31 December, 2005

A vision's prerrogative

With a faint of magic, or a touch of madness, or with just too much melancholy; I saw you, I caught a glimpse of where you might be, of how you were, of what you're doing.

And that made me sad.

I don't know how much deep I want to go about this, but yesterday I heard a song that said this:

"Será tu amor
que me curará este dolor,
será tu piel
Que me hará morir y luego renacer"

Die and reborn, that's something I need to do in order to kill you, to stop looking for you, and see again, so I can find you.

I've seen "yous" again, but you still reside within the lairs of my ivory tower, deep and chained while, outside, the five of us look for greater enlightment. But we're wrong, without you, enlightment lacks meaning, the exact thing we're looking for.

So I keep wishing for a better tomorrow, a happier awakening and a meaningful life.

KX.

24 December, 2005

Pop videos hurt

Life drags me back to you, and through these videos I remember, just a glimpse, of what I really envy, of what I’ve lost, of what I can’t stand. As I said before to you or someone like you, or all of you, or to none of you: “My greatest desire, my biggest fear”, what I failed to do (as I always do) it to reveal that this emotion refers to you or someone like you, or all of you, or none of you.

These videos are dangerous, these really hurt. I’ve done my job too well, I’ve found the core of this symbol and now I’m paying the price.

I’ve been told recently that “me” likes to have their own spaces, but it seems that I’ve managed to carve out of the fabric of society, space and time my own space, where leaving or entering is either too dificult, frightful of painful. I stand behind this wall, looking through a small opening to the rest of the world that deblacles over carcasses denied of meaning, hollowed. And still, these videos as pop as they are convey a force, a meaning, a real impact that, as ironic as it seems, look “real”, true, although they spawn from the most materialistic, underratted and commercial of all the genres.

And from here, I fell in love with you or all of you, or none of you.

I psyche myself out, I explain myself, and I claim that what I really fell is the need to be “normal” (Foucault laughs) and to “recover” the lost years of pain I couldn’t enjoy. But this is of no use, even thou I know, I still don’t Know, and the emotion, this empty cup, stands there, watching at me either laughing or crying, or both, or none.

The only thing I know, or I think I know, is that it all finally is up to us, or me, or all or no one. I see your face again and I long for something I don’t really understand, it’s dogma for me and maybe I’ll have to challenge that dogma for a more agnostic view ("YOU DON'T EXIST"). But right now, I wish you where here, “my greatest desire, my biggest fear”, and that I (for once) be able to act and kill myself only to be reborn in you.

KX.- on a heartbreak lullaby.

20 December, 2005

Impresión Visual #4: Encierro

Fuera de una pared tapiada, casi a la salida de la cueva, el Joven con el Bo y el Hombre con su Libro discuten sobre algo que se pierde mientras el Niño con su Oso de Peluche y la Mujer con sus Joyas se retiran a la penumbra, asqueados por tan inútil discución.

Desde adentro de la pared, una voz muy débil trata de terminar con la discución, pero sólo el Niño y la Mujer la oyen. Ellos tratan de llamarle la atención sobre esto al Joven y al Hombre, pero estos no entienden que es lo que le quieren decir; mientras que dentro de la Pared, un Viejo en medio de miles de libros y símbolos cuyo significado se perdió hace ya demasiado tiempo y cuya única fuente de luz es una lámpara, susurra respuestas que sin su debida pregunta carecen de significado.

¿Qué es una respuesta sin la debida pregunta?

El Viejo intenta otras señas, música, imágenes, historias que contar; pero el Joven y el Hombre siguen enfrascados en su discución mientras que el Niño y la Mujer esperan en las sombras a que estos se pongan de acuerdo y puedan, por fin, devolverle al Viejo Hermitaño la llave que perdió hace ya años y con la que él sólo puede salir de su Encierro.

El Hombre y el Joven parece que están llegando finalmente llegar a un acuerdo, pero no es fácil, viendo hacia la Pared se dna cuenta que la salida está un poco mas lejos de lo que creían, pero que si logran liberar al viejo podrán ver la luz del Sol finalmente.

19 December, 2005

¡Busque usted mismo las diferencias!

Tomando en cuenta todo lo que usted entiende por paradigmas metafísicos y sus relaciones con las culturas orientales y occidentales, por favor encuentre las diferencias entre los siguientes postulados:

Postulado 1: "... desde un punto de vista lógico, la noción de [representación/descripción] no puede conciliarse con el concepto de un ser absoluto, existe absolutamente, fuera de la dialéctica de presencia y ausencia. Eso impediría la posibilidad misma y la necesidad de representación."
Want, Christopher. "Kant para Principiantes". Ed. Era Naciente.

Postulado 2:
"1
El Tao del que puede hablarse
no es el Tao eterno.
El nombre que puede nombrarse [o representarse/describirse]
no es el Nombre eterno.

Lo eternamente real es innombrable [o irrepresentable/indescriptible].
El nombre es el origen
de todas las cosas particulares

Libre de deseo, comprendes el misterio.
Atrapado en el deseo, sólo ves sus manifestaciones..."
Lao Tzu. "Tao Te Ching".

KX.
[reemplazos y añadiduras propias]

09 December, 2005

MEX-REV

Damn it,

Me and my big mouth, I always get more than I bargain for and this time was no exception.

Last nite I wrote something out of tiredness, frustration and disappointment; driven by fear, loneliness and jadedness. I was bitching and moaning, things that usually get me in these situations.

Proud Crane after all...

But things turned out differently, I made some choices (for me life is all about that anyway) and laid down a plan, which strangely turned out better than I hopped.

