Herejía de poesía móvil y pseudomodernista de un enajenado oficinista buscando la redención del arte mientras regresa en autobus a casa.
En realidad no es poesía, no sé de rimas ni de métrica. Tampoco son traducciones, algunas incluso dicen lo opuesto de sus equivalentes.
-
Cagando/Pensando
Ausente el sentir mordiente,
opacado y entumecido, hecha jirones su sombra,
yerro renacido, errando sólo a veces.
Shitting/Thinking
In the absence of a gnawing feeling,
dulled and obscured in the guise of a shredded shade,
I wander anew, only seldom wondering.
-
Logic
Prey of a merciless syllogism,
devoid of sense I enact the premises.
Lógica
Presa de un silogismo despiadado,
me vacío de sentido y esquivo sus premisas.
-
The Sleeping Dead
We sleep standing like cows, like pigs in a sty,
in silence or under the racket of dreams, alone or besieged,
desperately or unaware,
but relentless, we sleep.
Who are these sleeping dead?
Los Muertos Durmientes
Dormimos de pie, como vacas dormimos, como cerdos hacinados,
en silencio o bajo el estruendo del sueño, solos o asediados,
desesperados o inconcientes,
pero incolumnes, dormimos.
Quienes son estos muertos durmientes?
-
Joko
sábado, mayo 23, 2009
miércoles, abril 01, 2009
Tres canciones
Acabo de subir un par de canciones a mi sitio de myspace. Las canciones se llaman "Colours", "The 38" y "Your Kingdom" - están todas en inglés.
La última empecé a escribirla justo antes de venir para Inglaterra. La terminé en Brighton pero va de un reino (y su reina) que queda un poco más lejos.
The 38 la escribí en una noche (algunos arreglos vinieron luego) y va sobre como los autobuses nunca vienen cuando uno quiere y sobre las dificultades de abrir una botella de vino sin un sacacorchos (y la que hace que estos hechos cobren importancia).
Colours es un fruto puramente de Londres, de la contradicción que querría ser si fuese otra persona.
La dirección de la página web es: www.myspace.com/jokolandia
Que disfruten.
I just uploaded a couple of songs in myspace. They're named "Colours", "The 38" and "Your Kingdom" - they're all in English.
I started writing the last one just before coming to England. I finished it in Brighton but it's about a kindgom (and its queen) that's a bit further away.
I wrote "The 38" in one night (even though I made some of the arrangements later) and it's about how buses never come when you want them to and how hard it is to open a bottle without a bottle-opener (and the one that makes these facts important).
Colours is purely a seed of London, of the contradiction I'd like to be if I was someone else.
The address of the website is: www.myspace.com/jokolandia
Enjoy.
La última empecé a escribirla justo antes de venir para Inglaterra. La terminé en Brighton pero va de un reino (y su reina) que queda un poco más lejos.
The 38 la escribí en una noche (algunos arreglos vinieron luego) y va sobre como los autobuses nunca vienen cuando uno quiere y sobre las dificultades de abrir una botella de vino sin un sacacorchos (y la que hace que estos hechos cobren importancia).
Colours es un fruto puramente de Londres, de la contradicción que querría ser si fuese otra persona.
La dirección de la página web es: www.myspace.com/jokolandia
Que disfruten.
I just uploaded a couple of songs in myspace. They're named "Colours", "The 38" and "Your Kingdom" - they're all in English.
I started writing the last one just before coming to England. I finished it in Brighton but it's about a kindgom (and its queen) that's a bit further away.
I wrote "The 38" in one night (even though I made some of the arrangements later) and it's about how buses never come when you want them to and how hard it is to open a bottle without a bottle-opener (and the one that makes these facts important).
Colours is purely a seed of London, of the contradiction I'd like to be if I was someone else.
The address of the website is: www.myspace.com/jokolandia
Enjoy.
miércoles, febrero 25, 2009
A pedido del público
I've received countless emails (one, yesterday) and petitions (one, just now, my brother Matias telling me as he saw me opening blogger.com "it's been a while since you've updated your blog") to resume my blogging activities. So without further delay I'll start rambling about the latest boludez that I happened to stumble upon. I don't want to dither in grandiose yet circular thoughts about writing something worthwhile and of epic proportions; otherwise this blog will persist in its silence and barrenness.
The boludez in question is not quite a stupid thought per se. The stupid thoughts are my own meek attempts to understand the mind-boggling implications of said boludez.
Basically, succinctly and in short, the GEO600 (a complex "machine" that looks for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes) has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in.
Not content with this, Craig Hogan, the dude that predicted the "noise" before it was actually detected by the machine, said that "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time. If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
How's that for a Monday morning thought to be lodged in the wrinkles of your frayed, hangover brain as you're trying to get to grips with the mind-numbing office routine?
The article is quite a long (as it should be, to try to explain such a bizarre concept) and of course, the idea could well be true according to present theories, proofs, etc.
I'll make a vain and hopeless attempt to explain the 2499 words article about quantum physics in but a few (with a bit of copy/pasting, of course!).
Black holes contain "information" (tricky word). According a widely affirmed principle, information cannot be destroyed. So when a black hole vanishes, all the information about the star that formed it can't simply vanish. This is known as the black hole information paradox.
