Memento

I'm home, with this uncomfortable pain in my neck. I had a car accident yesterday. Nothing serious, but uncomfortable. I've had time to watch the interesting ceiling and to look back. I'm downloading '74, '75, a song I used to hear a lot when I was in Italy. That was a long time ago, nine years have passed since that. But today, it seems to be so recent. Like the man that sleeps frozen during 40 years, and then, he just wakes up, waiting for the world to be the same one he left.
A gate is open, with no warning, with no announcement. I just pushed it a little, and it showed me a room filled for years with memories. The healing process has ended, I almost say. Now I can enter the room and take a good look at my past. I see the snow outside my window, I can see my bed, even the first night at Alvito, that small town near Rome. I remember! At last!
I've heard once that a friend of my sister, wasn't able to remember her childhood, and I just thought that it had to be pretty hard for her. But I never saw that coming for me. I've spent the last nine years rebuilding myself, and maybe the brain focused all it's energy in that task, shooting down the lights from the rest of the rooms.
But now I'm back, for good.

Have a Seat, Kidnapped

Yesterday there was something else than bikes on the 7a. in Bogotá. There was this line of chairs with black ribbons and a brick in front of every chair. On the brick there was a name of a kidnapped person in Colombia. I realised it was a protest against the "blood and fire" Uribe's policy. Four thousand women sat down on the chairs, with black outfits. They were begging for a humanitary exchange. Following and rescuing the kidnapped, imply an almost certain death for the kidnapped. I still can't beleive that people have the hope of changing the president's way of thinking. 4ooo women, but Uribe would do the usual thing: be quiet until this protest would be nothing but a forgotten event.

Growing up Amongst Bullets

Teenagers get bored... that's their natural condition. Boredom. but, growing up in Bogotá is a pretty different stuff. You can never get bored. But it is not because of nice reasons. We must be allert so we can survive. Not only survive war or rapists. We must survive the fact that we don't give a damn about what's happening. We don't watch national channels, we avoid journals, we close our eyes when things are just too close.
It is amazing to realize how far are we from bullets and from a conflict that grows parallel to us.

Music Is The Soundtrack Of Your Life

I haven't used my ipod since I bought it. Today, however, I thought it would be a nice day to make my experiment. I went out, I made a short playlist, I put the headphones and I started walking along the 7th avenue in Bogotá. Suddenly, the anger I used to feel, disappeared. I walked slowly and nothing seemed to attack me anymore. The hundreds of cars were just a flow on my right side. The noise was replaced by the music I like the most. I realise that not only art can make reality more beautiful or more horrible than it is, also inside reality, some hints can wipe out agressions from the environment.

Breakup With No Makeup Sex

Let's get toghether! Used to say a song. Always getting together and making babies! I hate the idea, but only because I am almost sure of my unability of raising another human being. People around me, started to have kids. Last night, I was out for dinner with a friend... "craziest than a goat" we say. He was showing me some pics from his new cell phone. A baby girl started to appear... "Oh, she's a friend's daugther" he said. "I am crazy for a baby". I couldn't beleive his words. For men it must be easier. They just plant the seed and they can leave whenever they want. That's what I though, and that's what I told him. He answered back inmediately: "Well, my friend lives with his daughter because he asked his wife the divorce. If that would happen to me, I would do exactely the same". Well, I must be mistaken. Maybe men are not such a pain in the ass, after all.

Sai Hi To The Camera

Long relationships can go through withoud real contact. There's only need of a computer and a camera. Yes, it's happened for years, but not decades. So, it seems like this new thing would become part of our daily life. We wouldn't notice the time when it would be easier to talk to a camera rather than facing another person in the "real" life.
It is, certanely, a matter of time. Sometimes we can't even tell the difference between going out and hanging out on the net.
I guess computers are an excuse to avoid fisical contact... but, could it replace humans?

