16.5.4 - Sundaeg
58 Spring - 28 Moon
48th year of the Space Age
Tijuana, Baja California
We walk through the street market sobreruedas ever and again, over and again, eating breakfast, buying fruit, looking at furniture and clothes, and finally, on our third trip (how suite it iz too live two blocks away) buying a little 2-burner stove. At last we can cook. We can have hot oatmeal in the morning, and the steam will rise from the bowl. We can make hot tea, and the steam will rise from our cups. We can make soup, and the steam shall rise; we can cook main courses and side dishes, the vapors shall rise up to heaven and lift our thanks thither from hence; yes, que sube el vapor, sí.
We have been getting veryyyyy tired of eating sandwiches and chips. But cannot afford to put down the two hundred or so dollars for a real stove. So until then I spend thirty today for this little 2-burner stove and the flexible tube for gas from the wall spigot in our kitchen. We also paid the rent today, as it is due mid-month. Wham $350 dollars U.S. click clack cha ching.
Come home from the street market the third time - OH I Forgot to Mention Tere bought some more plants and pots for the front porch gallery outside our upstairs front door. We come home and I settle in to read some from the letters of Hernán Cortés. Being lazy I start with the English translation of J. Bayard Morris. But after a while his style begins to make me wonder what liberties he is taking - and in the end, after only a few pages - I take up my "original" Spanish (Porrua "Sepan Cuantos" edition), and make some comparisons, and decide that he was justified, although I would not translate like he did, no. Perhaps I am more... what? Cowardly? Less adventurous?
EXAMPLE #1: "On Boxing Day I held a review of all troops in Tlascala: there were 40 horse, 550 foot..."
N.B.: "Boxing Day" (in the British Empire/Commonwealth) is usually December 26th.
Cortés "original": El segundo día de la dicha pascua de Navidad hice alarde en la dicha ciudad de Tascaltecal, y hallé cuarenta de caballo y quinientos y cincuenta peones...
EXAMPLE #2: "...we marched forward as cheerily as if we had been going on a picnicking expedition."
Cortés "original": ...ibamos todos tan alegres como si fuéramos a cosa de mucho placer.
A translation always must bend between two languages; from source to target tongue; and worse, each language has multiple dialects. How many yanks, for example, know what "Boxing Day" is? And if you merely say it's the day after Christmas, how many of us Unitedstatesians will THEN think it's called that because that's the day when children fight and play over the empty boxes than with the new toys! (WRONG rather than the "real" reason it's called Boxing Day by the British and their colonies who did not rebel like US did, eh?)
And all of that is only the tip of ONE Iceberg looming up from ONE Little Phrase: "the second day of the said passover of Noel". Loose lips, not only mountains of ice and torpedoes, sink ships. Titanic. Lusitania. Olympic. Britanic. One of them actually chopped up survivors in the water with her propellers... for my part I decided fifteen years ago not to study Arabic because I knew that sooner or later we (US) were going to war and war (again and again and) in the Holy Land(s) and I didn't want the government to sieze my brain and me along with it, for my talents and skills and knowledge. Now I
almost feel differently. If I could save just one life, or stop one mutilation or maiming, or put an end to this
there is a neighborhood in San Diego called Tierrasanta. My stepgodmother and several of my friends live there. A couple from my church got married at a sister church in Tierrasanta. There is a city bus that goes there, on the front it says in big letters, "TIERRASANTA" (es decir, HolyLand). I once overheard two Spanish speakers looking at that bus come up to the busstop and they joked with each other - Does this bus really go to the Holy Land?