About travel and the travel mentality

It's Friday night and I'm sitting in a King-sized bed in one of Mexico City's fanciest hotels, is late at night and I'm busted from a week of long discussions.

I'm miles away from home but I still feel like I'm chained to this laptop and my desk is just a couple of steps away. I feel like in a desert, where I keep saying "over the next dune I'll find water", but work keeps coming, and emergencies keep flaring, and deadlines and promises keep being broken, and apologies are made only to be broken again when laughable demands come my way, but I'm unable to turn them down. Then the cynic takes over and, jaded, I comply.

I'm really tired, and although I'm sitting in one of the most marvelous cities in the world, were its native culture enriches its modern world, were the jaguar pounds over gangs in the Zócalo and the masked fighter defends his honor and his mask from the evil Rudos, I'm sitting here tired, frustrated and alone.

I'm in no mood of traveling, although I already flew the miles. I don't want to smear the memories of such great works as the Zócalo or the Museo Antropológico with Business Reviews and Moderation Guides, and then there's the wish (the need really), to construct these memoirs with some meaning, not just a escape from the corporate cultural bubble into the wilds, outside the wall of the 5 stars hotels, the 25$ cab rides, the coca-cola and the air conditioning.

I'll travel back home, where I'll have the space to travel and see new things I can't see here, miles away from home. I'll be able to retake my journey and advance new steps away from this foreign land.

…….

I waked up as late as I could, played couch potato for the rest of the morning and watched all what Televisa could throw at me: Soap Operas, bad jokes, busty singers and cumbia masters, you name it. When check time came I was ready and promptly resolved my Corporate issues, escaped the banality mausoleum and went the next door Sanburns for some cash and looking for some late time purchases.

After that, and totally breaking the Corporate policy, I took a street taxi that lead me to the Museo Arquelógico, not without some weird discussion that included Chávez and Venezuelan Table Dancers traveling to DF. Then there were cows, in many colors and textures, with wings, maps and finally, an Angelic Cow.

Luck struck once, looking for a wrestler mask (as once a dear friend told me he bought there) I came to two men standing in front of a huge pole which end I could see right away because of the surrounding trees. I saw them drumming and chanting, until one of them started climbing the pole (the ladder, the heavens, the spheres, choose your own poison) and I could finally see other four men, standing in a square in each of the four directions (winds, realms, gods, choose your own destiny) ready to fall in a circling descent (how curious, they would "square the circle"…). Finally, the drummer reach the top and after a while the men hung themselves, and like falling from a crumbling tower, they hung upside down, arms open and right leg crossed down in a crisis, to their final death while slowly descending to the ground from the heavens. Arcana anyone?

Now I understand Campbell, is incredible how things are the same and people just see their carcass…

After a short stop at the Jaguar dance, I stepped into the Museum and began the honorable tradition of memory hunting, where one photographs anything in sight so you would not forget anything you missed because you were taking pictures of it, so after realizing the lack of meaning of the practice, I stepped into the wild world of past glories and forgotten knowledge the Museum had for their visitors (not without a picture of a feathered serpent for Ma).

I entered the back room, where the Mexica culture actually takes form and the solar disk welcomes the unfaithful. Temples without name and fellow memory hunters accompanied me along the way until I saw a man in a wheelchair. Hermaphrodites I've seen, deformed I've seen, a giant drove the taxi that took me "home" last night, but this man was different, he sat left to a stand whit no tag on it and a book that showed a grid where totems and gods determined the fate of the mundane, and this man, this hummingbird; sitting in a wheelchair, was offering answers to the uninitiated, the sleepers, and questions to the awakened.

6-Perro was the question was given on a piece of photocopied paper and scribbled with god names for day and night.

I pondered for a while I descended to the underworld and back, through Atleans and giant's heads, pondering on how Perro, Lechuza and the ability to destroy and reform had to do with me, so I went back to the crippled Colibrí and the kid who silently took the money from the tourists, but they had disappeared leaving me whit nothing but a picture of the empty stand, just a book with no tag.

Left with the feeling of wonder, where most usually take it as a nice souvenir, the numerous parallels of hanged men, hermaphrodites, gods of serpents and feathers that empower men and giants left me wondering, always a welcomed state, on what, why, and how…

Back to the real world, I left the Museum with a Mayan Mythology book and in search of some more mundane artifacts to a shopping center where I expected to obtain some books and CDs for my never-ending collection of trinkets. Needless to say, I paid my cab with a two hundred pesos bill only to find out it was really an old five hundred pesos bill. The taxi driver didn't want it, and I left him with the dollars I had with myself, oddly I missed one 10 dollar bill and had a 500 pesos one (roughly 47 dollars).

It sounds stupid, but I finally got to exchange my old 500 pesos bill and got nothing out of that place where I got self conscious of my age in a lot of time, since a girl playing what seemed an interesting fighter-adaptation of Full Metal Alchemist gave me a look when I asked if she knew the name of the title she was playing.

I left the shopping center, left he city and the country, but I kept in my mind how amazing is the fact that Symbols, Jungian or not, repeat themselves in different cultures, be it medieval Christian-based Alchemy or traditional native Mexican folklore. I'm either a fool or a madman, or both, or worse: none of them; but now what is difficult for me is NOT seeing these Symbols and understanding that humanity has lost its tools to deal with the world and with itself and gaining them back is a journey, an opus, that most certainly needs at least five years of reading and a dollar bill on the shelf case..

KX.- 3-Chuwen, 6-Perro, Proud Crane, Fool, Magus, Hacker Extraordinaire