A dude solved the paradox by saying that a black hole's entropy (i.e.: information) is proportional to the surface area of the event horizon (the theoretical surface that cloaks the black hole and marks the point of no return for anything coming round).
Now, to quantum physics (i won't explain quantum physics in a bracket [ok, i will, basically, you can't observe phenomena without altering the observed result, especially true at a VERY small scales, among many other things, there are properties of quantum physics that challenge "normal physics", one of them has to do with the fact that information can be in two different places at the same time, that information affected in one place can affect the equivalent information in other without any actual "phsyical process" happening to the other piece of information, etc]): theorists have shown that quantum ripples at the event horizon can encode the information inside the black hole, so there is no mysterious information loss as the black hole evaporates.
From this it gathers that the 3D information about a precursor star can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram.
One more premise before it all goes mumble-jumble: theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a mere 10 to the power of -35 metres.
And this is when shit hits the imaginary fan of theoretic physical bollocks: if space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe. In order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. Or, as Hogan says, a holographic universe is blurry. You can tell if you were living in a Hologram by measuring the blurring.
So... mind boggled enough? This kind of theory makes you think that the talking bush set on fire, the parting of the water and all that stuff the old religions invented are not that far-fetched after all. I mean, who on earth can believe on a holographic universe? And I better not get started with string theory, multiverse or some of the other crazy stuff physicists are coming up with.
Joko
P.s: You can read the full article here.
The boludez in question is not quite a stupid thought per se. The stupid thoughts are my own meek attempts to understand the mind-boggling implications of said boludez.
Basically, succinctly and in short, the GEO600 (a complex "machine" that looks for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes) has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in.
Not content with this, Craig Hogan, the dude that predicted the "noise" before it was actually detected by the machine, said that "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time. If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
How's that for a Monday morning thought to be lodged in the wrinkles of your frayed, hangover brain as you're trying to get to grips with the mind-numbing office routine?
The article is quite a long (as it should be, to try to explain such a bizarre concept) and of course, the idea could well be true according to present theories, proofs, etc.
I'll make a vain and hopeless attempt to explain the 2499 words article about quantum physics in but a few (with a bit of copy/pasting, of course!).
Black holes contain "information" (tricky word). According a widely affirmed principle, information cannot be destroyed. So when a black hole vanishes, all the information about the star that formed it can't simply vanish. This is known as the black hole information paradox.
A dude solved the paradox by saying that a black hole's entropy (i.e.: information) is proportional to the surface area of the event horizon (the theoretical surface that cloaks the black hole and marks the point of no return for anything coming round).
Now, to quantum physics (i won't explain quantum physics in a bracket [ok, i will, basically, you can't observe phenomena without altering the observed result, especially true at a VERY small scales, among many other things, there are properties of quantum physics that challenge "normal physics", one of them has to do with the fact that information can be in two different places at the same time, that information affected in one place can affect the equivalent information in other without any actual "phsyical process" happening to the other piece of information, etc]): theorists have shown that quantum ripples at the event horizon can encode the information inside the black hole, so there is no mysterious information loss as the black hole evaporates.
From this it gathers that the 3D information about a precursor star can be completely encoded in the 2D horizon of the subsequent black hole - not unlike the 3D image of an object being encoded in a 2D hologram.
One more premise before it all goes mumble-jumble: theoretical physicists have long believed that quantum effects will cause space-time to convulse wildly on the tiniest scales. At this magnification, the fabric of space-time becomes grainy and is ultimately made of tiny units rather like pixels, but a hundred billion billion times smaller than a proton. This distance is known as the Planck length, a mere 10 to the power of -35 metres.
And this is when shit hits the imaginary fan of theoretic physical bollocks: if space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe. In order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. Or, as Hogan says, a holographic universe is blurry. You can tell if you were living in a Hologram by measuring the blurring.
So... mind boggled enough? This kind of theory makes you think that the talking bush set on fire, the parting of the water and all that stuff the old religions invented are not that far-fetched after all. I mean, who on earth can believe on a holographic universe? And I better not get started with string theory, multiverse or some of the other crazy stuff physicists are coming up with.
Joko
P.s: You can read the full article here.
lunes, diciembre 15, 2008
The crisis
Today, accidentally reading a financial blog, I came upon a sentence that summarizes the crisis and the whole concept behind it.
"Wealth is a conditional trust, not an absolute possession".
Como decía un amigo: es todo tan relativo...
Joko
"Wealth is a conditional trust, not an absolute possession".
Como decía un amigo: es todo tan relativo...
Joko
martes, noviembre 11, 2008
Tuesday, 3:40 am
Richard Dawkins shouldn't have bothered himself writing The God Delusion, the mere existence of bedbugs disproofs that of a God.
I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the holy cleansing and purifying knights of the apocalypse...