A Walk On The Real Side

I went last week to the center of Bogotá. I knew I was gonna be scared. I knew I had to face a horrible feeling, a mixture of fear and anger. That would be the forgotten society of A Brand New World, and I was there, praying for getting out of there as soon as possible. But, on the other hand, I couldn't stop feeling like crap for being part of a society based on a pyramid. Some must carry all the weight, so that others can lie down and rest. People down there rather don't look up. People up there (should I say "up here"?) don't look down, cause they are aware of everything but, after a while, that present becomes a forgotten past.
There are so many, so hungry and mad. They're right, they shouldn't be dead alive just because they were born in a society that still concieve men as animals: only the strongest survive.
I say a movie yesterday, El Colombian dream. The last sentence is horrible: "In Colombia, is better to be born than to be dead". It is horrible because, sometimes, it seems like it's otherwise.

How To Deal With Your Handicaps

It's awsome... how people can leave their own culture, start living in a foreign country, and, still, keep their prejudices intact. This happens in Colombia with sirians and jews. They feel attacked the whole time, so they feel they have the right to strike back. Men hit their women, and even hurt themselves as a late response to an agression they made up.
In the carribean zone of Colombia, there's a strong arab influence, not only for their gastronomical heritage, but for poligamy.
Most of women got used to it, not it's normal to know about a man who has five different homes. All his wives struggle to be "wife 1", inside a crazy dynamic that doesn't seem to end.

Movie Makeups

Today I saw a friend I haven't seen for a year. We talked about the last Scorsese's movie, he said it's been a mistake of a great director, I said that I haven't even seen it, but, if it sucks it might be because he wanted a couple of additional zeros in his bank account. After my answer, he gave me that sad look of a boy that stops beleiving in Santa. He couldn't even imagine that a real artist could sell his art in such a "cheap" way. He said that it was just sad about that and he kept asking me the same question "why did HE do it?". Well, I guess it is hard to stop beleiving in Santa after an entire childhood of unstopped devotion.

War Media

The last two days, I went to a seminar about the coverage of news related to education from the mass media(Organised by the Fnpi). I heard journalists from all over Latin America. They all argued that there was not enough space for such subjects and they had to struggle with their editors to get a small space to publish their news about research, universities and stuff. Colombia has a particular reality, where you can find a space for massacres, bombs, kidnappings... It's understandable the imperative of journals for those spots. But, if someone takes a look at the local newspapers and magazines, could have the wrong idea of Colombia as a country with no colleges, with no scientists. There would only be guerrilla, civil war, an unstoppable mess.

There You Are, Motherfucker

Yesterday I dressed up for a halloween nite. It started at Mod, then I went to Mai Lirol Darlin, to Zona Franca and, finally, to Pink. I had fun, it's funny to see how badly people need to wear different outfits but, the most important thing, to wear actual masks. The whole consacrated behaviours were upside down. At the end of the night, a guy came to me, and started to talk to me in a nasty way. I tried to slap his face but he was faster. At the end, there I was, with a horrible pain in my right hand and there he was, with a horrible pain in his shoulder.
I left the party, still mad, full of adrenaline. He didn't see it coming, he was shocked staring at me frozen. Can women hit men? Certanely. We have on our favor that most of those macho latinos are totally coward. And then, it's the only way a girl can defend her honor and, also, feel releived.

Bogotá Smells Like a Rotten Corpse

If there's something I hate from Bogotá, is the smell of people on the bus. I must use Transmilenio -buses than transport three times their capacity- because I work outside the city. And it's killing me. There's a rotten old smell mixed up with the heat inside the bus. It makes me want to vomit. But they don't seem to be uncomfortable, the actually seem to enjoy that horrible smell opening their noses and taking deep breaths. In that occasions, I wish there were a nuclear war in Colombia against that kind of dirt.

Not To Go With The Flow

I went out last friday. There was a horrible rain all over Bogotá. For me, it would only be a hair problem, a few drops on my jacket between my door and his car. Who knows if little villages would be struggling for not losing their beds and bathrooms under a flow out of control. Because, every time there's a short, almost unseen rain season in this city, we have horrible stories about rivers that wiped out villages, that killed children, but, to be honest, we never give a shit about that. We couldn't care less. We only try to survive, to go somewhere, to do something with our lifes.
It's all so horrible and so messed up around here, that taking care for someone else that is not part of our inmediate social circle, would be a suicide, would be to give a little bit of your own vital energy to someone else, and that little bit you lose, could be big enough to kill you.

