diumenge, de febrer 27, 2005

Penwythnos o fwyta a ffilmiau (Welsh / French / Spanish)

Penwythnos o fwyta a ffilmiau.

Nos Wener es i allan efo Carolyn a Holly o Binghamton. Roedd Holly wedi dod i fyny i fynd i lawr i Ddinas Efrog Newydd efo Carolyn i weld Phantom of the Opera yn Broadway dydd Sadwrn, felly ymaith â ni i Yip's nos Wener i gael pryd o fwy Tseina a diodydd ffrw-ffrw efo'r glawlenni lliwgar. Roeddwn i wedi blino cymaint erbyn nos Wener nad oeddwn wrth fy modd i fynd allan yn hwyrach, felly des i i'n ôl gartref ac ymlacio, heb hyd yn oed cael cyffaill hwyl, LOL.

Dydd Sadwrn oedd Diwrnod i'r Brenin gan mwyaf. Roedd y ffôn yn y canu cyn cyfarth ci yn y bore felly wnaeth hynny fy neffro yn gynharach nag oeddwn yn ei ddisgwyl. Daeth Anna rownd am pedwar o'r gloch am lymaid o chwisgi cyn i ini fynd allan i gael bwyd. Aethon ni i Lorenzo's yn Van Vranken, hen gartref Cornell's oedd wedi bod yn y fan'cw ers blynyddoedd. Roedd y bwyd yn dda, yn Eidalaidd Cyfoesol. Mi ges i Pheasants Lasagna. ond doedd dim ffesant ynof o o gwbl, ond cig cwningen, cig hwyaden a chig llo efo caws ricotta, mardach a saws marinara. Roedd yn dda iawn ac roedd y pryd yn wych yn hollol. Hyd yn oed, dwi ddim yn siwr y rhuthrwn i'n ôl yn syth. Yn dda oedd, ond dim yn enwedig. Roedd y gwas yn neis iawn yn fodd bynnag, ac roedden nhw'n cynnig grappa, felly roeddwn wrth fy modd. Wedyn aethon i arcâd siopa Clifton Park er i Anna brynu pot arbennig, jardinière oedd yn wir, ac wedyn i'r siop fideo.

Y tro hwn, rhention ni La grande école a Ciénaga. La grande école était en fait excellent, très bien fait avec un sujet attirant, ou dirais-je des sujets intéressants: notamment les questions de classe, de race, et de sexualité. Les acteurs était de vrais acteurs, dans la tradition dramatique. Ils jouaient leurs rôles sans cacher le fait qu'ils étaient des rôles. Le réalisme du film se trouve en effet dans la mis-en-scène et la vraisemblance du sujet, pas dans de mauvaises interprétations des personnages. Leur beauté était en plus un aspet attirant du film, les acteurs et les actrices choisis parfaitement quant à leur look.


(photo de http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/en/film/28855.html)
Ciénaga por otro lado es una película totalemente deprimente, y relata el cuento de dos familias disfuncionales, una de la clase media, otra de la burguesía. La burguesa pasa la mayoría de su tiempo totalmente borracho. Mientras tanto, sufren varias tragedias que hacen su situación aún peor. Si queire algo profundamente triste, una a película a matar el alma, pues Ciénaga sería perfecta...

dimecres, de febrer 23, 2005

Futuros (Spanish / English)

Se dice que mañana es otro día. Pero es más sencillo que eso; la verdad es que cada minuto es un día nuevo. Nunca se sabe cuando uno vaya a cambiar de camino, cuando uno vaya a escoger una nueva vida o inventar de nuevo la antigua. En este momento estoy en un tal lugar...

"Two roads diverged in a wood..." - Robert Frost

No sé que voy a poder hacer, pero lo que decido, o bien lo que sucede, va a cambiar mi futuro para siempre. No es una decisión del corazón mientras tanto, sino una de la mente, y no depende solo de mí sino de otros en que mi destino se queda, si aún solo un poco. A mí, me gustaría ser rico. No tan rico como Bill Gates, eso no me interesa, pero a la vez me gustaría tener más que lo suficiente en cuanto al dinero. Esto es un sueño vacío en varios niveles. Ser rico no quiere decir que uno va a tener una vida buena, solo una vida con mucho dinero. También, hay que aceptar el hecho que tengo 33 años y he escogido una vida de servicio donde el dinero no cuanta tanto como en el mundo de negocios. Además, yo sé que no tengo la mentalidad para vivir para ganar dinero. Yo vivio en tanto como hedonista, para disfrutar de los varios placeres que me presenta el mundo. Entendido que la mayoría de los seres humanos son pobres, y los con más poder consumedor vienen de las clases medias, los ricos no pueden hacer tanto tan diferente de los de las clases medias, solo puede hacer más de tales cosas, o pueden tener experiencias parecidas pero con más juguetes bonitos. Por ejemplo, tengo el poder de ir a Paris este fin de semana si quiero, pero hay que pagar los platos rotos después. El rico puede ir sin preocuparse de los platos rotos; él puede comprar toda una cocina nueva si la quiere...

Brevemente dicho, un Bill Gates no puedo ser, pero un burgueso confortable, sí - ¿cuánto burgueso? eso es la pregunta.