Top 5, worst sleeping nights of my life:
5. Australia, I'm not sure when and where since there were many nights involving the tent - summer trips with the lot and with Ash:
Perhaps it was the one right before going to Moreton island with Niro and Eva, maybe the one on the top of Brisbane Waters national park with Rik and Eva or perhaps the one with Ash on the west coast (that turned out to be its last), but definitely the whole experience with my crap tent in Oz. Many a time I woke up in the middle of the night to fix those ever-braking poles as the tent almost fell on top of our poor, sleeping heads. Many a night I heard them snap and went back to sleep cursing the bloody thing and hoping it would at least stay standing until the morrow. Funny enough, it was almost an emotional moment when I finally parted with it.
4. London, my first night on my new flat - only a few days ago:
I rented out a huge room with my own private "garden" in a decently cool area in London. To my regret, I discovered that even though the previous owner had left a few weeks ago, the true occupants were anxiously waiting to welcome me: that night, a bedbug infestation feasted on my flesh and blood. Even though it was a shitty night I was lucky to be in high spirits because of my new job and how my new adventure was starting to take shape in London. Three days later, the bloody (literally) creatures have worn off my optimism and deranged my psyche. I'm hoping tonight doesn't clinch a new position in this accursed poll. Tomorrow the bastards MUST go.
3. Venice, first night in Venice waiting for Ash and Lucas to arrive the next day - ski trip to the Alps with Ash and Lucas.
I had the rather dubious pleasure of discovering how cold the hard stone can be in a rainy winter night whilst carrying my rucksack with me. After a few beers in a pub, I tried to sleep under some of the arcades next to the canals but the cold stones seemed intent in challenging my experience-toughened resistance, maybe because of the proximity with big bodies of water. After wondering for hours hoping to find some sort of shelter, I ended up sleeping under a scaffold to protect myself from the rain and over some cardboards to insulate myself from the ground: it worked to perfection, good'ol homeless style. Funny enough, the next day I slept perfectly fine in the airport for about 5 hours and, after the arrival of Lucas and Ash I had to give in to their bourgeois demands to sleep an extra 3 more top quality hours in a bed... absolutely nonsensical.
2. Ferry from Patras to Venice, sleeping on the deck of the ferry - end of inter-rail trip with Ash:
After inter-railing for months around Europe (mostly Italy and Greece) with Ash and sleeping pretty much every night in night trains and in variously shitty camping sites (in our tent), Ash and I had the brilliant idea of treating ourselves to proper beds in our last night in Greece, in Patras. The result: my first encounter with bedbugs. Strangely enough, he managed to get away unscathed but alas! I wasn't so fortunate. On top of that, the next day I decided to try to do the Jewish thing, out of sheer curiosity and to test myself, and fast for a whole day (I can't quite remember the name of the festivity but it was in late October). Of course, my itching body didn't aid much in this endeavour. I also remember I was reading American Psycho at the time and that it made the whole situation even more disturbing: first encounter with bedbugs and resulting nasty bites over my whole body, first time I fasted for a whole day and resulting vagueness and airiness of the mind, plus intensive reading of very graphic descriptions about a psycho killer drilling holes in his victim's gums...
The truly nasty night was actually the following one. We had to take a ferry from Patras to Venice so we could catch a flight to England from there. That night, with my rashes at their peak of itchiness, I ended up "sleeping" on the deck of the ferry inside my sleeping bag besieged by a thousand itchy bites and a hideous, continuous glare coming from the engine room of the ship. Moreover, the idiotic crew members didn't turn off the lights of the ship so there was no way to avoid staring at a massive light bulb every time I opened my eyes; on top of this, the cold wind prevented me from getting too far away from the sheltered yet horribly noisy entrance to the lower decks. Did I mention that I had a thousand bites from bedbugs?
Only the sight of the moon over Albania and the Mediterranean night sky saved this one from getting the top accolade. Well, maybe because the winner was pretty nasty too.
1. Galway / train from Galway to Dublin, only night in Galway before returning to Dublin in the early hours of the morning - traveling solo in the UK trying to get a taste of the real homeless traveler's life whilst sleeping on the rough:
In truth, most of the nights were actually not too bad except for the one in Galway (some of them were in fact excellent, like the one on a hillside near Tralee watching the sun fade over the atlantic ocean). I was on a tight budget so apart from sleeping in parks and hills, I was also spending little money on food. I arrived in Galway in the gray afternoon drizzle and found a lovely little Irish pub (a REAL Irish pub) where there were some funny, bearded young men playing some cool Irish traditional music. I got carried away by the experience so, a couple of hours and Guinness later I decided to set off to find a place to sleep for the night. I had an empty stomach (even before drinking) but due to the thickness and heaviness of the black beverage revered in that country I thought I felt pretty full for the rest of the night.
A few hours later, still happily drunk and marveled by the city but already quite wet, tired, and in view of the lack of options available, I choose the entrance of a church as my abode for the night. The church was one of the ugliest I can remember since it was surrounded by one big parking lot that seemed to protrude from the building in every possible direction. Even though I was cold, wet and wary of Irish rapists, the really dreadful part was waking up at 4:30am with the most horrible hangover to go catch the only day train back to Dublin (maybe this should actually go on some sort of top 5 worst hangovers). I got up feeling extremely sick, cold and miserable; I had to shoulder my heavy rucksack and head to the station in the morning gloom under the same persistent and depressingly thin drizzle.