Bombing Our Kidnapped Citizens

Yesterday, a bomb exploted inside the Universidad Militar in Bogotá. A few hours later, our president decided to stop negociating with the guerrilla group, Farc. He wants to rescue the thousands of kidnapped civilians with two dangerous weapons: "blood and fire". Some politics are shocked, they claim for peace instead of war. But, sadly, our president prefers to attack even if there are civilians in between. Lots of people are joyfull, "we finally see the president we voted for", they say. I, personally, set as a priority the life of people captured by the guerrilla. They can't be trapped, they can't risk their lifes just because of a terrorist act.

Loving Your Static Schemes

I know it's impossible to ask for internal changes in a society. People born in a specific environment and nothing can modify their fears and hates. Hating gays is the new catholicism's sport in Colombia. Our dominating religion beleives that a man can not share a bed with another man, so they will be punished with no legal rights as a couple. Maybe priests are afraid of them because that's their deepest desire. But priests, of course, get rid of their sexual impulses raping children.
A famous catholic school in Bogotá, has several stories of students molested by their teachers. It will always remain in their memories and wouldn't ever be spoken outloud. Like Metallica used to say, "sad but true".
Society itself allow priests raping children because nobody wants to talk about it. And forbids sane love between people of the same sex taking their rights away. Are they that afraid of pleasure?

Look Back In Anger

Why do humans love to dig in their own past? Why are we so fanatic of lost loves and almost forgotten friendships? It might be our stupid nature. The main character of "High Fidelity" dedicates a big part of his life getting to know girls, the other part trying to forget them, and the last piece of his single life is sadly wasted contacting ONCE AGAIN all his past loves.
I guess we are all guilty of that crime. It is impossible to wipe out feelings -nice and awful- once they got inside our blood.

Naked Old Ladies

Women in the third world get naked as an extreme way to say they'r opressed. I am a woman and I come from the third world, but this whole thing appears to me as a bad joke. I find it effectist and cheap. Last month, eleven 50 year older women made a 2007 calendar: that was ther attempt to achieve freedom. But that seems a huge contradiction. They do what they attack. It's like being against North America wearing a Nike T-shirt.
I will post one of their pictures as soon as I can, so you can take a look at that crap and be able to judge by yourselves. Aren't there more "civilized" ways to fight sexism?

The Same Old Lie

"I love you, baby, I am sorry". Yeah sure. That happens to be the same old lie. I've heard it so many times in such different contexts that the words have no meaning to me anymore. Guys keep thinking it's clever to say it, they're convinced on it's efficiency. Maybe it is just because they're not chiks and they haven't heard it hundreds of times. Can anyone please tell them to stop doing it? They look fake, from the way they put that homeless face, to the tone of their voice.
I rather hear "I didn't give a fuck, girl". That, at least, would be honest. Stop using big words in your mouth, please.

Lunch With Death

After lunch, M's mom and aunt did nothing but talk about their properties and bank accounts. I found it interesting, watching them like extint animals, very rare, like those you see at the zoo, full of care and protection: those might be the last. I discovered, however, that there are some species naturally repulsive to others. If there were empathy between a lamb and a tiger, there would be a trauma in the chain of hunters-hunted. So, my conclusion after five hours of contemplation, is simple: a tiger can watch how it's victim struggles, a cat enjoys making it's dinner die slowly. There is pleasure in masochism. So, I imagined I had the right, that it was meant to be and, with great greed, I saw my prey and I didn't kill it. But somebody, a good samaritan, should cage all the aunts with their heritage, and drop a chemical bomb.
That would make us all much happier.

Cloudy Day

The season of rain has just arrived. People, as usual, receive this season surprised, like it never happened before. Everybody gets totally wet under the rain and watches the sky waiting for an explanation. We are sick of saying that colombia has magical realism in every corner, there is no magic in here. But, I must admit that some behaviours are totally stupid and unexpected, withoud any traces of logic. That's the closest thing we've got to that magical idea that people have about Colombia.