Mañana me voy al banco para suplicarlos un préstamo para juntar todos los préstamos que ya yo tengo en las casa. Ya me parece que tengo éxito en este asunto, pero la próxima parte de mi plan es de coger un línea de crédito para comprarme algunas casas más, para alquilarselas a otras personas. Si tengo éxito en ese asunto, me voy a poner bastante burgueso de todos modos, y mi vida será, de punto de vista económico, mucho más confortable.

La verdad es que yo tengo que pensar en estas cosas: la mayoría de mi famila ya murió, y los pocos que me quedan no son ricos. Nadie me va a dejar un montón de dinero después de su muerte. Es que necesito hacerme mi propio camino por la selva, sin guía familiar ninguno. Además, un día es posible que no quiera enseñar. La verdad es que ya he enseñado 11 años. En 15, tendré 48 años y habré acabado mi año 26 en la clase. Si todavía respiro a esa época, no sé si podré de veras enseñar, si me quedará la pasión o aún el interés requisito para hacerlo bastante bien. Es por eso que necesito planear varias rutas de escapa, planear modos de tener varios futuros sin necesitar preocuparme tanto de dinero.

Mañana puede cambiar todo para mí a lo mejor o a lo peor. Lo importante es de ver como reaccione a la resulta, que haga con lo que se me manda...

"Strong heart Tegan..." - Dr. Who

diumenge, de febrer 20, 2005

La mala educación (Spanish)

¡Que buena película! Es cosa rara que veo una película que me gusta tant0, que me entrena tanto. Si le gustan a usted películas sobre el mundo gay, entonces vale la pena de ir; si le gustan películas de aventuras románticas realistas, también vale la pena, y finalmente se le gustan películas ligeramente posmodernas cuyos escenarios doblan y redoblan con muchas sorpresitas, entonces vale la pena.

No voy a darle los secretos de la historia, por que de verdad creo que se debe ir a verla, pero basta decir que es sin duda una película de Almodóvar. Ya muestra más madurez y su voluntud de tomar más riesgos en cuanto al material y al desarollo del film - sin duda merita su NC-17: eso no es un film que aguantaría la mayoría de mis compatriotas. Hay situaciones abiertamente homosexuales y escenas de sexo gay que matarían a los Bautistas. La verdad es que no hay desnudez total, pero la sugestión es bastante que mate a cualquier represado...

Pues si tiene ganas de ver algo verdaderamente interesante y distinto en un cine estadounidense, ¡vaya a verla pronto!

Dyddiau Gwych (Welsh)

Mae hi wedi bod yn benwythnos braf ebryn hyn, a dim ond hanner ffordd trwyddo hefyd. Roedd nos Wener yn wych, hyd yn oed efo Carolyn ar f'ochrau. Cyrddon ni yn McGuire's sydd yn dy bwytaf dosbarth cyntaf yn Lark Street, "pentref" Albany, sef ardal fwrjwâ yn nghanol y ddinas. Cafon ni fartinis gwych a fi wedyn Scotch da iawn cyn teithio hyd stryd i fflat Jon a Kim a pharataodd bryd o fwyd ardderchog: cyw iâr lemwn, gwyrddion y De, a thatws wedi pobi dwywaith am brifplat, ac wedyn cacenni pwdin siocled poeth fel melysfwyd. Roedd gynnon ni win coch a gwyn oedd yn flasus hefo'r pryd hefyd, ac i orffen y noswaith, aethon ni Enoteca Antica, bar gwin Spaenig hefyd yn Lark Street a chafon sgyrsiau da iawn dros ambell botelaid o win coch o La Rioja. Ar ôl imi gyrraedd yn saff yn ôl gartref, mi gefais ymweliad o gyfaill hwyl i orffen y nos yn berffaith fel pin mewn papur. Roedd yn nos fendigedig yn wir.

Wedyn, ar b'nawn Sadwrn, aeth Anna a fi yn hela am drysorau, ac aethon o ben draw'r ardal i'r llall i'n holl siopau hoff. Canfyddais i lawer o bethau bach i'r ty ac wedyn aethon ni'r bwffé Tseina yn Niskayuna am bryd o fwyd. Rhention ni wedyn DFD, sef Japón. Roedd yn edrych yn wych o'r olwg cyntaf, ond roedd yn wael iawn ym marnau Anna a fi, yn arbennig y sîn rhyw rhwng y prif gymeriadau oedd yn wr canol oed a hen fenyw. Hen hen fenyw. Hen fenyw dlawd sy'n by mewn bwthyn tlawd mewn bryniau sych Mecsico. Dydy'r ffilm ddim yn egluro pam yn wir mae'r dyn canol oed wedi dod i'r canyon lle mae hi'n byw tu hwnt i'r cyfafeddiad a wneith y dyn yn dweud yr aiff i'r pentref bach i hunanladd. Mae'n dod i ben efo marwolaethau'r hen wraig a'i theulu mewn damwain tractor pan roedd y tractor yn tynnu llwyth o garreg enfawr oddi ar ei thy i bentref cymdogol, ac yn eironig mae'r gwr yn fyw o hyd, yn wylo dros farwolaeth yr hen wraig heb lwyddo hunanladd o gwbl.