When I finally boarded the train and thought I'd get some more sleep, the new day dawned and the light of the morning sun glared in my eyes. Unable to sleep, with a thumping headache and the most painful jabs stinging at the back of my eyes, I tried to find an answer to my plight in the toilets. A few more appalling minutes retching over the stinky sink unable to obtain any tangible (or rather visible) results from my dismayed efforts gave me another brilliant idea: since my stomach felt completely feeble and empty I should eat something and it'd surely make me feel better. After force-feeding myself a banana I'd been carrying I finally managed to fall asleep, only to wake who knows how many minutes later to clumsily make a blind dash to throw up a thin yellow stream of thickish bilis in the train's piss smelling toilets. For the life of me, I can't remember throwing up anything more disgusting than that (top 5 throw ups?), I actually consider myself extremely lucky to still like bananas after that dismal experience.
The rest of the journey comprised of some 3 or 4 miserable hours of half-slept existential sorrow and agony, cursing the very day a drunken Irish had the brightest idea of inventing the black stuff (once again, maybe this should go under a top 5 worst journeys).
Special mention:
Frontier between Bulgaria and Romania, sleeping on the side of the road of a side road - trip to Vama Veche with Matt and Sabina.
This one should probably be in there anyway. We arrived late in Vama Veche, an old once-a-hippie-now-trendy Romanian village in the frontier with Bulgaria, but that didn't prevent Matt and Sabina from having an imperious desire to walk to Bulgaria. Yes, just WALK to the bloody country. So we set forth towards Bulgaria, passed the security checks and, after asking directions (there weren't that many choices really) from some very bewildered border control policemen, walked the 5 kms towards the nearest Bulgarian town.
The little town was, of course, a shit hole. Luckily, it was a shit hole where there was some sort of festivity going on so we were able to bargain with the locals in a very effective sign and grunt language to get some nondescript sausages and warm, flat beer for the night. Despite the sour tone of my writing, I actually enjoyed that night quite a lot, it was simply a completely nonsensical and stupid idea; however, for whatever reason I seem to have a penchant for ideas nonsensical and stupid. Anyway, Sabina was flirting with a very hopeful Bulgarian looking for a Spanish passport whilst Matt and I went out of our way to avoid even getting the slightest glimpse of any of the local beauties (god forbid smiling at them) given the very menacing looks we were receiving by the hostile, hormone-pumped, former-would-be-communist youths.
We somehow managed to survive and drink the night away surrounded by a very picturesque crowd that was slowly beginning to accept us. Some of them were actually friendly enough to approach us and offer their golden-teethed sisters. However, Sabina didn't quite agree with the sausage she had eaten or all the warm beer she was drinking, maybe she was just puking her way out of a tight situation with an over-excited Bulgarian but in any case, we cleared off and started walking back to Romania.
Suddenly and fortunately, someone had the alcohol induced sudden inspiration that maybe the shift of the control policemen could've changed and, if that was the case we had got ourselves in a pretty nasty situation: two drunken Europeans (yeah, I know, but I had the passport!) and an drunken American appearing out of the blue, or should I say the pitch darkness, without a car, walking on a deserted road and trying to enter Romania at 5 am in the morning... we were bound for some serious questioning or some serious bribing. Therefore, we decided to sleep out the rest of the night on the side of the road of a side road and head towards Romania first thing in the morning. The thing is, the vegetation on the side of the road of the first side road we found was pretty thick and we couldn't dare to venture any further because there was barbed wired and who knows what overzealous property protecting Bulgarian night-dwelling monsters. Still, even though the road was absolutely deserted, we couldn't risk to sleep on it (even stupidity and daring has its limits).
Eventually and given that we were getting too tired and the odds of finding a haven in a god-forsaken Bulgarian side road were getting longer by the minute, we simply dropped dead on the side of the road. Unfortunately, in less than 3 minutes we were covered in a swarm of starving mosquitoes trying desperately to find any bit of exposed flesh to prolong their existence. It's in times like these when I wonder how the fuck can so many mosquitoes procreate and survive in nature, and then reflect pitifully on the sad and helpless life of whatever animal that lives in the area and is forced to endure such a nightmarish experience every night.
I don't think we slept at all that night but at least we lay down for maybe half an hour and, when the sun finally shyly rose over the black sea, we headed back to Romania - now in too grumpy a state to even care about what border policemen might think about our sudden apparition. When we finally got to Vama Veche, we slept a good solid 5 hours on the beach and then checked in a decent hostel. Beds feel ever so precious when you spend a night on the rough.
---
It's almost 6 already. Well, that's two hours worth of my blood that these bastards aren't getting. Damn it, tomorrow is my second day at work, I should be in bed. Ah, well...
I only intended to write that stupid thing about Dawkins, God and bedbugs but I got carried away telling all these stories. It's strange that I don't normally go to great lengths about telling detailed accounts of my trips. Maybe I'm not a good story teller and I feel I can only be fair to the memories if I put them in writing. Maybe I'll become one of those old grampas that pester their poor, innocent nephews with stories of past adventures and outlandish experiences. Gee... I must be getting old...
Joko
I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the holy cleansing and purifying knights of the apocalypse...
