I hurted myself

Friday night,I hurted my left arm and leg: nothing serious, but I can't write with my left hand. So you know: leave a lot of comments and write a lot on your own blogs, for I will be some days without being able to post here (and with some time to read, too). Take care, I'll miss you all.

Happy solitude (a title for my (un)wanted life)

"Y algunas veces suelo recostar mi cabeza en el hombro de la luna y le hablo de una amante inoportuna que se llama soledad"

"And sometimes I lay my head on the shoulders of the moon, and I talk to her about an unwanted lover whose name is solitude"

In the mood for love

Today I watched "In the mood for love" for the second time this week. I had a pizza with Torjman at La Bella Napoli (best napolitan pizza in Barcelona) and then we got into the cinema. Since I had watched In the mood for love last Saturday, I thought of going and watch some David Cronenberg's crap, but finally we decided to go for Wong Kar Wai. And man, it was awesome again.
On the one hand, I discovered I had not understood half of the movie the first time I saw it, and felt proud of myself for being able to understand a piece of art if I am given a second chance. On the other hand, I realised why I have wanted so much to become a cinema director, and why I will never get to be one. The colors, the light, the rythm of this movie is just so completely different from the cinema I have watched lately (and I do watch A LOT of cinema) Not even the best advertisements (probably the purest form of art nowadays) get to achieve something similar. There's a mood, yes, that's it, there's a mood through all this movie, and you can get inside and feel it so deeply. I don't know if it's a mood for love or despair, for coldness or warmth,... and Maggie Cheung, well, I am wordless before her. Her face, her expression, her legs. Definitely, if you get a chance, go and watch it. If possible, in a cinema, a lonely cinema, like the Melies Cinemes at Barcelona. With silence, silence before the music of Wong Kar Wai.

M

You should be working now! Stop reading my blog!

A punto de fumar un porro

Estoy escuchando a Barney Kessel tocar Speak Low, habla bajito. Y me apetece gritar, gritar de felicidad o de tristeza, pero gritar porque no estás junto a mí, porque ni tan siquiera sé quién eres. El CD cambia ahora a Love is here to stay, el amor llegó para quedarse. Amor, quisiera acariciarte y decirte sinceramente que te quiero, que quiero cada instante de tu piel rozándome la palma de la mano, los labios. El gusto de tu piel, las cerezas de tus mejillas. Tus manos, tus manos abrazan mi cadera ahora mismo, siento el calor, el aura de tus manos recorriendo los rincones de mi alma como un huracán suave de placer. Y luego el ruido plácido del tiempo perdido, las contracciones de tu estómago golpeando el mío. Y tus ojos, joder ahora el clarinete enfila How long has this been going on, la guitarra en el transfondo como cama plácida por donde la melodia revuelve las sábanas de las notas precisas. Esa guitarra, que ahora puntea delicada, sin estragos, las notas precisas de mi sentimiento, la burbuja de mi alma al fin penetrada, vencido el dolor de la vida. Agujas de placer absoluto esas notas, y el humo en mi boca. Te quiero.

Nat King Cole (II)

Jojo said it better than I could possibly do. The cheap Jazz and Blues CDs come to our hands "as if someone, a force that goes beyond reckoning, has decided to subsidize this blessful music throughout the world." How much I like that image, that concept, that idea. Now, it's all of us subsidizing this music through the peer-to-peer networks. But those cheap CDs had, and have, something else. It's a magic I just can't get to describe accurately. It's a magic that's here to stay, with me, with jojo, forever. We will always have Paris, we will always have Nat King Cole singing Route 66. Just 6 euros, a long, long time ago.

The Internet Law

A new law, (La Ley de Internet) "the internet law", is going to be approved in March in Spain, by our very appreciated socialist government. The law will make the ISPs liable for the content they transmit, including the "ilegal" files being uploaded and downloaded through peer-to-peer file swapping software, such as Kazaa or Emule. In other words, ISPs are liable for all the mp3 and divx being downloaded every day in Spain. At UC Berkeley, I had a professor who warned us about the control governments can apply to the Internet, very much in the style of Lessig (it was already back in 2001) A year later, at LSE, I had a professor who said socialist governments are the worst thing. Back in Spain, I made a presentation for a graduate course, and my professor (a socialist, of course) said I was too pessimist, and that my views about a perfectly controlled internet with the help of governments was all too biased and irrealistic.
Well, here you have it. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, our beloved socialist government spent 8000 milion euros organising a global sustainable and cultural encounter (to be repeated in four years in Monterrey, my dear Jojo) The same government raised the tickets to the filmoteque from 60 cents to one euro. Fuck, I really wanted to be a socialist, you know.

