Reliquia

Monograms

- Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar. (122)

- Not least among the tasks now confronting thought is that of placing all the reactionary arguments against Western culture in the service of progressive enlightenment. (122)

- Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak with out provoking strength. (122)

- Imagination is inflamed by women who lack, precisely, imagination. They have the brightest aureoles who, turned unwaveringly outward, are wholly matter-of-fact. Their attraction stems from their lack of awareness of themselves, indeed of self at all: Oscar Wilde coined the name unenigmatic Sphinxes for them. (108)

- Women of exceptional beauty are doomed to unhappiness. Even those favoured by every circumstance, who have birth, wealth, talent on their side, seem as if hounded or obsessed by the urge to destroy themselves and all the human relationships they contact. An oracle gives them the choice between calamities. Either they shrewdly exchange beauty for success. Then they pay with happiness for its condition; being no longer able to love, they poison the love felt for them and are left empty-handed. Or the privilege of beauty gives them the courage and confidence to repudiate the exchange agreement. They take seriously the happiness that the person promises, and are unstinting with themselves, assured by the admiration of all that they do not need first to prove their worth. In their youth they are free to choose. (109)

All taken from Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life

Revolucion

I will risk disappointing more than one, but I will now have to state that this revolution, our generation's revolution, is not going to be fun. In fact, it's gonna have to be boring and seem uninterested.

Back to sleep.

Accident

The whole experience left him out of sync, walking around the house, marking a trail in the carpet across the living room all the way up to the kitchen. When his muscles started aching, he would get up again and open the fridge, staring at the assortment of multicolored Tupperware but not looking inside any of it. He would hold his empty stare into the fridge for a few seconds, before deciding he wasn't hungry enough. He would do this a couple of times each day, eventually succumbing to some reheated chinese food or cold pizza.

The insurance agent called again that morning. Dem Franchise Boyz busted through the silence for almost a minute before the call went to voicemail. He stared at the phone as it rang. I gotta change that stupid ringtone, he thought. Better yet, I gotta get rid of that phone. The call didn't wake up Steven, though he nudged inside the sleeping bag where he was carving a place in the corner of the dining room. There was a message.

Hello, Francisco, it's Sharon from Progressive again, and I left a couple of messages last week and we really need to talk about the accident and I hope you are feeling well and I wish this bitch would stop talking to me like she knows me. He had a pervasive dislike people who were paid to be friendly to him. He took out that angst against as many telemarketers, sales representatives, and customer service agent as he could.

Inside, however, he wished he had friends. He longed for the times when he wouldn't systematically push people away. He wanted a better shrink, a new girlfriend, and some food from that fridge but was too lazy to sort through the Tupperware. He closed the fridge and grabbed a slice of cold pizza from the counter.

His neck didn't hurt much anymore, but the scar on his leg still looked vicious, according to Steven. Now 11-years-old, Steven was trying to be a cool kid and used words like vicious. Francisco had been a role model to him. Old enough to be an uncle, but never grownup enough to make anyone forget he was Steven's cousin. Now, the roles were beginning to change and Steven found himself babysitting what was left of his big cousin.

Pick up your fucking phone, he yelled as Dem Franchise Boyz interrupted the silent morning again. And change that fucking ringtone, for gods sakes.

Francisco got up and grabbed the phone. It was not Progressive, AT&T, or any refinance opportunity. It was Laurie. He put the phone back in the table, letting Dem Franchise Boyz finish the chorus. A thousand memories ran through his head. The sights, sounds, smells, laughs, fights, and, above all, the sex. The museums and concerts, and that time when she surprised him at school with balloons on his birthday.

Maybe I should go back to school, he thought, as if he had ever given it a real chance to begin with. I wonder what the hell she wants and if she misses me. Come on, baby, let's give it another try. There was another message.

Hey Francisco, it's me Laurie and I heard about your accident and I hope things are going well and I am moving out and do you want these clothes back that you left here long time ago and this must really be over if she called me by my first name.

I'm going out for a drive, he told Steven. Nothing big, he just wanted a Slurpee. This time he would stay in the road and avoid any mysterious head-on solo crashes against the freeway wall. He still didn't know what to do with his life. No more accidents, though.

En la vida hay amores...

... que nunca, pueden olvidarse.

Aparición

Their dreams had never matched, but a young, instinctual attraction had always accompanied their moments together. Neither had their opinions or priorities, even less their backgrounds.

In fact, each of them privately thought, their chances of ever meeting had been slim in the first place. More so, they often fought, disagreed, made each other nervous.

I met them later on my college years, they were in their teens. They broke up last week.

Questions

I slept atop a pile of pillows in Patty's apartment, in the exact spot where Ibeth's bed would have been a few weeks ago. This was the last night of my road trip, which had seen me sleep in a UCSD van, the Doubletree hotel in Berkeley, the Goldman School of Public Policy, the UC Berkeley Foothill student housing, Ben's apartment in the Castro, Jesse's apartment in Westwood, and now, finally, these pillows.