Top 5, worst sleeping nights of my life:
5. Australia, I'm not sure when and where since there were many nights involving the tent - summer trips with the lot and with Ash:
Perhaps it was the one right before going to Moreton island with Niro and Eva, maybe the one on the top of Brisbane Waters national park with Rik and Eva or perhaps the one with Ash on the west coast (that turned out to be its last), but definitely the whole experience with my crap tent in Oz. Many a time I woke up in the middle of the night to fix those ever-braking poles as the tent almost fell on top of our poor, sleeping heads. Many a night I heard them snap and went back to sleep cursing the bloody thing and hoping it would at least stay standing until the morrow. Funny enough, it was almost an emotional moment when I finally parted with it.
4. London, my first night on my new flat - only a few days ago:
I rented out a huge room with my own private "garden" in a decently cool area in London. To my regret, I discovered that even though the previous owner had left a few weeks ago, the true occupants were anxiously waiting to welcome me: that night, a bedbug infestation feasted on my flesh and blood. Even though it was a shitty night I was lucky to be in high spirits because of my new job and how my new adventure was starting to take shape in London. Three days later, the bloody (literally) creatures have worn off my optimism and deranged my psyche. I'm hoping tonight doesn't clinch a new position in this accursed poll. Tomorrow the bastards MUST go.
3. Venice, first night in Venice waiting for Ash and Lucas to arrive the next day - ski trip to the Alps with Ash and Lucas.
I had the rather dubious pleasure of discovering how cold the hard stone can be in a rainy winter night whilst carrying my rucksack with me. After a few beers in a pub, I tried to sleep under some of the arcades next to the canals but the cold stones seemed intent in challenging my experience-toughened resistance, maybe because of the proximity with big bodies of water. After wondering for hours hoping to find some sort of shelter, I ended up sleeping under a scaffold to protect myself from the rain and over some cardboards to insulate myself from the ground: it worked to perfection, good'ol homeless style. Funny enough, the next day I slept perfectly fine in the airport for about 5 hours and, after the arrival of Lucas and Ash I had to give in to their bourgeois demands to sleep an extra 3 more top quality hours in a bed... absolutely nonsensical.
2. Ferry from Patras to Venice, sleeping on the deck of the ferry - end of inter-rail trip with Ash:
After inter-railing for months around Europe (mostly Italy and Greece) with Ash and sleeping pretty much every night in night trains and in variously shitty camping sites (in our tent), Ash and I had the brilliant idea of treating ourselves to proper beds in our last night in Greece, in Patras. The result: my first encounter with bedbugs. Strangely enough, he managed to get away unscathed but alas! I wasn't so fortunate. On top of that, the next day I decided to try to do the Jewish thing, out of sheer curiosity and to test myself, and fast for a whole day (I can't quite remember the name of the festivity but it was in late October). Of course, my itching body didn't aid much in this endeavour. I also remember I was reading American Psycho at the time and that it made the whole situation even more disturbing: first encounter with bedbugs and resulting nasty bites over my whole body, first time I fasted for a whole day and resulting vagueness and airiness of the mind, plus intensive reading of very graphic descriptions about a psycho killer drilling holes in his victim's gums...
The truly nasty night was actually the following one. We had to take a ferry from Patras to Venice so we could catch a flight to England from there. That night, with my rashes at their peak of itchiness, I ended up "sleeping" on the deck of the ferry inside my sleeping bag besieged by a thousand itchy bites and a hideous, continuous glare coming from the engine room of the ship. Moreover, the idiotic crew members didn't turn off the lights of the ship so there was no way to avoid staring at a massive light bulb every time I opened my eyes; on top of this, the cold wind prevented me from getting too far away from the sheltered yet horribly noisy entrance to the lower decks. Did I mention that I had a thousand bites from bedbugs?
Only the sight of the moon over Albania and the Mediterranean night sky saved this one from getting the top accolade. Well, maybe because the winner was pretty nasty too.
1. Galway / train from Galway to Dublin, only night in Galway before returning to Dublin in the early hours of the morning - traveling solo in the UK trying to get a taste of the real homeless traveler's life whilst sleeping on the rough:
In truth, most of the nights were actually not too bad except for the one in Galway (some of them were in fact excellent, like the one on a hillside near Tralee watching the sun fade over the atlantic ocean). I was on a tight budget so apart from sleeping in parks and hills, I was also spending little money on food. I arrived in Galway in the gray afternoon drizzle and found a lovely little Irish pub (a REAL Irish pub) where there were some funny, bearded young men playing some cool Irish traditional music. I got carried away by the experience so, a couple of hours and Guinness later I decided to set off to find a place to sleep for the night. I had an empty stomach (even before drinking) but due to the thickness and heaviness of the black beverage revered in that country I thought I felt pretty full for the rest of the night.
A few hours later, still happily drunk and marveled by the city but already quite wet, tired, and in view of the lack of options available, I choose the entrance of a church as my abode for the night. The church was one of the ugliest I can remember since it was surrounded by one big parking lot that seemed to protrude from the building in every possible direction. Even though I was cold, wet and wary of Irish rapists, the really dreadful part was waking up at 4:30am with the most horrible hangover to go catch the only day train back to Dublin (maybe this should actually go on some sort of top 5 worst hangovers). I got up feeling extremely sick, cold and miserable; I had to shoulder my heavy rucksack and head to the station in the morning gloom under the same persistent and depressingly thin drizzle.
