The trees

There was a time when the trees grew with their boney and crooked branches only and exclusively up. The scientists looked at such wonder with faked awe and said that the Apocalypse was very soon to come. Religious people came close to the trees with peace and study in their faces and gave all kinds of explanations related to botany. It was the fall. The remaining leaves fell and the branches were left completely shelterless as the wild animals ran off the frozen trunks in order to go hide on the other side of the horizon, into the sea. The branches finished then their straightening when the Winter ended. Spring made the insects come back and they all became plague. Harvests were destroyed, animals sacrificed and food was compressed. The youth came out to the streets to announce the end of the world with enormous banners and protest yelling aimed at the Creator. Children and professionals left out pencils and, at seeing themselves disabled at erasing, they wrote with electronic keyboards, without mistakes. Summer came and all the trees were now over two meters high. A year had passed and man still could not understand the why of nature's behaviour. Churches began to give and forgive people's sins on the squares, which were left without plants since they had to cut everything down for everyone to fit in. Scientists started to study the trunks and branches with real eagerness, and they realized that they were more normal than ever. So, every person on Earth that was not linked to science or religion started to lose their faith in evolution and creation when they realized scientists and priests were getting rich at their expense. So, one day, they simply threw them into the void. The following day a true Spring began and people came out into the streets to work and live in peace, without using more than was needed and thinking only about the future with patience and wisdom. From the trees leaves sprouted, branches bloomed and flowers gave abundant fruit. And then said God: it is amazing that these poor men require so much in order to understand that science and religion should consist only of being happy.

Written in 1991

spanish version

The greatest gift

She gave me a smile
in my old and sad face
in my forgotten and dry body

She turned my day into sun
my anxiety into relief
and my cold into goosebumps

She wrapped me in her arms
for a scarcely eternal second
for a moment
my heart at last without hollows

And here I am
after such a long time
knowing that all, all,
everything compiles into a hug:
simple as that...



click here for the original Spanish version

A fable

Once, there was a simple ant that had desperately fallen lost into love limbo for a beautiful light moth. It came to happen that this ant's almost nightly work schedule allowed it to contemplate dawn while heading towards the huge hole that all of the ants had invented themselves, to the point that one day she saw the small light moth emerging as if bulleted in direction to the sky. What a sublime creature, said the ant. Marry me, it said. But the moth was too focused in her task of reaching the light, all the time insisting and trying to figure out some strategy to reach it.

This story has no end. It's always the same, and it's made as if a mockery of any lost cause. Because the ant may as well invent herself some wings to fly, but it will surely not fly towards the light anyway. Because, even though in a moment of distraction the moth might turn her gaze to where the ant stares at her with awe, she will never see in its tender love-filled little eyes any other thing than a light even more radiant than any light bulb's, to which she's compeled to go. She'll try to understand it, grab it and almost swallow it, without realizing that what causes that light isn't but a reflection of herself through a stranger's eyes.


click here for the original Spanish version.

Nothing and everything to write about

Busy.
Loooots of work.
Lots of stress.
Projects.
Headaches.
Porcelain has been broken at last.
But there're always more gods.
Impossible to concentrate when you're not working.
You ran over a donkey the other day just because of your being unfocused.
The following week your car almost rolls over with everything inside, including your friend.
You're still amazed to have come out of it alive.
Your actions do have true consenquences.
However, everything seems so surreal.
Another friend, almost lost.
The future settles itself and there's no other choice above holding it by where it lets itself be grabbed.
And now it seems you don't even know what to do with so much money you're earning.
But, it isn't that much anyway.
You just had gotten used to lacking it.
There are cycles to be closed.
Or you can just keep on rolling over.
September was truly an avalanache of more than memorable proportions.
Fortune's coming.
But the scale always keeps moving.
Always...



