An avenue for the mind

Amizade

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 7:04 PM 0 comments

He loved him for who he was, and so ruined his life.

Labels: literature

posted by shaikai @ 7:10 PM 0 comments

Delusional, transient, finite, elusive. (Romantic) love. First you feel you need it, you desire it, you crave for it, you fight for it. You spend your time searching, socializing, thinking what to do, thinking you should not do anything for it (because "it will come suddenly one day, for sure"). Times passes by: days, weeks, months, even years. A lot happens, but not what you wanted, not what you craved for, not what you fought for.

That love, the object of your hope, might not ever come. You could keep waiting while you waste your life. If it comes, it might no be what you expected: the joy of a day, a week, or a month, of a short time. Until it reveals his dark side, leaving you alone, weeping beyond consolation.

If your love comes and it is stable, time goes on, turning ecstasy into routine. You both start to realize how common you are, he was not a price, he was a mere human being. A mere human being, defective, mad, unsatisfying. You have to get used to it. It takes almost your whole and gives less than that. Or even worse, paradise becomes hell, sometimes all of a sudden, like a nigthmare at noon: the sun in the sky, brighting intensely above the realm of suffering. Everything is ruined and you are left alone again, as you were before it all had started.

You can believe I am the worst of pessimists. But that is not my view. You can believe I have lost all hope in love. But that is not my view. You can think I arrived to these conclusions out of a hedious rage against life. But, trust me, that is far from being my view. I love life, may be more than anyone. And that is just why I arrived to these conclusions. I am one among the army of the hopeful, those who always feel the need of (romantic) love who never gets entirely satisfied. I do not deny it. But I can't ignore how I find all this delusional, transient, finite, elusive. All incomplete and doomed to failure. How could it be another way? How could we fix what is essentially ruin?

The sages say happiness and suffering are the same thing. Once you realize it, only endless joy can follow. And I sincerely think that is the only way out. How to learn to live in a world like this? That is the real question. There was a truth in saying that you should not fight to find love: what for? It is all the same. It might come, it might not come. But true love does not need to wait for a special person. Love finds its own way, even in doom, and sometimes especially in doom. True love finds in every sentient creature an opportunity to develop. And the special one? He might come, he might not come.

I can't stick fully to my own words. That is why I feel the need to spell them out. Somebody could listen and smile at me. And I will smile back.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 12:36 PM 0 comments

Love again

I surely know what it is like having somebody close to me, close in that particular sense... close in such a way that I feel safe, extremely calm, extremely glad. I deeply wish I could experience the same again, soon. But, am I in the mood for going after love? I guess not. Some people have told me that's not something you look for, but something you surprisingly run across. I know they might be right, but I still doubt it.

What to do about it is far from clear for me. Though today, more than any other single day recently, I have felt the need to taste that safeness, that calmness, that gladness.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 8:41 PM 0 comments

Love

Some people yearn for love, hoping someday that special one will finally come and brighten their lives, all of a sudden, as an all-time expected surprise (ironically speaking). Somehow I recognize that kind of guy in myself, somehow I am a romantic man, but I can't help feeling skeptical as well. Skeptical not of that special one coming someday to my life, but even worse, of my ability to fall in love with somebody at all. I say to myself that I might be too worried, and that probably that suspicion is just the result of having experienced the possibility of truly liking someone without being in love. It might be that, or it might be that I have grown old for romance. In that case, I wouldn't consider it necessarily catastrophic, I could even find in it an opportunity to focus on other issues and love without grasping; but at least I'd feel such a melancholy, as if saying goodbye to a past life and welcome another in which I can't expect things to be the same anymore, like abandoning my land never to go back. Should I wait? I wish I could pack right now.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 10:14 PM 0 comments

Cuentos de la China

(English translation soon)

El segundo semestre del año pasado tuve la gran fortuna de conocer a Gao Xinjiang. Él es un escritor chino, de mucho renombre en nuestro tiempo. Nació en 1940 y en el 2000 recibió el nobel de literatura por una novela, creo que aquella titulada La Montaña del Alma. Hasta ahora sólo lo conozco por un libro de cuentos llamado Una Caña de Pescar para el Abuelo. De los cuentos que he leído de esa colección, el del mismo nombre es el mejor a mi juicio. Ya les cuento por qué.