When I finally boarded the train and thought I'd get some more sleep, the new day dawned and the light of the morning sun glared in my eyes. Unable to sleep, with a thumping headache and the most painful jabs stinging at the back of my eyes, I tried to find an answer to my plight in the toilets. A few more appalling minutes retching over the stinky sink unable to obtain any tangible (or rather visible) results from my dismayed efforts gave me another brilliant idea: since my stomach felt completely feeble and empty I should eat something and it'd surely make me feel better. After force-feeding myself a banana I'd been carrying I finally managed to fall asleep, only to wake who knows how many minutes later to clumsily make a blind dash to throw up a thin yellow stream of thickish bilis in the train's piss smelling toilets. For the life of me, I can't remember throwing up anything more disgusting than that (top 5 throw ups?), I actually consider myself extremely lucky to still like bananas after that dismal experience.
The rest of the journey comprised of some 3 or 4 miserable hours of half-slept existential sorrow and agony, cursing the very day a drunken Irish had the brightest idea of inventing the black stuff (once again, maybe this should go under a top 5 worst journeys).
Special mention:
Frontier between Bulgaria and Romania, sleeping on the side of the road of a side road - trip to Vama Veche with Matt and Sabina.
This one should probably be in there anyway. We arrived late in Vama Veche, an old once-a-hippie-now-trendy Romanian village in the frontier with Bulgaria, but that didn't prevent Matt and Sabina from having an imperious desire to walk to Bulgaria. Yes, just WALK to the bloody country. So we set forth towards Bulgaria, passed the security checks and, after asking directions (there weren't that many choices really) from some very bewildered border control policemen, walked the 5 kms towards the nearest Bulgarian town.
The little town was, of course, a shit hole. Luckily, it was a shit hole where there was some sort of festivity going on so we were able to bargain with the locals in a very effective sign and grunt language to get some nondescript sausages and warm, flat beer for the night. Despite the sour tone of my writing, I actually enjoyed that night quite a lot, it was simply a completely nonsensical and stupid idea; however, for whatever reason I seem to have a penchant for ideas nonsensical and stupid. Anyway, Sabina was flirting with a very hopeful Bulgarian looking for a Spanish passport whilst Matt and I went out of our way to avoid even getting the slightest glimpse of any of the local beauties (god forbid smiling at them) given the very menacing looks we were receiving by the hostile, hormone-pumped, former-would-be-communist youths.
We somehow managed to survive and drink the night away surrounded by a very picturesque crowd that was slowly beginning to accept us. Some of them were actually friendly enough to approach us and offer their golden-teethed sisters. However, Sabina didn't quite agree with the sausage she had eaten or all the warm beer she was drinking, maybe she was just puking her way out of a tight situation with an over-excited Bulgarian but in any case, we cleared off and started walking back to Romania.
Suddenly and fortunately, someone had the alcohol induced sudden inspiration that maybe the shift of the control policemen could've changed and, if that was the case we had got ourselves in a pretty nasty situation: two drunken Europeans (yeah, I know, but I had the passport!) and an drunken American appearing out of the blue, or should I say the pitch darkness, without a car, walking on a deserted road and trying to enter Romania at 5 am in the morning... we were bound for some serious questioning or some serious bribing. Therefore, we decided to sleep out the rest of the night on the side of the road of a side road and head towards Romania first thing in the morning. The thing is, the vegetation on the side of the road of the first side road we found was pretty thick and we couldn't dare to venture any further because there was barbed wired and who knows what overzealous property protecting Bulgarian night-dwelling monsters. Still, even though the road was absolutely deserted, we couldn't risk to sleep on it (even stupidity and daring has its limits).
Eventually and given that we were getting too tired and the odds of finding a haven in a god-forsaken Bulgarian side road were getting longer by the minute, we simply dropped dead on the side of the road. Unfortunately, in less than 3 minutes we were covered in a swarm of starving mosquitoes trying desperately to find any bit of exposed flesh to prolong their existence. It's in times like these when I wonder how the fuck can so many mosquitoes procreate and survive in nature, and then reflect pitifully on the sad and helpless life of whatever animal that lives in the area and is forced to endure such a nightmarish experience every night.
I don't think we slept at all that night but at least we lay down for maybe half an hour and, when the sun finally shyly rose over the black sea, we headed back to Romania - now in too grumpy a state to even care about what border policemen might think about our sudden apparition. When we finally got to Vama Veche, we slept a good solid 5 hours on the beach and then checked in a decent hostel. Beds feel ever so precious when you spend a night on the rough.
---
It's almost 6 already. Well, that's two hours worth of my blood that these bastards aren't getting. Damn it, tomorrow is my second day at work, I should be in bed. Ah, well...