click here for original spanish version

August

This August was good to me. It was a good friend, with its ups and downs, just like all friends. It hasn't been like other months that are quite disagreeable just by looking at them so prodigiously long with their 31 days and nights. I was infinitely impoverished. However, I had a lot more of work. My car was broken 3 times, but I got to remember the routes of all bus lines. I realized that the Torreón-Gómez no longer go all the way downtown. I got 3 new classes that I won't get paid for until November, but it doesn't matter because by then I'll be getting such a huge check that I'd rather not tell you since I might as well spend it all instead. I sent music kits of my band including CDs, DVDs and biography to only 4 record houses that are interested in our concept. I bought the Los Toreros Muertos compilation. My room has gone a true mess because of so many darn willinglessly-piled-up-and-conciously-forgotten papers. I finally was able to be updated as far as all my job reports are involved. Santos is the super-leader of the league. Shamra has elected me once again for their following anthology! That makes me real happy. I got invited to at least 3 completely different job projects. And I think I can do it all. One of my best friends, my brother in fact, is in big trouble and he's got me all worried about him, so much that I haven't slept well. But it's September already. And September is coming along as if it were an avalanche. August, however, has been like an awakening.
Like a reality check. Like once again spreading out my wings. As if, at last, being able to recognize the horizon afar... up from the clouds...


Original Spanish version here

Still life

"I don't understand why in this house that pineapple is always on top of all, darned conceited fool. She's always there, showing her malformed crest and boasting about her abdominal squares crowned with their little forelocks, more shriveled than myself." That who was talking under the concealment caused by the other fruits was the pear, forgotten at the bottom of the prodigious fruit bowl that the painter used for his still-life paintings.

The other fruits, the pouched mango, the sugar cane, the Chinese cantaloupe, the smelly guava, the exposed peaches with tiny nectar drops, the bananas and the purple grapes, kept silent since the weight that the vain pineapple exerted upon them was too much. Besides, the touch of its shell produced some stinging due to its so many protuberances and dry roots. It seemed better that it remain on top, thought all, because if it were underneath, we'd surely be stung by her hard green gray and marred pompon.

"I love the smell that always comes out of this room" a voice was heard. It was the beautiful woman that in ocassions was with the artist. She was crossing the lintel of the door and she looked ecstatic, as if finding out something that now made her understand. She was light-dressed, with a long white gown in almost transparent layers that seemed to reveal but didn't but for the opening that it had below the crutch. "You hadn't shown me this place" said she without turning back but obviously aware that the painter was listening to her at her back with both his hands strongly fit grasping the upper part of the door frame. It was noticeable that the painter held the aluminum tightly so as to restrain his anxious steps towards the woman and get to her in a violent plead for a lust outburst. To him, in this moment, this room was the least voluptuous place in the universe, simply because it was taking time away from her afternoon and night with her.

"You'll have to explain to me how it is that you get inspired to paint", said she, with her soft hands sliding over the empty canvass of days and days without being able to give expression to what any ideas soever. He kept ironically silent, rocking underneath the horseshoe that was nailed below the irregular wooden ceiling. She, nevertheless and despite the expansion she created in his anxiety, did not await an answer and kept on walking graciously till reaching the thick cedar table in which lay the candles and the fruits cloistered within the measureless glassy-coloured bowl. She lay her hand underneath her chin in a thoughtful attitude with a murmuring moan at the time she observed the whole composition. "This pineapple doesn't seem right in here" said she. "It looks like it's crushing everything else". And, right before the painter's eyes that opened wide like broken piggy banks and before his muscles that tightened as hanging bridge's wires, without anymore talk, she grabbed the huge fruit by its hardened hair with both her hands and dropped it off the table like someone who tosses a ball for it to reach the kitchen bouncing and hopping.

As she did so, an even more intense scent than the whole room's came out from the bottom of the bowl. It was a pear that had been buried under red apples even with its very smell inside its grave. And the smell had been concentrating down till creating this aphrodisiac compound of taste-without-inspiration days. So, still ever flabbergasted as moments passed by, the painter watched how the beautiful woman dismounted the heap of fruits that still didn't seem to satisfy him in order for him to start painting, until she could reach where the pear was free at last and exposed to the light that showed its reality: it was stale.