(In)significant daily problems

It took me 20 minutes to reply an email using hotmail... is this normal? Everyday I have some sort of problem with hotmail, like I can't never sign in at once. I have to refresh, and refresh, and refresh... it's really hot in Seattle, or so they say.

An email I just wrote

Yes, what the hell is going on? I've just read some of the last emails from the list and I can't help feeling a bit disgusted by words like: yucky, yummy, guppy, cracky, ...
What the hell is going on with you, people? And you, Gabor? Why have you learnt to write better English? I used to be a good writer, and you used to be such a good bad writer... and now I see you using all these guppy words.
For some reason, it seems like you have to use this kind of words to show you are mastering the English language. And it turns out those words are the worst thing about the English language. I just hate this -y sounding words, they are so... I don't know, the infest whatever you write with a sense of californian girl stupidity that I just can't tolerate, my skin suddenly irritated. Ah... my friends stay in the States, and of course they learn more and more English, and I start to feel I don't belong to their vocabulary anymore... where are you, guy-by-the-fountain-in-Bancroft? Have you also learnt to put yucky between your sentences? Are you walking on a cracky floor? Do you eat donuts which are so yummy yummy? Please, don't tell me if this is the case... The other day I saw you behind a dark, long curtain inside the cinema. They played Ragging Bull and then In the mood for love. I just watched the movies play, and felt the beauty of a good film again penetrating my blood and flooding my whole body with a sense of peace of mind. The peace of a quiet, warm and embracing time, as time goes by.

Living with your mother

What I precisely hate about it is when, for instance, I want to go to bed at 22h and smoke a quiet joint in my room. I just can't. Precisely on the days I really want to do that, my mom will decide to go to bed very late, like 0:30 or more (when she's usually in bed no latter than 23h) It's like they had a radar: they sense you want to be alone and free, and thus they decide to spoil it. And I suspect it's not just moms, it's anybody you live with. My father likes to say that one thing nobody will never accept is the fact that you want to do what you want at any moment.
Take today, for instance. Fuck, I prepared dinner and everything, then it was 23h and I just demanded a bit of loneliness. It wasn't welcomed. I had my mom entering my room several times for different reasons, or, what I hate the most, just entering and starting making my bed and putting the clothes in the closet, saying no words. Man, how much I hate that, it just makes me want to scream so loud. Anyway.

Nat King Cole

I am listening to him now. Probably you know him as a popular singer, but he was also an excellent jazz pianist and singer, and his recordings with a quartet are very appreciated among the connaisseurs. As for me, I got a double CD by Nat for just 6 euros, a long time ago, I think in the supermarket downstairs. But I listen to it all the time. In fact, the CDs I listen to the most, are those I bought in supermarkets, gas and train stations, press kiosks and the like. Always very cheap, usually very simple in design, but containing such good music. Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday. And Nat King Cole. And all of the so cheap, and so good. I wonder who is in charge of this cheap collections of delicious music. I wonder who.

Summer night

It's freezing cold outside, and home it feels like a summer night. Silence has taken over the air, and I think that tomorrow it's Ann's birthday and we'll go out and celebrate the unstoppable direction of time. I like to think of a young woman full of life, maybe 21 year old, the skin obscenly fresh hiding the meat of a juicy white peach. I'd like to eat it now, because whenever I have the chance to spend a few days with my girlfriend, and then I come back to loneliness, whenever that happens, I was saying, I feel like biting every women's arm or cheek that gets a bit closer. Like today, when I wanted to grab you delicately and kiss you and then torjman crossed my mind, like the rotten hole inside a dream. Torjman, always him, so mechanically precise.
Somebody's knocking on my window: I'm scared. I am really scared. Should I look outside? What if I really find somebody? A scared face, probably. Somebody, somebody knocking outside in the freezing cold under the night's blanket.