I only intended to write that stupid thing about Dawkins, God and bedbugs but I got carried away telling all these stories. It's strange that I don't normally go to great lengths about telling detailed accounts of my trips. Maybe I'm not a good story teller and I feel I can only be fair to the memories if I put them in writing. Maybe I'll become one of those old grampas that pester their poor, innocent nephews with stories of past adventures and outlandish experiences. Gee... I must be getting old...
Joko
viernes, octubre 10, 2008
Neddle in the haystack
Picture a silver needle with a long thin thread passing through its pinhole. Now imagine you are the needle and the long thin thread is your lifeline. Your lifeline represents your life through the passing of time, with whatever circumstances you're immersed in at each stage of your life.
Outside the reach of the needle and the thread there is an immense sun bathing it in light from every direction. The silver needle shines back. Now, as more and more thread passes through the pinhole, it's an inevitable matter of time before it entangles with the body of the needle. Maybe it brushes it slightly or maybe it takes one or two turns around it, partly covering the needle.
Usually the needles shakes off the thread and it regains its normal course. But the thread continues to pass for a whole lifetime so the more time it passes before the needle untangles itself, the less the likelihood it'll ever will. As the needle gets more and more entangled by the thread, its body is progressively obscured by the fabric and it stops reflecting the light. It simply stops shining.
There is no needle in the haystack. There is just a shining, silver needle in a stack of small pieces of solid thread - pieces of thread that cover what once were shining, silver needles.
Joko
Pd: All this could've been said by any self-aid book with a simple: rid yourself of your circumstances and you'll shine, but it's always easier to remember things with metaphors.
Outside the reach of the needle and the thread there is an immense sun bathing it in light from every direction. The silver needle shines back. Now, as more and more thread passes through the pinhole, it's an inevitable matter of time before it entangles with the body of the needle. Maybe it brushes it slightly or maybe it takes one or two turns around it, partly covering the needle.
Usually the needles shakes off the thread and it regains its normal course. But the thread continues to pass for a whole lifetime so the more time it passes before the needle untangles itself, the less the likelihood it'll ever will. As the needle gets more and more entangled by the thread, its body is progressively obscured by the fabric and it stops reflecting the light. It simply stops shining.
There is no needle in the haystack. There is just a shining, silver needle in a stack of small pieces of solid thread - pieces of thread that cover what once were shining, silver needles.
Joko
Pd: All this could've been said by any self-aid book with a simple: rid yourself of your circumstances and you'll shine, but it's always easier to remember things with metaphors.
miércoles, septiembre 10, 2008
Antes de que me olvide lo que hoy siento
Volver a una ciudad. Volver a una amistad. Volver a un amor.
Volver es una ficción, nunca se vuelve, ni siquiera en alegorías o en sueños. Sólo se vuelve para recordar mejor con la ayuda visual de una realidad presente. Las ciudades están vivas y cambian; los amigos, en su mayoría, también están vivos y cambian; los amores viven otros amores y aún si no lo hiciesen también cambiarían - y yo, el inevitable observador subjetivo, dueño y esclavo de mi percepción, yo también cambio.
Vuelve el viajero a su terruño, a su ciudad natal, en un arrebato de enamorada nostalgia. Deambula navegando sus calles, siguiendo inconsciente los viejos pasos de una rutina capaz de sobrevivir cualquier olvido mientras descubre con sonrisas y lágrimas los escenarios de una vida pasada. Se pierde con presición y se regocija fantaseando un encuentro casual con un habitante atrapado en el tiempo y congelado en su recuerdo, quizás con un viejo amor o una mujer que haya marcado su juventud a fuego. Su memoria juega a las cartas con su imaginación y se revitaliza con las imágenes que vuelven a visitar sus ojos, las mismas que alguna vez quedaron grabadas en su retina. Lo que no entiende es que en su fantasía se entremezclan el ser en el que se ha convertido con recuerdos que para él no han cambiado.
Pero así vuelve y así siente el regreso hasta que la imaginación pierde su poder y la realidad aplasta sin piedad los devanéos de la memoria. El viajero pronto ve que la ciudad, por supuesto, respira, y que los aires que alguna vez fueron suyos ya se han reciclado. Entonces su nostalgia pierde ese entrañable encanto y se tiñe de tristeza, incomprendida por el insolente presente que, inmutable e inclemente, continúa infatigablemente reemplazando al olvidado pasado.
El viajero busca a sus amigos y ellos también habrán cambiado. Los buenos se tomarán el trabajo, quizás en honor a esos preciados recuerdos, de intentar redescubrir a este extraño conocido. Los otros no tendrán la paciencia, la energía o la curiosidad.
En algunos casos, la fuerza del recuerdo de la amistad es tal que las personalidades se confunden en él y, al menos temporalmente, vuelven a reflejar las que alguna vez fueron. A veces los amigos ya no reconocen a este osado deconocido que se ha atrevido a desafiar la veracidad de sus recuerdos; a veces descubren amargamente que esa amistad inverosimil sólo pudo haber sido fruto de esas pasadas circunstancias y ahora que han cambiado, no existe ningún vínculo con este viajero salvo el de rememorar viejas historias.