"You'll have to use fresh fruits for your paintings, beauty", said she gesturing some graceful sarcasm with the spoiled fruit's stem between her fingers. She kept on walking now more slender in her posture up to reaching the corner where the waste basket was. She threw the pear with an accurate basketball-player pass and went on towards the kitchen making her way under his right armpit and arm. "I'm hungry", she said. "Have you got anything to eat?"


Original Spanish version here

Musical intermission about the egg-and-the-chicken conundrum (free will vs "everything's written")

God is music. God is all of our feelings. God results from everything that comes off from our instincts.

Or it might be that our instincts are directly granted by him to us. So that we understand. So that we go back to our most basic moment of feeling. So that we also know. So that we could be aware of how needy he is of us and vicerversa. So violently. So precariously linked to us. But linked in the end. Because it is supposed to be that he gives us freedom of choices, isn't it? But, hey. "Everything's written" say those who know "but you've got the power to choose". And I say(at least I used to say at the time I wrote this text three years ago, when I was still happy): Well, yeah, that's right.

It's like music: Like when you start imagining some tune, chorus or a piece made of some series of chords. Nothing's written, but you might very likely have an idea of where it is you want to get to, because at the very time you commenced writing or devising you just went on following your inspiration that was but molded by no other thing than your environment, your feelings at the moment and a whole series of events that led you to start, and that now do nothing but let themselves be driven off by a song that's writing itself without your hand's being able of avoiding the happenings of your mind that are being embodied onto silence, with such luck that the song was practically written since the moment it was conceived but in fact wrote itself...


Click here for the original Spanish version

Super-kor, the beginning (pt II)

Everything was cloudy. His vision, the sky, his lucidity. Someone was saying things as if from behind a very thick and steamed up glass, and he did not know how to take his hands to where he could scrub his eyes in order to unbog what he was seeing. For a moment he even felt how a huge tear drop emerged from his left eye leaving its wet vertical wake over his cheek. He sensed it all above every other thing that surrounded him since, awake as he was, the tiny water spot made in his ears such an extreme noise as would a sudden flooding flow of a dry river at Summer start. He was about to yell from desperation, but then the feeling started to fade.

At last, he realized where he was and what it was that had occurred.

- What happened? - He was able to say. He wanted to say something else, but his mind was well too stuck.

- Cats are gone. - Said the voice.

Niko moved as though he wanted to sit up, but a remain of pain in his articulations didn't allow it, so he only turned his head so as to see the person owning that voice.

- Wait down there, don't get up. - She warned. - Relax for a while.

Although for some reason it seemed strange to him, Niko didn't feel surprised to know he was obeying a perfect stranger. He leaned his head over the little bench's cement and let himself be drawn off by exhaustion. However, a few seconds later he noticed that something was climbing up his spine: Some sort of spark that was burning all of his nervous center in an unthinkable way and then spread all along his body giving him an energy and a discernment that he had never experienced before. He sat up fast till being fully straight on the bench.

- You are a very good person. - Said he.

He said it with such tone of voice and such conviction that she went all scare-blue with cold as she realized he did not refer only to the fact that she had helped him some moments ago, but he had also made, in that sole phrase, a summary of all of her attitudes, actions, failures and experiences with a degree of compasion that was more than overwhelming. For a moment she felt completely bound to fate, as if naked, without being at all concious of what it was that was going on, a thousand images paraded right in front of her eyes just as that boy told a too-well-known story. So familiar, that it always hurt.

- You've lost something. - Said he. - Someone. Someone that suddenly was gone. Someone with whom you shared a whole list of dreams and projects. Someone that one day just left. You've wondered thousands of times what it was that you did wrong for such thing to have happened. You have cried and haven't gotten any comfort. You've wanted to share your misfortune, but nobody listens, nobody would understand anyway. You've sought for this person's arms. You've wanted to hear his voice amid the crowds or to see his face while you walk on the street, but you know he's not coming back. You've lost him and you think it is your fault. You think you don't deserve any more chances, so you'd rather not look for them. You've surrendered. You've given up getting what used to be granted to you and it is because of this that you prefer to help. Just like you helped me.