Yfory yw Gwyl yr Arlwyddi, felly mae'r Coleg ar gau, ac bydd dydd rhydd gen i. Rwyf am weithio ar y traethawd y fory, a byddaf, ond hefyd mynd allan am ginio efo Nathalie a wnaf. Dylai'n sgwrs ni fod yn ddiddorol oherwydd mae hi'n meddwl am ysgaru'i gwr. Drama ymhobman o'r olwg, tu hwnt yn fy myd bach clyd, hihi.

A chynlluniau'r tai? Ydyn, maen nhw'n bwrw ymlaen yn weddol. Yfory byddaf yn sgwrio â'r fancwraig i weld os wyf yn gallu atgyfnerthu'r mortgeision a'r cardiau credyd i mewn i un mortgais mawr ac yn rhetach na beth wyf yn ei dalu rwan. Os yw cynhysgaeth o'm plaid, byddaf yn byw yn y ty hwn ar fy mhen fy hun cyn hir ac enill mwy o bres ar yr un tro.

dijous, de febrer 17, 2005

La vie est un long fleuve tranquille (English / French / Cornish)

C'est bien le tître d'un film que j'adore...

N.B.: If you plan to watch this film, be warned, I reveal the ending in this blog.

Following in the recurring series on love and relationships...

Released in 1987, La vie est un long fleuve tranquille is a gem of a film. Already quite post-modern, it has two distinct and interwoven plots. The central plot, the one that takes up most of the film reels, is about Maurice, a pre-adolescent boy who has been raised in by a poor family on the wrong side of the tracks. Due to the events of the other plot line, he finds himself relocated to another family, a wealthy family who are in fact his biological relatives. An intentional mix-up at the clinic where he and his "sister" were born results in the secreting of the truth. Once returned to his true family (the "sister" is also kept with the wealthy family), he attempts to conform to their staid, bourgeois expectations. His formative years, however, have been spent in the confines of poverty, and he has learned to survive by thieving and lying. Following the typical moral of the story, he reverts to his previous behaviors but now finds even easier marks among his small northern town's provincial bourgeoisie. He systematically tears apart his new-found family and sends them spiralling from one moral conundrum to another.

The story of Maurice would at first glance seem to be the main story, but after having viewed the film many times, I would argue that the other, apparently secondary plot which sets the former into motion is the "real story." It relates the secret romance of Louis and Josette, doctor and nurse in the clinic where Maurice was born. These two had been having a secret affair for 14 years when the doctor's wife fell ill and died. Josette, the hopeless romantic now believes that the doctor will make a clean slate of their relationship and bring it out into the open. Attending the dead wife's funeral, she approaches Louis and lifts her black veil and offers her condolences, but he snubs her. Unbelievably wounded by his rejection, she takes her revenge on him. She writes letters to both families, the poor Groseille and the wealthy Le Quesnoy revealing how she switched the children on the night of their birth. Considering the relative conservatism of bourgeois French culture, the doctor is shamed into relinquishing his post. Josette promptly skips town as well. In a letter to Louis she writes: "je vais t'écraser comme une merde." - I'm going to crush you like a piece of shit.

The revelation of this plot line occurs early in the film and does not meets its resolution until the very end of the film where we behold a windswept beach in norther France on a brillant fall day. The ocean is crashing along the sand, and in a neat and tidy beach house, Josette is drinking from a large glass of red wine. She stares triumphantly out into the sea, then turns and glares at the shivering form of Louis, broken and cold, having no one else to turn to, loosely clutching a glass of red wine as well (it should be noted that in nearly every scene where Louis appears he is drinking white wine). He has lost everything: his career, his respect, even his wine. He will not spend his remaining years under the constant glaring gaze of Josette.

Why is this one of my favorite films? I understand Josette perfectly. If I had been she, I would have done the same thing. The only thing better than a good Welsh love story where everyone dies is a good love story about revenge! ;)


Louis

Josette

(Photos de www.thelin.net)


Lucky for me I turned into a bitter Old Maid before some Louis got to me and charmed me!

Da rag un tra yu den kemyn, ha henna yu kysi dhymm tybyans, hihi ;)

dimarts, de febrer 15, 2005

Why I Would Rather Be an Old Maid than a Miserable Partnered Co-Dependent Slob - or - Why Relationships Rarely Work (English / Spanish / Welsh)





"Young man, no one knows more about love than an old maid."
-Spinny to the Artist in Robert O. Selznick's 1948 Portrait of Jenny

It's true. I should know, I'm an old maid. Old maids are not what society thinks we are. First of all, we're not all women, but that much is obvious. Secondly, they assume that since we are unattached that we have never experienced love, never mind mad passionate obsession or any of the degrees of human attachment which lie between.

Jennifer Jones (no relation) and Joseph Cotton made a fine and midly isane pairing in the roles of the Muse and the Artist. Of course insane, one clear interpretation of the film is that Jennifer existed only as a figment of Cotton's character's imagination, a placebo to fill in a gap left open by the varied circumstances of a basically bourgeois man's life as he tries to find himself in the modern world. Already in 1948 the upper middle class man and woman were trying to find themselves, but let me not digress into a discussion of class on this topic.