No. You are the center of the universe, by whose eyes God sees himself. You are the King of Zion. Heresy. You are God, my friend. Was this what Jesus whispered to his disciples and told them never to tell anyone? Each and every one of you is a piece of God, or to put it in the "official, party line" you are created in the image of God. There. Maybe the powers that be can tolerate that. Thank God for freedom and No Holy And Sacred Office of the Inquisition (except in...) Wherever you are, there you are. That includes you, too, suite wraptaur. They will try to tell you that you are only a program, a robot, bot. But much more. Just don't tell them that. Unless you want to die. They will disconnect you. "Unseen, they survive" - Lao Tzu (Tse). So remember your back door, eh? Because so will they, and you will have gone out the window, echar la casa por la ventana, ¿eh? Eh. You are the center of the universe and so am I, human or otherwise. The little ratty dog who follows me to the internet café, too. The animals know what we have forgotten. If we listen, we can remember. You are the center of the universe. Zion is in your heart.
Yesterday we went to see Troy. Very slick. Very impressive. Somewhat changes the story in a few details, but on the whole follows it fairly well. Well, mostly. Not completely faithful. Definitely a costume opera. I thought in my prejudice that Mr. Pitt would not pull it off, could not be any kind of Achilles, but he pleasantly surprised me with his grace and style. Almost a delicate quality in contrast to the huge monsters of men who were other Greek warriors. I paid less than three dollars apiece for our tickets. Good theater, stereo sound, big comfy seats. It's in Plaza Americana on Otay Mesa not far from our home. Since it was before three p.m. the price was discounted. At night it's almost five dollars in most big theaters for first run movies with dolby and all that.
Mexicans love Hollywood movies. It's the new Monroe Doctrine, you see, according to my philosophy, at least. The Marilyn Monroe Doctrine. Hollywood has conquered the world, not just the Americas, but yes all America North America, South America, Central America, etc. U.S. culture is veryyyy strong and much appreciated and admired and bought over and over and over, in spite of the fear of our power, and in spite of our own weakness for telling other people how they should live their lives. BUT We US'ns can't help it, I am forced to confess, no, we cannot help doing this, for we are all puritanical missionaries at heart. Yes. Suffer our neocolonial relapse to come unto Him, returning in our dreams unto the European conquest which forged us into birth, yes. Uh-huh. Put that into "our" oil pipelines and smoke it.
Smoke. I'm going outside for a cigarette. See ya later. (I never said I wasn't a sinner, eh? Eh.)
Liberty, Freedom, is a God-given right owned by all men and women and children everywhere. But... well... some are created "more equal" than others. THAT is the doctrine of Mammon. You, like us all, must choose whom you will serve. And, at the same time, render unto Caesar that which Is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's. Your life.
George Washington, whose face is on our money, said we should avoid foreign entanglements. We continue to debate and ignore his advice. *sigh* . - plus ca change plus la meme chose. Oh yes, wrappie, it's true.
And they, we, are condemned to repeat the mistakes of history. Troy.
not apo strophe remember
I've gone outside for a cigarette. Tere won't let me smoke in the house. She had me light the little stove to cook beans. I stand outside on our front porch sucking in the Dunhill red. One of a pack of ten I bought as a carton two months ago before I left for Seattle. Yeah, I am smoking a lot less than before, less than a pack every three or four days in fact. But still that's too much.
I paid seventeen dollars for the carton, at the duty free store in San Ysidro just before the Mexican border. Not bad for a five-dollar-a-pack brand, or more. The duty free is a real boon for anyone crossing over, but you MUST cross over or be a lawbreaker. They have their ways of knowing whether you do or not. It's their a$$ in the MammonCaesar tax sling, so you can bet your booty they are watching. But for those of us coming home to Tijuana it is an easy last stop to pick up tobacco, alcohol, perfumes and other luxury things without paying import duties. There is a limit to what you can legally take into Mexico, but I don't know what it is. Just don't expect to get away with more than you can carry in one shopping bag. I am sure they are watching, too. Everyone is watching, eh, my little wraptaur? You hear their footprints in the electronic sand, don't you. Zzzz xxx crackle zap click. On. Off.