I walked to class armored with a heavy backpack, a gym bag full of clothes, and Ron Currie Jr's God is Dead, a funny dystopian novel I picked up at the UCLA store.

As I was crossing the street that separates the dorms from the rest of campus, I came across the AFSCME 3299 service workers, which were holding up their picket signs and trying to hide from the scorching morning sun. Like all my other recent decisions, I didn't think about it much, letting out a scream:

"Que vivan los trabajadores!!!"

A few of them cheered and smiled. At this point, I noticed that Currie's prose had taken me away from my fellow pedestrians, a group of young gymnasts. One of them sought to break that disconnect.

"What does that mean?", she asked.

I missed her at first glance. She was miniscule, must not have reached 10-years-old yet. I smiled at her with a sense of journalistic pride.

"They are the ones that clean up the school, and they don't pay them enough." Again, I had let the words come out without thinking much, or scoping the surroundings for parents who don't appreciate strangers politicizing with their children. In this case, it was a protective gymnastics camp counselor.

"Don't bother the nice man, (inaudible name)." I threw her a dirty look as she hugged the inquiring young girl away. Currie got my attention back rather quickly as I I kept walking down the hill that leads to the middle of campus.

I hope that young girl always asks questions.

Why I am not going to graduate from college

Because when I have an easy 6-page take-home midterm to write, I spend two hours reading about personality disorders and trying to match people to them. Now, I am going to get to work, maybe.

Pick up

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Caminito al costado del mundo

I have heard this song a good 15 times in the last 12 hours.

With Ben

Quiet night in San Francisco. Just me and Los Piojos. I gave up the fuzzy sweater for a bright orange Holland jacket earlier today. I shared the future life plans, he shared the story of Aimee's trip to Nashville. We walked about 3 miles to grab Argentinean empanadas. I wanted a piece of home and some peace away from the drunken calamities of the previous night.

We also talked about me sneaking back in through Canada. The future cannot come soon enough.

Morning walk

"Where else am I supposed to walk? There's no sidewalk!"

I suspect that, at that moment, his aviator glasses hid a dumbfounded gaze, as if he had been caught being the human representation of an irrational situation. I could not be blamed for using that 3-feet long median as my walkway if there was no other option.

"Well, just be careful then."

As the Berkeley policeman drove off, I kept on walking in the median, much to the amazed look of many drivers who stared at me as if I had been a previously unknown specimen, a rare walking creature interrupting the monopoly of engines and asphalt, a pedestrian in the bridge connecting the city and the marina.

I assume not a lot of people walk from the Berkeley Marina to the UC campus. I missed the three half-full 51's during my 50-minute morning walk.

I am here until Sunday.

The only advice I can give you

Today I am debuting a new section called "The only advice I can give you". This will be a recurring list of life-changing wisdom

The only advice I can give you is...

Do not assume that when you buy a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner it actually get the job done. Shampooing and conditioning are two very different skills, each needing a specialist for its assigned duty.

Now go on and be fruitful.

New look

A sort of premeditated impulse.

The Times

Miguel texted me at 6AM saying I looked cute on the newspaper. The online edition did not put the picture up, but the article reads well and presents a different story.

I will have a stronger IDEAS post up soon. Here's the link: A degree of anxiety.

Cheers to the underground undergrads!

The Joker

It was our tribute to Heath Ledger. And a great accessory for the Gentlemen Pad in the Valley. That bus stop won't miss it, and the movie is going to have a great opening weekend anyway.

Fun times.

Jehova and Gandhi

This was the inscription in my graduation frame:

Mati*s Nicol*s Ram*s Goralcz*k
Graduación, Universidad de California Los Angeles, Junio 2008
Porque Jehová da la sabiduría, y de su boca viene el conocimiento y la inteligencia.
-Proverbios 2:6
Sé el cambio que quieras ver en el mundo.
-Mahatma Gandhi

I chose the proverb because that's my favorite book in the Christian Bible. What I mean by the Lord giving me, as a student, my wisdom, knowledge, and intelligence (if I have any), is that he put my parents in place. I have no way of knowing so, but if they consider me and my siblings a gift to them, I still have no way to prove they were not a gift to me. The Gandhi quote serves to add a social justice front to the inscription, and to break the Western monotony.

The frames themselves included a wallet size picture, a Royce Hall postcard, and the inscription. La Abuela Lucía is delivering them. Her flight back to Buenos Aires leaves tomorrow.

Anaheim

I should have been friends with those guys.

The whole moment symbolized our high school years. I got there late, and they had been playing for a while. As they played cards, I sat right outside of their game, watching it unfold and having the insider's perspective through Ben's cards. The conversation was, for the most part, cordialities about experiences and future plans.

Ben, a freelance writer with law school plans, remains an odd friend of mine and someone who always offered a good vibe. His oddity is a joy to get to know, from the appreciation for obscure sports and rock bands to his keen, almost gimicky idealism represented in shoes, pants, and political savvy.

Mark, Jimmy, and Byron are those guys I always knew but never got to know. The type of Asian males that I had, at one point in my life, seen as not much more than the brainy-type. But as they taught me their card game, I thought that the four years in between high school graduation and tonight taught us to put aside model minority myths and other assumptions.