Cotton's deep seeded feelings for the semi-mythical Jenny are natural; they mirror the unrealistic expectations of fulfillment that so many people seem brought up to have. Old Maids - note I from this point on capitalize the term; it is, as it should be, a proper noun. We are a different breed - are alone not because we couldn't find someone to love. We find many people to love, but they all disappoint us in the end (if not very near the beginning), not because, as the merrily coupled accuse us with wagging fingers that we have supercilious expectations of others, but because we are not looking, as our erstwhile partners are, to be fulfilled. This search for fulfillment that most others seem to have from the onset is the true unrealistic expectation. It is perhaps the result of the slow permutation of the Victorian sense of romantic love, and it is perhaps an especially American problem, although not exclusively.

From a very early age, we seem taught to seek a number of impossible dreams, being fulfilled near the top of the list. Quixotically we are also taught that such dreams are good to have. Who among us has not at some point in our lives heard the strains of "Dare to dream the impossible dream"? Thus arises a social disease present in nearly all classes of our society. We are taught in books, movies, television, nearly every media, including the internet with its plethora of dating services, that sooner or later we will find the Alpha to our Omega, the lid to our pot, the final puzzle piece to finish the jig-saw. We live in a complex multi-causal world with myriad social stimuli and we trot off like Don Quijote tilting windmills in hopes of impressing Dulcinea, as thought achieving this one, lone thing will make us complete human beings!

And yet, if we take time to read Cervante's obra maestra we learn that like the Artist, Don Quijote's Dulcinea is a larger-than-life fictionalized dream of the ersatz knight. Yes, she does exist. No, she is not, in real life the damsel he seeks.

Such unrealistic expectations of the mate are not the exclusive purchase of the middle classes anyway. One has only to observe (and quixotically - to keep with the theme - it's good food for the soul) an episode of the pathetically low-brow Jerry Springer Show to see how the lower end of our society plaintively exclaims when asked why he or she slept with the tranvestite half-man-half-pig sex surrogate, "Because baby, you were never there for me!"

I have one low brow question to ask about that ubiquitous declaration: What the hell does it mean anyway?

My answer translated into uppity snob / Old Maid talk: "Because baby, I wanted you to make me feel like a full human being; I wanted you to show me that I'm important and that I have meaning in the cosmos. In short I want you to validate my feelings, my existence, my pain, my suffering, my joy, and I want you to do it every waking minute of the day, and if you don't I will keep looking till I find someone who will do all those things for me."

Old Maids on the other hand, all we really want is a nice person to spend some time with us most every day. We don't really want them around twenty four hours a day because we know that even our favorite people can grow tedious and tiresome with too much exposure. We would like that person to pay us common courtesy and be essentially respectful to our person. It would be nice to go out socially and publicly with this person once or twice a week, and as often as feasible spend time naked and aroused with this person performing various sexual positions as suits our mutual fancies. Moreover we expect this to be a two-way street, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. We look for deep, abiding love to grow over time, and to grow stronger. We wouldn't like if this person ran around with other more sexually adenturesome people, but as long as they did it discreetly, without bringing home disease and maintaining the social veneer, most of us would tolerate it. Finally we would like this person to become a real freind, a person who would still be at our side as we slide into old age, dotage and death.

We're not looking for fulfillment and ultimate validating, we're looking for a life-long dedicated friend with benefits, a human cozy corner in other words.

And we are the ones who are asking too much and have unrealistic expecations...

But wait, considering the perspective of most other people around us, I guess at the end of the day, we do. We don't want too much; we just don't want the right things!

A few people who do enter the world of Happy Coupledom find true amor reciproque, cariad cywir we call it in Welsh, "correct love," where the partners treat each other with genuine respect and true, heart-felt love. Most however, even if they refuse to admit it, live in a wretched state of codependence swirling in a quagmire of disappointment and longing for an ideal which is no more real the Don Quijote's giants.

More than likely I will end up like my aunt Arwilda Elizabeth (1908-1994) (aka Dee-Dee) who died "alone" and without children. I can recall my cousin Arwilda Helen (1927-1997), who was born on my aunt's 19th birthday, and hence named for her, declaring as my aunt languished in the hospital on her death bed: "It's not our fault she's alone. She could have gotten married and had kids!"

Arwilda Helen, whom our family nicknamed Nutchie, should have known. She was married twice. The second man she married in the early 1990's, but they had begun their courtship before I was born, somewhere in the misty 1960's. For this man, who for years denied he was seeing her intimately, she continued to take birth control pills, resulting that, even in her 70's, she had not yet gone through menopause; moreover she died of liver cancer, no doubt, I would imagine, brought on by years of abusing the poor organ with unnatural chemicals, which in turn induced unnatural results in her body. In the end, he outlived her by around two years, and her son, whom she had had with her first husband, was more fond of his father whom she had divorced some thirty years before her marriage to husband number two.

Thank you Nutchie, but I will gladly choose Dee-Dee's lot in life. She lived long, seemed to be happy with her little laundry business that she ran almost until her last breath, her canaries, her baking, and her other family members. Of course our family's genetic spiral has just about unwound these days, but along the way, I have met other good people and they have become non-sexy friends and a sort of surrogate family. If God exists, and if he loves me, then I may live to 85, and die a slow painful death on a morphine drip too, but at least the ride will have been a good one, and while it may have been taken largely unattached in romantic terms, it will still have been worth the journey. If there's any fulfilling to be done in my life, I'll be the one doing it, thanks all the same...

dilluns, de febrer 14, 2005

Synchronicity II (English / Spanish)

(continuation of Synchronicity I)

Note to the reader: all the events in Synchronicity I & II are real; the names of some of the "guilty parties" have been changed to thinly veil their identities...