Why I don't blog

Things going on in my life lately, preventing the fruitman from blogging:
1) 9-day trip to Hong Kong.
2) coming back on Sunday midnight and having to work the following morning, just 6 hours after.
3) 1+2 gives terrible jet lag... yesterday as i touched my head i realised i got
a terrible headache just by pressing one finger against it... and you know, i sort of got the stupid idea of keep pressing my head with one finger until i felt asleep.
4) the fruitman has a gmail account, and plays around with it as a girl with new blue suede shoes.
5) the fruitman gets back home and hates having to talk to his mom or anybody else, and just tries to get alone in bed as soon as possible.

International fruitman

I hereby inagurate this new posting category. I am writting from a cybercafe inside Hong Kong's tallest building, the IFC. I had a salmon sandwich and a perrier bottle of sparkling water. Very chinese, you can tell.

Geeky fantasy island

Here it is

I am there

Yes, I got here 12 hours ago. Terrible jet lag. The sun going out. The birds start singing. Blogging at 7:09am, man, that's really something I never did before.

Leaving again

Yes, I am again heading off on holidays to the oriental lands. I wonder whether the blog will suffer from my trip, but you know, that's the internet: no matter where I write from, you won't be able to tell.

By the way, this is my table now:

1) a joint to the left, a lighter to the right.

2) in the lower front the laptop, the upper front the window: dark outside, cannot tell the lights of the buildings and the streets since the window i quite high, too high on the wall.

3) a thought wandering around: do you prefer me to start each item with a capital letter?

4) a pile of old magazines, folders and papers to the left. on top of it, a wine-red t-shirt with the title of a woody allen movie printed on it: the curse for the jade scorpion.

5) books on shelfs, books on tables, books on the floor: and i haven't read a whole novel for such a long time! i am more of a book starter.

6) the wireless connection cable plugged to the laptop: the cable is like a mouse tail or a fake toy snake.

7) my bed, impolute, so well made: warm and cozy, my dear bed how much i love you.

8) the spanish guitar, alhambra, inside its case: bonapster, what about my electric guitar?

9) another thought: Choche is in the air, jojo is inside the joint: oh fuck, jojo, are you ok inside there?

10) you, somewhere, maybe hidding inside the bed, maybe waiting at the other side of the door... somewhere, you, bye bye, i am leaving again.

Sabes?

Sí, claro, seguro que sabes. Pero quizá no sepas que en las noches me debato entre nubes de humo verde, ciego, ignorante del perfume que me condujo al fondo de tu falda, oscuro como la luz del sol en la noche que quizá no sepas. En la noche, todo termina en la noche, en mi noche que es a menudo la tuya, cuando tumbas tu cuerpo invisible sobre mi alma húmeda de recuerdos secos; seca alma ávida de humedad.

Pensé en decirte lo bonito que sería repetir lo que nunca llegamos a consumar. Pensé en decirte que vinieras conmigo y regresáramos a la vida verdadera, atrapados en el río de la felicidad que no se siente pero se puede tocar. Debería planear este año, ¿sabes? Construir mi pequeño proyecto y que al terminar el diciembre que viene esté orgulloso de su maduración, como de un buen vino recién embotellado.

Sí, lo ves, ya no estoy enamorado. Puedes verlo en las combinaciones de palabras que construyo, ¿verdad? Por ejemplo esta última, qué fea, y esta todavía más, y esta. Esta. Antes... Antes tu cuerpo caliente y mercurioso en su fuga alimentaba mi fuego nocturno. Antes te tocaba y sentía algo completamente nuevo cada vez, y a medida que te descubría quería fundirme en tu carne y sin embargo no podía, y eso alimentaba todavía más mi sed de perdido en el desierto de tus muslos. Antes era sed lo que sentía, hambre infinita, ansia sin límite en la vida, más allá de mi muerte certera. ¿Lo sabes, lo has sentido alguna vez? ¿Has deseado así a quién te desea, al padre de tu carne alumbrada, al tiempo de tu tiempo, al dueño nocturno de tu imperio oscuro? A veces, hacéis el amor una tarde de sábado, y por unos minutos lo deseas como lo deseaste la primera vez. Pero qué pronto se pasa, incluso antes de que te corras. Y entonces, ¿qué haces? ¿qué sientes? Nada, y de nada te sirve ya entonces regresar a mí, a ti, para consolarte y consolarme, y a pesar de la tristeza infinita creer y creerme que aún es posible la felicidad sostenida.