Y los amores... los amores también cambian, claro. La pasión suele permanecer escondida como un gigante dormido bajo montañas de recuerdos apilados, pero sin embargo sigue allí, expectante, casi amenazante. El amor suele ser buen compañero de la nostalgia pero es asiduo a confundir el pasado con el presente, y en ese vals que quiere bailar desesperadamente, se pierde casi irremediablemente. Puede renacer y transformarse en un fuego distinto y nuevo; puede revivir impulsado por el recuerdo y morir por su misma mano inclemente cuando la imagen de la realidad ya no se ajusta a aquella idealizada en la memoria; por último, el último estertor de un amor apasionado puede destruir la impoluta belleza de la experiencia pasada.
Sin quienes delinearon su historia con experiencias compartidas, la ciudad puede tranformarse en una simple cáscara, un escenario vacío de donde los preciados actores ya se han ido. Por más lejos que se viaje en el tiempo, tarde o temprano la realidad hace mella en la memoria.
Como eterno viajero con más de una tierra estoy condenado a ver mis recuerdos fusionarse con realidades cambiantes. He descubierto que para mi, las ciudades sin mis héroes son sólo un ápice de lo que deberían ser. Son ellos quienes las enaltecen y las dotan de significado.
Yo vivo y el mundo es el escenario y sin embargo, el escenario no es el mundo. O al menos así creo que me siento hoy luego del enésimo retorno a mi enésima casa.
Joko
Volver es una ficción, nunca se vuelve, ni siquiera en alegorías o en sueños. Sólo se vuelve para recordar mejor con la ayuda visual de una realidad presente. Las ciudades están vivas y cambian; los amigos, en su mayoría, también están vivos y cambian; los amores viven otros amores y aún si no lo hiciesen también cambiarían - y yo, el inevitable observador subjetivo, dueño y esclavo de mi percepción, yo también cambio.
Vuelve el viajero a su terruño, a su ciudad natal, en un arrebato de enamorada nostalgia. Deambula navegando sus calles, siguiendo inconsciente los viejos pasos de una rutina capaz de sobrevivir cualquier olvido mientras descubre con sonrisas y lágrimas los escenarios de una vida pasada. Se pierde con presición y se regocija fantaseando un encuentro casual con un habitante atrapado en el tiempo y congelado en su recuerdo, quizás con un viejo amor o una mujer que haya marcado su juventud a fuego. Su memoria juega a las cartas con su imaginación y se revitaliza con las imágenes que vuelven a visitar sus ojos, las mismas que alguna vez quedaron grabadas en su retina. Lo que no entiende es que en su fantasía se entremezclan el ser en el que se ha convertido con recuerdos que para él no han cambiado.
Pero así vuelve y así siente el regreso hasta que la imaginación pierde su poder y la realidad aplasta sin piedad los devanéos de la memoria. El viajero pronto ve que la ciudad, por supuesto, respira, y que los aires que alguna vez fueron suyos ya se han reciclado. Entonces su nostalgia pierde ese entrañable encanto y se tiñe de tristeza, incomprendida por el insolente presente que, inmutable e inclemente, continúa infatigablemente reemplazando al olvidado pasado.
El viajero busca a sus amigos y ellos también habrán cambiado. Los buenos se tomarán el trabajo, quizás en honor a esos preciados recuerdos, de intentar redescubrir a este extraño conocido. Los otros no tendrán la paciencia, la energía o la curiosidad.
En algunos casos, la fuerza del recuerdo de la amistad es tal que las personalidades se confunden en él y, al menos temporalmente, vuelven a reflejar las que alguna vez fueron. A veces los amigos ya no reconocen a este osado deconocido que se ha atrevido a desafiar la veracidad de sus recuerdos; a veces descubren amargamente que esa amistad inverosimil sólo pudo haber sido fruto de esas pasadas circunstancias y ahora que han cambiado, no existe ningún vínculo con este viajero salvo el de rememorar viejas historias.
Y los amores... los amores también cambian, claro. La pasión suele permanecer escondida como un gigante dormido bajo montañas de recuerdos apilados, pero sin embargo sigue allí, expectante, casi amenazante. El amor suele ser buen compañero de la nostalgia pero es asiduo a confundir el pasado con el presente, y en ese vals que quiere bailar desesperadamente, se pierde casi irremediablemente. Puede renacer y transformarse en un fuego distinto y nuevo; puede revivir impulsado por el recuerdo y morir por su misma mano inclemente cuando la imagen de la realidad ya no se ajusta a aquella idealizada en la memoria; por último, el último estertor de un amor apasionado puede destruir la impoluta belleza de la experiencia pasada.
Sin quienes delinearon su historia con experiencias compartidas, la ciudad puede tranformarse en una simple cáscara, un escenario vacío de donde los preciados actores ya se han ido. Por más lejos que se viaje en el tiempo, tarde o temprano la realidad hace mella en la memoria.
Como eterno viajero con más de una tierra estoy condenado a ver mis recuerdos fusionarse con realidades cambiantes. He descubierto que para mi, las ciudades sin mis héroes son sólo un ápice de lo que deberían ser. Son ellos quienes las enaltecen y las dotan de significado.
Yo vivo y el mundo es el escenario y sin embargo, el escenario no es el mundo. O al menos así creo que me siento hoy luego del enésimo retorno a mi enésima casa.
Joko
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