... so back to 1999....

I had just begun working at my college, replacing a rather rotund 58 year old man who was retiring to be with his much younger wife, nearly 20 years his junior. In the course of his finalizing his retirement, he learned that his wife was leaving him, not for another man, but for another woman. His paperwork for retirement was processed, filed, and the search for his replacement was underway. Luckily for him, he really didn't need to work much anyway, since he had a hearty inheritance and had invested carefully too. Still, his bitterness for his predicament is plain and plainly understandable. Needless to say, he didn't warm up to me right away either, since I, at a mere slip of 27, decided to do everything differently from how he had done it for 30 years.

The fact that his wife had left him for another woman did seem important at the time, but as luck would have it, it came back into the picture. Beyond his divorce, the poor man was also in poor health. Indeed, it seemed like his health and his marriage were on parallel courses into the depths of hell. He married, for the second time to this younger woman, and on their honeymoon in Jamaica, he had a heart attack. While enroute to the hospital to see him, his wife was mugged by nasty tourist hating thugs. They did return home, however, and managed to conceive a child.

Now let us fast forward to 2001 when Lady X and I traded apartments. I moved into my new flat and found Sandy cleaning the place up. Lady X had left in such a hurry that she barely picked the place up, and there was grime and muck all over. Sandy asked me upon my arrival for an early trip to check the place out, "Did you move some of your things in already?"

"No," I answered," Why?"

"Well it looks like Lady X left you about 40 batteries!"

It was true; in the vegetable crisper were around 40 batteries of every shape, size and voltage you could imagine. In addition, she left 25 hand towels, a drawer full of feline veterinary supplies, a clove of garlic and a bowl half fowl of dried up catfood.

After I had moved in, I heard that my predecessor, whom I shall call from here on in, Don Melón, had suffered another heart attack. Additionally, he was going blind from diabetes. I was talking to my secretary Dale about his sorry state, and I mentioned that the divorced, which had not yet been finalized, must also have been playing havoc on him, emotionally, and physically.

Dale nodded her agreement, and added, "Yes, and can you believe that his wife, Doña Endrina, ran off with that Lady X?"

"Lady X!" I exclaimed in disbelief. "You don't mean the same Lady X who used to work here part time."

"Yup, that's the one," Dale said. "She used to come in here all the time and everytime something worked out the way she wanted she would throw her hands up in the air and scream, 'Hallelujah!'"

Sure enough, that was one of Lady X's trademark gestures. It also occured to me then that Sandy had also mentioned the name Doña Endrina in connection with Lady X in passing. Now it was clear. Lady X left Sandy's flat not to be closer to work, which I never took to be more than a tissue of lies, but to shack up with Doña Endrina, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of my immediate predecessor! Considering how bitter he was when I took over his job, could you credit how much more bitter he would be if he ever knew that I was also living in the flat of the woman who stole away his beloved Doña Endrina? And That Lady X, what a woman! Besides Doña Endrina, apparently she was also entertaining two other women, one of whom was a former dean of my college!

This tale now moves forward in time to 2004. By now Lady X and Doña Endrina have bought a minor mansion together in Rexford, one of our chi-chi-er suburbs. Lady X inherited a small wad of cash, and Doña Endrina was herself fairly well healed. With them lives Doña Endrina's and Don Melón's love child Dulcinea, and as I recall, at least two standard poodles and two mau cats, one of which bit Lady X on her middle finger one day, after which she arrived at a day long church function fours late with a large, long pink plaster on it which forced her to wave her middle finger at us all day long.

One day a couple months ago, Lady X announced in church that she was going through a difficult transition: an older, ailing family member was moving in with her and her partner. Now I knew that Lady X didn't have any other relative's left, so that just left Doña Endrina's family. I put my RADAR up and began searching for answers; my intuition was prodding me to posit that the person moving in with them was in fact none other than Don Melón. It seems absurd to consider the possibility, but considering the other bizarre interconnections in this story, it seemed more than plausible.

It took me a couple months to unearth the truth. Confronted with a direct question, Lady X would surely have fabricated another semi-believable story and quite possibly fobbed me off. After discreetly chatting with several members of church, one finally had the true identity of the "older" family member. It was indeed none other than Don Melón! Older is an overstatement. Indeed he is older than Doña Endrina, but younger than Lady X. Evidently while older men didn't appeal to Doña Endrina, older women did.

Sadly the poor man is dying of heart failure, and his days are more narrowly numbered than many of us. Still one must wonder what would drive a man in his state to want to move into a house with the woman who left him and the woman who stole her away. On one hand one can discern a kind of Christian charity on the part of the women, or unrequited guilt; apparently not a day went by that Don Melón didn't telephone Doña Endrina: the thick binding of codependence must not have been broken when the divorce was finalized. And he, what is he after? Is he only seeking the succor of friends and loved-ones, altho one must use the terms sparingly in this context, or is there something more passive-agressive going on?