Mark is going from Cal State Fullerton to two years of non-profit work in Vietnam. Jimmy is coming back from Berkeley to a consulting job in Downtown LA. Byron is leaving the Michigan cold and embracing the warmth of UCLA Law School. Ben is still going to be writing around San Francisco.

I don't think they understood the magnitude of my decision to go back to Argentina. What else could be more normal than a return trip to the place of one's birth? So, to those that always expected me back, and those who witnessed me wallowing around in Loara High School, this trip is not earth-shattering.

Those who I love most have had the harder time so far. But people understand. I'm off to reinvent myself and when I come back things won't be the same. But maybe they will be like tonight. I think they might be better.

If North Were South

Some thoughts:

- This song is still incredible relevant 12 years after its release. In fact, I think this song will outlast me.

- It would be interesting if someone with an affinity for songwriting had an inspiration for "If West Were East". I assume it would have to be written in Arabic or Farsi.

-My favorite line: "Y si la deuda externa nos robó la primavera, Al diablo la geografía se acabaron las fronteras..."

Las Barras y Las Estrellas

Hoy es cuatro de julio, día de la independencia de los Estados Unidos.

Sentado en el balcón de casa, me puse a pensar que tipo de significado, si es que existe, tiene la fecha para la gente de este barrio. Encrustados en el medio de una de las ciudades mas anglosajonas del condado de Orange, aproximadamente 300 familias viven en el barrio de Cinnamon Tree. La mayoría tiene sus condominios apretujados, y los menos pudientes ocupan departamentos apretujados.

Me senté un rato en el balcón porque adentro me sentí, también, apretujado, aunque la casa estaba semi-vacía. Facundo había desaparecido con amigos a Los Angeles, y mis padres compartían una rutinaria actividad eclesiástica en Anaheim. La abuela dormía una siesta bonaerense importada, y Sophia se unía a los millones de jóvenes y niños (yo incluído) que dejaban pasar la vida mirando un monitor.

Lo único que se escuchaba eran los pajaros y el ventilador. Había apagado el celular para que no interrupiera el silencio de la tarde y seguía pensando en eso del cuatro de julio.

En Placentia no se notaba mucho la diferencia porque las barras y las estrellas flameaban en las avenidas todo el año. En este tipo de suburbio el patriotismo vacío y privilegiado se derrochaba facilmente. Pero la gente de Cinnamon Tree era la excepción. No había mucha identidad para esta comunidad Latina aislada, y el dia de la independencia también iba a pasar desapercibido.

Los ricos lo ignoraban por exageración y los pobres se esmeraban en ignorarlo. Ningún hecho político de hace 232 años atrás podía importar hoy, porque hacía mucho calor, el gas estaba muy caro, y mañana hay que trabajar porque sino quién paga las cuentas.

Aí se fue desapercibido el cuatro de julio.

Rapid Eye Movement

I am becoming quite adept at the art of lucid dreaming.

More specifically, I use the WBTB method, going back to sleep between 30 to 45 minutes after waking up. I usually try to sleep on a well-lit room, allowing the morning sunlight to interrupt my sleep, and then wake up to read the morning news, check email, etc. After that, I am ready to ignore breakfast hunger and start transitioning directly between wake and sleep, by prolonging an imagined situation in my mind as I get tired again.

In the past, I have imagined a walk through the Pyramids of Egypt, flights through the UCLA campus, and an afternoon of soccer in La Bombonera. Yesterday, I thought of myself sitting in a Buenos Aires coffee shop on an autumn day. Everything in the coffee shop was different shades of brown, as were all the people and things visible through the window. The coffee shop looked just like the set of Cafe Libre, the Christian TV show at which my sister used to volunteer. Nobody was there, however, at least not in the tables and chairs in front of me. A man cleaned the bar, and listened to AM radio.

That's where my phone rang in my dream, and I picked up, talking to a friend in Norcal. I don't remember what we said, but I don't think it was much more than our usual contentious witticisms. Later on, I took a taxi to my grandma's house and walked around the house. The dream ended there.

Funny thing is, hours later I checked on my phone and I had an actual received call at 8:15AM that morning, from that friend. I had been on the phone, in my half-asleep state, for four minutes, and I thought it was all part of my lucid dream.

I don't know if this is a case of reality filtering into the subconscious, or the opposite, or simple absent-mindedness. I just think it was a phenomenal experience.

Moving

Unforgettable night and busy morning during my last hours in 555 Kelton 101. I played all my sad songs, and none received a positive review.

Today, I spent the morning loading my stuff up to Ivan's car, then drove to CPO for a free meal. It seems I might have taken the vanpool program for granted, and they may not have room for me.

The infamous bed went unsold. It sat by the 4-arm tree as I drove away, festering the sidewalk. /stupid joke.

Today, Fabulosos Cadillacs returned to stage. I am going to go to a concert on that tour. I'll let you know where (Mexico City, L.A., Buenos Aires?)

To fit all the occassions, I spent the afternoon listening to their happy songs.