The girl snapped out of her image download as she somehow knew herself as being the very close target of the most sincerely thankful smile. She realized that she was too very near that man, but never felt frightened, since, although her face was flooded in tears, nothing could shame her anymore. She felt fearless even when his hand rose from his lap to lay on her chest so as to withdraw, as if being a light magnet, a small diamond that simply came off through her skin without pain or feeling whatsoever.

That was the best part: She felt nothing. And that was the best moment of her life until then. Since now -as she saw in frank acceptance, although without fully understanding, the little diamond vaporizing into thin air- she was finally free. Free to smile...



Click here for the original Spanish version

Super-kor, the beginning

On the day that Niko realized about his superpower, he also noticed his weakness.

It was a rainless and sunless day. A nothing day. Empty and without soul. Niko was walking with a slouch amid the bushes of some lost park within the anonimity of the suburbs. Flowers stood as if sad, waiting for some dew drops to fall down from the sky. Everything around looked as if in a frankly dry and chapped desperation. Some cats were playing paddling with their paws lying as though waiting over the various cannal shore edges of the artificial woods. A girl was seeing them without watching, as if lost and ecstatic at the same time. Niko could guess without thinking about it, just with opening his senses before her posture and attitude, that she was needy of something to fill certain gaps and certain crevices. Nevertheless, at that precise moment, facing the image that was being showed to his fearless eyes, Niko had some sort of epiphanic sensory revelation: Suddenly all of the environment turned into an enormous transparent heart that shrank and dilated in a hectic and whimsical fashion. It was as if Niko had the capability to contemplate the balance of everything that surrounded him.

He thought he was going to faint from such overwhelming feeling. The girl noticed him too and stood up from where she was, the more because of the shock of seeing him stumbling all around than because of will to help him. In fact, for a moment, she was quite skeptical of what was happening: It could pretty well occur that this guy was some abuser that showed himself to his victims feeding pity into them. So, by the time Niko finally collapsed on the bench where she had been sitting, the girl had already walked backwards with a rejecting gesture. A little while afterwards, however, she noticed that his face was more than pale. She approached him to clear his forehead from hair and ask him what was wrong.

- It's the cats. - Said he. - They thirst for killing.

Not a very long time after that, when Niko had already accepted his superhero condition, he had to admit a fact that wouldn't favour him at all: Super-kor must not have enemies ever. As a matter of fact, the best thing for him would be to become an anonymous superhero, since his weakness flowed mercilessly from within the smallest nooks where lay the worst intentions of all life forms: Super-kor couldn not defeat evil. Only sadness and pain...

Click here for Spanish version

Super-kor

Super-kor was a hero. He knew it and everyone else did too. Nevertheless, Super-kor always had in mind that the not-so-redeeming thing about being loved and appreciated is that the boundaries that divide humility and vanity might as well be broken by anyone at any time.

His chief power was meant for the hurting hearts of people. No other superhero could grant the joy that Super-kor did. Because there's no greater feeling of pleasure in the world than the absence of pain, most of all if it happens immediately after pain.

Suicidals were who got the most aid from Super-kor. There wasn't gratitude in this world that could be compared at all to what they felt. And it all was such an easy thing for him: Just a matter of placing his hand on the person's chest in order for their heart to be healed, after the most intense ten seconds of their lives. As if being virtual ointments, stitches, massages and rehab-sessions from the most instrinsic depths of his very soul. Super-kor then knew the person entirely, understood and empathized with him or her and then loved them unmercilessly while being within a searing embrace. By the time the process was over, the person had already experienced the catharsis that would've taken them years of efforts and more pain towards a whole new type of freedom back to their soul's innocence. In the end, the feeling of relief was such that everyone, without exception, exploded in a beautiful laughter.

That was Super-kor's power. For many, a hero. Even though he knew that quite frequently it isn't so great to be one...

(to be continued...)

Click here for Spanish version



WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW? My dear friend Blanca, whose blog I really love, got her nephew to draw the first Super-kor comic sketches. Check them out! I really loved them, specially when Super-kor lays his hand over the girl's heart while he's closing his eyes. Thanks, Blanca!