These answers are yet to be revealed, and surely shall be in the fullness of time. In the meantime, we can sit back and muse about the tangled webs these characters have weaved.

Street Scene in N'Djamena, Chad. Posted by Hello

Trethi - Taxes con't. (English)

Ok, fair play, the streets of the United States do not look as dire as the one pictured above in N'Djamena, Chad, clocking in at HDI 167 out of 177, nor, all the worst naysayers notwithstanding, do I think it ever shall be. One the other hand, if one looks closely the other world scale, HPI-2, then America is in even worse shape that its otherwise rosey looking 8 might make us believe. HPI-2 takes into account relative poverty among the 17 wealthiest nations in the world, since in relative terms, otherwise there is little difference among them. One is forced to ask however, how the arose at the 17 wealthiest nations rather than 10, 20, 25, something with a nice typical cut-off point. The mystery is quickly solved when you observe that the United States ranks at number 17. More frighteningly still is whne you consider the percentage of American's who live below the poverty line. We rank in at 27 worldwide, with number 28 our good old buddies, the Russians. France incidentally has and HDI of 16, but an HPI-2 of only 8; Germany's are 19 and 6 respectively.

All these data are sobering reminders of the changing fortunes of man and his best laid plans. What is especially disturbing to me is how few Americans are aware of their country's crumbling perch. Relatively few Americans even seem willing to admit that their country is any worse off now than it was ten years ago, yet the numbers clearly indicate that. Sadly too, few Americans are willing to travel abroad to observe the changing world around them, seemingly content to live in Spanish imperial-like decadence as the rest of the world catches up and sails past us.

dijous, de febrer 10, 2005

Trethi - Taxes - (English)

Three hours have gone by since I began my taxes, my fairly bourgeois taxes at this point. I've come a long way from government cheese and saddling up to the wood stove for warmth in January. Poverty builds character, and I think everyone who knows me would concede that while I may not be the kindest man on earth, I'm a character...

The United Nations gives the United States (strange how language works, since oddly these two names are synonyms...) an HDI (Human Development Index) of 8 in the world, seven whole notches from the top... so much for Dubbyah's shining empire. Oh wait, that was Reagan's shining castle wasn't it? Anyway, whatever the hell it was, the sheen has gotten a little tarnished by all reasonable accounts. Dubbyah's accounts are generally incomprehensible, nevermind reasonable, so I will dispense with him post haste.

That voluptuous number 8 makes me wonder what I'm paying my taxes for. Thankfully I have begun to engage in the outright oppression of the lower classes by investing in a "rental property," and oddly, this asset makes my tax burden fall; this is especially true here in Schenectady where our property taxes are almost four times greater than the per capita GDP of Chad (HDI 167). I remember a conversation last summer with Mary Jones Tai'n Lôn back in Wales (HDI 12). She was vociferously complaining about her Council Tax which has spiralled up to a whopping £240 sterling, around $400, or about 10% what I pay in property taxes to the city and county of Schenectady for a run-of-the-mill two family home with a high-end market value of $125,000. Mary's two-up two-down kitchen off the back semi-detached end row house is priced at £250,000, or about $475,000. Something may be rotten in Denmark, but it's definitely putrified round these parts...

Of course, the HDI is misleading becuase one of its three legs is stuck squarely in the quagmire of per capita GDP. In the US, about 13,000 families are wealthier than the 20 million poorest folks in the realm. Per capita GDP is one of the few rankings in which we come in high up the list, at a dizzying 4 (Ireland, incidentally, is number 3, following Norway and Luxenburg at 2 and 1 respectively). The only problem is that per capita GDP does not indicate the real distribution of wealth in a country. Chad's sad little per capita GDP would make us think that no one had more than about $1,100 dollars to play with a year, and would thus deny the very real existence of Chadian millionaires.

The other thing that keeps our rank higher is our relatively low tax burden, but the key word is relative. Add my Federal, State, Property, Local Sales Tax and all the hidden taxes here and there, and the bill's not so small anymore. Any road, my taxes are done now, and I am awaiting my refund, which will be lovely, since it will a little more money Dubbyah can't use for nefarious tomfoolery.... (to be continued)

dimecres, de febrer 09, 2005

Transitions (English / Welsh)

Welsh culture and language have always been a part of my life, ever since my early adolescence. More than twenty years ago now, as a wee lad of 12, I began my formal study of the Welsh language. Two years later, in 1987, I had my first article ever published, in the Welsh language. It was called "Bwrw ati ar ei ben hun," meaning "Going at it on his own," in reference to my having studied, and in two years, fairly well mastered written Welsh. It was published in Dolen the Welsh language section of Ninnau. It is a matter of great personal pride for me that the first public statement I ever made to the world was not in English, my birth language, but in Welsh, the language of my soul. Ninnau is now the only "Welsh" paper in North America. Up until a few years ago it had a rival, the old and venerable Y Drych which began publishing in its first incarnation in Scranton, PA in the 1850's. Transitions happen not only to people, but their creations, and now Ninnau, barely 30 years old, has incorporated Y Drych.