A lo largo de mi vida he conocido distintos estilos de escribir literatura. En cuanto a la prosa, de varios autores he tenido la impresión de que tienden a hacer reportes de los detalles [los siguientes ejemplos son inventados]: "La habitación lucía terriblemente desordenada, como si nadie hubiera vivido allí en mucho tiempo, pero el olor a ropas de anciano delataba ocupación humana desde mucho tiempo atrás...", "las rosas ardieron con rapidez; éstas, aun en aquellos instantes en que perecían miserablemente por obra del fuego, expelían, de hecho con mayor intensidad, su exquisita fragancia; como si la amenaza sólo lograra magnificar la esencia de su belleza.", etc., etc. etc. Cada cual procede de manera diferente: unos generan una atmósfera asfixiante y desesperante, como Kafka; o angustiosa, como Dostoyevski; o de éxtasis estético, como Yasunari Kawabata.

Sin embargo, Una Caña de Pescar para el Abuelo parece una narración de un carácter diferente. Pareciera intentar retratar no sólo las situaciones, las impresiones, las atmósferas emocionales, sino el mismo pensamiento, el ejercicio de recordar, el tener una vida mental. Y qué profundo impactó el que me causó ese estilo, que en otros de sus cuentos no se repite. Quisiera escribir así. "Iré a las afueras, a la orilla del río de las afueras al que el abuelo me llevó a... ¿pescar?, recuerdo que el abuelo me llevó al río, no me acuerdo con claridad si pescamos algo, pero recuerdo que tenía un abuelo y una infancia y que en esos años de infancia me sentía muy mal cuando mi madre me bañaba desnudo en el patio... me viene a la memoria un poema cuyo protagonista lleva el cuerpo cubierto de cuchillos tintineantes, una libélula sin cola revolotea sobre el lugar, los críticos tienen padrastros en los ojos y el mentón ancho, quiero escribir una novela profunda, tan profunda que las moscas perezcan ahogadas en ella, y luego veo la espalda del abuelo sentado en cuclillas sobre un taburete fumando encorvado una pipa, abuelo, lo llamo pero no oye, me llego a su lado y lo llamo de nuevo, abuelo, y esta vez se devuelve, pero no sujeta en su mano ninguna pipa..." [Una Caña de Pescar para el Abuelo. Gao Xingjian. Trad. Laureano Ramírez. Ediciones del Bronce: 2003]

En medio de ese desorden universal, si llegan a leer todo el cuento, notarán un registro mental, un retrato experiencial, en toda su extensión, más que nada. Este cuento es prueba de que la literatura puede hacer magia si uno le sigue la cuerda. Es para leerse dos, tres, todas las veces. Porque la experiencia humana nunca se agota, no admite límites ni frenos. Y Gao pudo mostrármelo. Quisiera, en verdad, escribir así: haciendo emerger el silencioso a la vez bullicioso fluir de la mente sin descanso. Pero bueno, mejor dejo que lean ustedes mismos.

Labels: literature

posted by shaikai @ 7:35 AM 0 comments

Resolutions for 2008

1. To be a better Buddhist.
2. To keep on constantly reflecting and writing about my philosophical interests.
3. To keep on learning languages without stopping. Priorities: Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese.
4. To prepare my next trip abroad. The farther, the better. Better if I go to study.
5. To start living alone.
6. To start working out frequently.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 11:51 AM 2 comments

A Happy New Year for everybody around.

Labels: personal

posted by shaikai @ 5:13 PM 0 comments