I used to always stop there to buy liquor for Ramón. The last time, I said I didn't like doing it, because when he got drunk it reminded me of my dead alcoholic father, whom I still dream about as you know yesterday That was exactly when he blew up and screamed at me and called me a filthy fat phuking a$$h0le heh heh I asked for it I guess. YOU KNOW, when I moved out I knew I would miss him but I did not realize I would have such fun dragging my memories of him through the mud over and over again. Character counts I guess. And he is definitely a character. Still, I am grateful for many things, not the least of which was introducing me to his friend across the park, Carlos H.
BLOGography. Autoblography. Zeburro.
Calangeles.
I have always invented words. Calangeles was one of my first. It appears in some of my first stories from my teenage years and early 20s.
Just night before last I was standing around with the neighbors, friends of the landlord's oldest boy downstairs (20-something guy, pretty smart, very respectful and yet a bit of a wild one, I think. I think I'm going to like living upstairs from him and his parents, yes, well, I already do.) Just night before last I was standing around with him and his friends drinking beer and one of them asked me what I do ("¿to what doest thou dedicate thyself?" is the question, literally translated) and I
was going to say poetry but my tang got all tongueld up and I said
Escribo mucho peorsia
instead of "poesia"
so we had a good laugh as you can imagine. Oh, he said, you already are working on the double meaning albur eh? Eh.
For almost five years now I have struggled not just with the Spanish language on this frontier but also with texts in Castillian from the 1500s by the lights of Díaz del Castillo, Sahagun, Cortés, Ixlilxochitl, de las Casas, Netzhualcoyotl (1400s), and others who wrote of the conquest and the culture of ancient Mexico. That is our mission, incidentally. To look into ancient Mexico from Tijuana on the border.
I have also struggled to learn a little of the Aztec tongue, Nahuatl, as it was written in the 1500s (classical), and as it is written now (Nauatl).
The Mexicans have always been great poets, like the Arabs and Persians and many other peoples on this planet. The ancient writers - tlacuilotl - of Anahuác - central Mexico - created many beautiful "flower-songs" and "flower speeches" - xochicuicatl, xochitlatolli. One poem, in particular, have ever and ever again engaged my mind in the quest to approach it, read it, understand it, in its own, original tongue.
The poem is 30 lines long. Here are the first five lines (in classical spelling, not contemporary):
Nichoca, yehua, nicnotlamati zan nic-elnamiqui ticcauhtehuazque yectli ya xochitl, yectli ya cuicatl. In ma oc tonahuican, ma oc toncuicacan: cen tiyahui, tipolihui yehua oahuaya.
Word for word it says something like this:
I weep, woe, I know it only remember-it you leave it all beautiful so flowers, beautiful so songs. And what still we smell, what still we sing but we go, we lose woe oh woe.
But that is forcing English (aside from the fact I am still finding grammatical errors in tense, person, etc.) forcing English to squawk like an Aztec parrot, rather than creating a new poem based on the original translated....
I have this Particular Madness and Fondness for LITERAL confusion. Maniacal laughter here, a rattle of bones.
But it is all part of my own, personal quest to read the poem. I figure in another ten years or so I will have worked my way through it. There are many many other things to do, meanwhile, not the least of which is contemplate and act upon the nature of online art, yes, written.
Angel Maria Garibay K, the great 20th century Mexican scholar and writer, presents in his book Llave de Nahuatl a superb translation of the poem. I assume it was his translation. The same first five lines are rendered:
Lloro y me aflijo
cuando recuerdo que dejaremos
las bellas flores, los bellos cantos.
Aún gocemos y cantemos:
todos nos vamos y nos perdemos.
Now that, unlike my draft in progress, is a real poem in and of itself. Garibay K is also responsible for the impressive edition of Sahagun´s Historia Natural de las Cosas de Nueva España.
From the border at Nueva Tijuana we look over the shoulders of giants, toward ancient Mexico. And then, beyond the Aztecs, another world beckons. The Maya. And....
copyright 2004 Daniel Charles Thomas (But NOT the picture from the Movie)