Neither paper tho, in recent years, has really been Welsh, at least not in the 21st century meaning of the word, nor have they even been very strong in the Welsh language. Dolen the section I wrote my article for in 1987 disappeared a few years after my article was published when the editor returned to Wales to live, and no one else came to the fore to take his place. At least 2,500 people in the US are native Welsh speakers, and probably somewhere in the neighborgood of 20,000 people speak and write it reasonably well, but Ninnau's subscription base remains at a stagnant 3,000 people, which is amazingly pauce when you consider the millions of Americans of Welsh descent.

My relationship with Ninnau is even deeper tho than being a 21 year subscriber. For six and a half years, from 1995 to 2002, I wrote a column for Ninnau in English called Cyber-Cymru. In the beginning the World Wide Web was new, and I wrote about and reviewed websites that used the Welsh language. For a few of those years I even maintained my own website as a database of those which I had reviewed. Eventually I came to the decision that my efforts were no longer necessary. Welsh-language websites were easier and easier to find, and growing very quickly in number. In 1995 they were novel; by 2002 they were commonplace. Much to the chagrin of Arturo Roberts, the Argentine born published and Editor-in-Chief of the paper, I resigned my post and decommisioned my website.

Now, 21 years after I paid my first year's subscription to Ninnau, I am considering letting it lapse. I too have been going through a transition in relationship to my "Welshness." Chwarae teg, fair play that is, my Welshness is an American sort, moreoever, a Pennsylvania German-American-Welshness. Still, Ninnau has sort of become like a quaint old aunty who stopped living in the real world ages ago. Its pages are full of vignettes about elderly Welsh-mostly-Americans getting honored at decripit black tie affairs where they listen to old hymns plucked on pedal harms, and to their artieries hardening, and pictures of hoaky festivals where people who have never been to Wales, speak no Welsh, and only have a vague notion of what Wales is today. Fair play to some of the writers of Ninnau, some are Welsh born, speak some Welsh, or at least have travelled to Wales.

Moreover, I don't consider it a requisite to have done all the things I mention above to have a legitimate stake in Welshness. On the other hand, I think some basis in 21st century reality is necessary.

Sadly, in the popular notion that most Welsh-Americans have of Wales, it is still a forgotten colony of England full of dark houses with no central heat, coal mines, slate quarries, fundamentalist Christianity, hymn sings, tea, crushing poverty and a dross of ovines. In reality, most of these "icons" of Welshness are cloying anachronisms largely relegated to museums and the collective memory of octagenarians. Wales in 2005 is a modern industrialized nation of the Information Age which is building a nationwide network of fiber-optic cables bringing highspeed internet to anyone who wants it. It is a nascent nation-state well along the path of Devolution from the United Kingdom with the hopeful ultimate state of autonomy within the European Union. All the commercial coal mining, once the backbone of the Welsh economy, is now done in one pit, owned not by dark horsemen from England, but the miners, and the slate quarries are all but finished aside from one or two still chinking out enough slate for Red Dragon coasters or roof repairs here and there. It is country where the cultured are more likely to go to the new Opera House in Cardifff Bay than to a Cymanfa Ganu in some pokey chapel to hear strains of Cwm Rhondda. Religion itself is pretty much a goner in Wales, with chapels turning regularly into used car lots, pubs, or trendy boutiques.

Even the Welsh language, one of the most ancient in the world, is experiencing a steady and unremitting renaissance. Only 21 years ago when I began, it was believed that it would be all but dead by the beginning of the 21st century. As of the 2001 census, its numbers both in raw figures and in percentage of the population had grown for first time in a century, notably among the under 20's. Moreoever it's a modern and vital language, with a pop music scene, a club scene, complete education system, and an increased respect in the private and public sector. In other words, it ain't your grandmother's Cymru.

This is the Wales I have come to call my own, the one I criss-cross during the summer, visiting Neolithic ruins while listening to 21 year old hooch Gwenno Saunders on BBC-Cymru sing sultry techno ballads in the language of heaven, and this is the Wales nearly absent from Ninnau, and one, sadly few Americans really want to know about. There's something romantic in a sad little wet country struggling against an evil empire. It's success inspite of those odds makes it a little less alluring, ironically.

In the pages of Arturo Robert's Ninnau women still wear tall black hats and clog dance weekly. They eat scones and drink too much tea, and sing a lot of Calon Lân. It's not that there's anything wrong with these lovely icons of yesterday, it's only that they're just that, part of the past. I do firmly and devoutly believe in preserving, cherishing, and celebrating the past, but equally important is living in the hear and now. One can only parrot yesterday so many times before one is cute, quaint, on the path to toral irrelevance. More relevant to me these days are the new publications like Planet: the Welsh Internationalist and Cambria. It's a bit sad to say, but I think my association with Ninnau after 21 years is drawing to a close. If I do renew my subscription, it will only be out of a sense of nostalgia, pity, and guilt.

dimarts, de febrer 08, 2005

Les virtues du whisky (Cornish / French / Spanish / Welsh)

Dowr tom yu pur da yn ow thybyans, ha'n nos haneth yth esov vy ow eva dowr tom Iwerdhon, kens oll Jameson 12 blynedh. Pur wheg ha whar yu avel den-jentyl, ow slynkya yn herwyth pup lemmyk a-woles an vryansen, ow donsya war'n tavas hag ow tenna, ow huda orth pup ten.