The beggining

I should be listening to "This is the end" right now, but anyway. I read on landiman's brand new blog (he still doesn't allow me to make it public) that every story has a beggining. I know, this is not landiman's creation: we've heard that sentence over an over: "every story has a beggining". Perhaps because I'm sort of highish, I think "fuck, that's not so simple." Is it? I mean, does every story have a beggining? And if so, where is the beggining? Oh man, it's not that cristal clear. I mean take one day, for instance: where is the fucking beggining of a day? When the first ray of sun matches an eye? When my alarm clock beeps? When the minute hand reaches the twelve? Take the minute hand: when can we say it precisely reaches the twelve? I know, I know. You don't care a shit about this shit, and I don't either. But don't tell me then that every story has a beggining, because you will never be able to tell me when.

If you think about it, this is the perfect metaphore of human condition: we have invented so many concepts ("beggining" being one of them) but we know nothing at all. When? No fucking idea, zero, nothing, emptiness inside our skulls. Pure philosphy, pure thought. But alas, thoughts are what we were made to produce, and thoughts we produce. Nothing else matters because nothing else is real. Except for when we make love, and you moan, and I hug you and you embrace me, and a seed is planted inside you, absolutely real, still ignorant of the fact that only more thoughts will come with its growing up into a her or a his.

Shit

Shit, I just saw an Apple iMac, very old one but looked new, the bid on Ebay was just 219 euros but the minimum price had not been reached. So I don't know why, I bid 250, and shit... I reached the fucking minimum price. Suddenly I was two hours from winning this crappy old iMac, and considering it was past midnight, I was going to win the computer. Why the hell did I bid? Don't know, don't know... stupid, stupid me. Then I got an email from eBay... to confirm the bid. Yes, it was true and there was no way back... wasn't it? There was: eBay informed on the email I could "retract", even though it was not OK to retract just because I changed my mind, which was exactly my case. No, the retracting policy didn't admit it. So I retracted argueing I had put the wrong price. Stupid, I know, because in that case you're asked to introduce a new price, otherwise they check and threaten you with I don't know how many bad things. Anyway, I retracted and I don't know what will happen. Such are my stupid fears. Shit, the beggining of the year is a disaster, really. What kind of person I am? What the hell I am doing bidding for stupid old iMacs at midnight? I am really angry at myself right now. I feel like those stupid New York citizens I saw today on a TV documentary: they take their dogs to the psychologist and when they go on holidays, they pay a five star hotel for their beloved dog, 250 bucks per night. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell? Did I tell you that today I almost die at the swimming pool? Well, die is maybe too strong a word. But I almost drowned. Shit, I was swimming and suddenly felt I had no energy at all, I thought "fuck, the water is loosing pressure, the swimming pool is losing water. But it was me the one who was losing pressure. Fuck, I freaked out. It was such a pain to get to the border of the swimming pool and get out. The pool watchers gave me a glass with water and sugar. I saved myself. The rest of the day I spent it with sick, my head turning around. And to end it I bid for the iMac. Oh man, terrible day. Terrible.

Second day of the year

Somehow, my first day of the year 2005 ends on the second day of the year, and with the following quote on my mind, from The third man:

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they have brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cockoo clock."

I always thought this quote to be great, but today I don't really think it's that great. I think it's too demagogical, too cool in a superficial and even irresponsible way. Somehow, artists like Orson Wells want their work to be more than a simple intellectual entertainment, and they want to describe it as the product of an era, the depiction of a society or whatever you want to think of. Artists that think being on the ethical and well-behaving part of the society is too nice and beautiful, and definitely not "artistic". They need evil, they need sadness, they need misery: it's like the poet who thinks only suffering can be transmitted through poetry. That only suffering is of artistic value. And thus they need to create a dramatic character out of themselves.

Is the quote valid today? I think we sort of changed our way of thinking. Maybe because nowadays we can witness everyday the outcomes of a period like the one of the Italy of the Borgias. We witness terror, wars, crime and misery everyday on TV; we witness everyday the personal dramas that emerge from this situations, we know personal stories of a mother that lost her son and husband after a bomb targeted their home. No, the Italy of the Borgias is today something terribly present, not just a distant period of ancient Europe. I know I don't make my point very clear, I know I can write what I'm writing in a better way, sorry I'm tired. I go to bed, just take the thought and try to create out of it something better in your minds.