el desperfecto de manera minimalista: vuelven a tender toda la cama o quitan todos los libros de la repisa para acomodarlos nuevamente. A estas alturas el tranquilo jefe de familia reafirma que ha desposado a una dama hacendosa y diligente. Casi sonreímos con esa alegría interna de haber hecho una buena elección. Esa mujer lasciva de mala reputación con la que por poco contraemos nupcias nos habría llevado a un mundo de placeres ocultos y pecaminosos del cual habríamos despertado (si despertábamos) casi moribundos. En cambio nuestra esposita nos demuestra su amor en el cuidado que pone a nuestra residencia construida con tantos sacrificios.

Una vez arreglado el desperfecto en cuestión ella se va. El consorte disfruta de ese momento de tranquilidad y satisfacción de hallarse con la persona correcta en el lugar correcto. Hasta que un sartén le pega en la cabeza y por poco y se la saca de un tajo

-¿Qué traes vieja?, ¿casi me descalabras?- pregunta cariñoso y sorprendido.

-¡Chin!, yo quería descalabrarte-

-¿Por qué?-

-¡Eres un holgazán! Estas viendo que estoy arreglando la casa y ni siquiera te acomides-

-Tengo 10 minutos leyendo mi libro-

-Claro, primero son tu cosas y después las mías, bien me lo advirtió mi madre que me estaba casando con patizambo egoísta-

-Son los primeros 10 minutos de lectura que tengo en el mes-

-¿Y cuantos minutos de descanso crees que yo he tenido desde que nos casamos? La casa siempre es un tiradero que tengo que recoger yo a cada minuto y además están los niños-

-Vieja, no tenemos hijos-

-Pues como si los tuviéramos, me debí de haber casado con aquel millonario que me agarró la pierna en el banco-

-Te agarró la pierna porque le estabas pisando el juanete con tu tacón de 10 centímetros-

-¡Claro que no! Pero lo peor es que tú lo dejaste. Permitiste que un extraño me arrebatara mi virtud.

-Nada más te quito el tacón de su pie además yo todavía no te conocía en aquel entonces. Tú me contaste el incidente-

-¿Y eso te disculpa?-.

En este punto el firme consorte ha perdido el duelo. Nada podrá brindarle la victoria, tendrá que ceder e ir de compras o instalar la máquina para hacer ejercicios que se convertirá a la sazón de unos cuantos días en el recolector de polvo oficial de la vivienda.

Lo más curioso es que cuando ya esté en ese trance lo hará de buena gana porque el amor, nadie puede dudarlo. Es una cosa misteriosa.

Nos estamos leyendo.