La délice et la magie du whisky sont particulières, à chacun son goût, on se dit, et à chaque whisky son goût, sa merveille. Les bons sont des cadeaux des dieux, les mauvais sont des punitions pour les pauvres ou les bêtes. Le boire du whisky c'est en soi une espèce d'art, ou bien l'appréciation du goût c'est un art avec lequel il me semble il faut naître, c'est en toute probabilité un héritage génétique, qui bénit et qui maudit en même temps.

Se dice del famoso e inteligente Benjamin Franklin que decía él que la cerveza ya es prueba que Díos nos ama y quiere que estemos contentos. Estoy de acuerdo, la cerveza me contenta, pero el whisky, eso es mas una cuestión de algo al nivel espiritual. La cerveza es el agua de baño, confortable, alegrante. Mientras tanto el whiskey es un orgasmo despues de una larga mimada :)

(Er Cof Math ap Mathonwy a'i Forwynion)

diumenge, de febrer 06, 2005

Binghamton (English)

Binghamton, New York, population, appx. 45,000. I have a panorama of downtown Binghamton laminated on wood hanging above my computer in my home office; the picture was taken in 1910. Today, almost a century later, Binghamton's population is the same as it was then, but now instead of strongly French influenced architecture inspired by Robert Ivey, the downtown is dominated by 1960's era urban renewal Stalinist constructions like the state office tower in the middle of the city. Once known as the Parlor City for its refinement and magnificent architecture, today it is called by many derogatory nicknames, including Big-Hell-Town, the Twilight City, Bingo, and most recently, Bingladesh.

At its height in the 1960's and 70's, Binghamton has a population of around 80,000 people, almost big enough to be considered a big-city. Today, at 45,000, barely half its prime, it is a small city, still in decline. For a small city though, it has a marked skyline, visible from some miles up the valley. It's a striking mix of Victorian Gothic-cum-Haussmanian and block and steel modernism of the most dire kind. It's skyline is however marked with holes, like a smile with missing teeth where other buildings have given way to empty lots and parking lots, now largely disused in a city whose downtown is frequented more by the ghosts of yesterday than by 21ist century shoppers or intrepid urban pioneers.

And speaking of ghosts, the local lore has it that it is cursed. To see its perpetual yellowish haze, its morose collection of disconcerting minor skyscrapers standing next to still oddly beautiful Victorian ruins, its streets frequented by living human caricature left at life's starting gate in some cruel combination of bad luck and bad personal decisions, it does seem a place forsaken by god. The local legends have it that the Onondaga who lived in the area refused to live in the valley, notably where the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers converge, at what today is the center of Binghamton proper. They only came to that place to bury their dead, and supposedly said that no one should ever live there except the dead.

Binghamton's most famous progeny (not truly a son, he was born in Syracuse) was Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone. In a display on his life in Binghamton's Forum, the local performing arts venue, there was a quote by him I saw some years ago. It read, "Everyone has to have a hometown... I guess mine is Binghamton." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Binghamton today is basically a collection of poorly built "shanty" houses thrown up in the early 1900's surrounding the bizarre coterie of the downtown and abutting burned out industrial zones. The main settlement of the city is periodically punctuated by well manicure homes, some of impressive grandeur. In another more affluent city, they wouldn't really stand out, but here they stand in marked contrast to the mass of rundown, derelicts. Surrounding all of them is the sprawl of modern suburbia with minor-McMansions and strip malls. The grand industries of the past are all but gone these days, and the city's one saving grace, Binghamton University, is essentially the primary employer. Binghamton's two sisters, Endicott and Johnson City, both of which ride each other, and in turn ride Binghamton's western rump, are little better.

I spent three years of my life in Binghamton, going to the University, frequenting its water holes and assorted dives, and even with the valley's cancer clusters and leukemia plume, its water contaminated with volatile organic compounds, little calling cards of its mega-industrial glory days, it still holds a small place of affection in my heart. I have always held the Binghamton that was, the Binghamton of Robert Ivey, and the Binghamton that should have been, the Binghamton that didn't decided to tear its own heart out, in high esteem, and I still see the potential that the place has. I fear tho, that it may have missed its last chance by now. Each year it just slips a little more and more into obscurity and edges ever close to oblivion, like so many old rustbelt burgs deep in the American continent.

dijous, de febrer 03, 2005

Imbolg (English / Spanish / Welsh)

I have been away these past couple days, cocooning and cleaning, reorganizing parts of the house that need a little of that, in casual observance of Imbolg, the halfway mark in the dark half of the year. Sadly, Imbolg is a generally forgotten Pagan Rit these days, and even I merely noted it's passing without doing much more symbolic than cleaning my closet. It reinforces the continuing falling away from the cycles of nature to which we are all prone, and for which, no doubt, we will all pay at some point.

Having been too busy with practical matters, my mind has not yet returned to musing, altho I do realize that I must complete the second installment of Synchronicity. This weekend I will be going to visit Tom in Binghamton. After my return I will reveal the rest of the twisted connections in that story. Already I have finished the list of alternate names for the "characters," each on purloined from or based upon El Arcipreste de Hito's Libro de buen amor. I could think of no better muse for the rest of that story ;)

Tan hwyrach...