FLAUNT

Oisercage.com

2011-07-08T10:52:00.001-07:00

I now Blog over at Oisercage.com. Please join me. I explore personal growth and joie de vivre (fashion + art) through photography. All the photos are original except for those which are cited. Here's a peak at the new blog:

Hope to see you soon!

Dyane

Grand Gestures

2009-11-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

In theatre class, they always say "exaggerate everything." Taking a page from the thespian handbook,

Martha Beck, a magazine columnist and counselor, urges her readers and clients to double everything. Apparently, people only notice about 50 percent of what we think they notice about us. So, if you're afraid of dancing for fear of falling down in public. Cut your fear in half because your audience will only be half of what you think it is.

"Double the social behaviors you usually limit," Beck prods. "The energy with which you communicate, the intensity of the colors you wear, the number of times you laugh, the clarity of the opinions you voice."

While I loathe half-hearted "appropriate" gestures like chocolates and red roses on Valentine's Day, I love heart-felt grand gestures. This woman, Vanesa from Sevilla, apparently really likes this guy and wanted to let him know at their wedding ceremony. Instead of the typical priest-led drudgery, she did this. Even if you don't understand Spanish, you will feelher love.

Let's Get Loud

2009-11-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

I am in love with the new song Free Me. If you've read past posts or met me in real life, obvious reasons light up in your brain. I just adore her free-mindedness and her balsy approach to her music. "No one is going to give it to you. You have to take it for yourself." But besides the personal touch, the music itself is excellent. And, by excellent I mean versatile, evocative and provocative. Her tracks range from soulful, throat-growling funks, to anti-governmentalist rants, to bluesy numbers. My current favorites are Free Me for its brazen lyrics and thumping beats, and 4 and 20 , a blues number-- her raspy voice soaked in a drizzle of piano keys, together sparkling over a stiff warning: Love or Leave Me. Same title introduces an old favorite of mine by the venerable Nina Simone. Different tune, same message.

I'm not sure what the message of most of Nancy Ajram's songs are but I know that they are an excellent antidote to a furious rant. Either your own unrelenting diatribe or that guy next to you. Akhasmak Ah is my personal cooking dance kick off. You set the board out on the counter, gather all the ingredients. Indispensable, of cousrse, are hot pepper, bell peppers, honey, lime ( I just learned this fact: lime is green and lemon is yellow...easier to remember if you know that the longer name corresponds to the longer adjetive). Then, you begin your general preparations and put on Akhasmak Ah and let your hips float up and dance. Recommended barefoot.

Incidentally, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki directed the video for Akhasmak Ah. The video is quite inspirational if you are thinking of belly-dancing or just dancing with unbounded glee in your own living room. Ya Salam requires wider feet shuffling, I think, and so recommended when cleaning or mopping floors.

Ya Rayah by Rachid Taha is another song that defies my linguistic skills but make my feet happy. I discovered this song via the movie Something New, which features a mostly African American cast but is not the stereotypical trope. Recommended for all those who enjoy romantic comedies where the woman is not a pathetic excuse of a person desperate for someone, anyone, with two balls (well, sometimes one ball will do) to take her to her cousin's wedding. Rachid Taha is French- Algerian but generally sings in Arabic.

Blown 'Away'

2009-10-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

I have just finished Amy Bloom's Away. I feverishly licked my way through the 240 pages burning to get to the next adventure. This is the book. Complete. Amy Bloom can turn a trenchant phrase " Her blisters weep pink, red and yellow (italics mine) but its the quickening pulse of the book that thrills me.
Ms Bloom is not a stickler for what they call historical accuracy - a phrase that titters my overly analytical mind. How can accurate be applied to history. All history is just a just story, at best we can throw it "account". A story that stands as truth because the dissenters are busy scractching out a paltry living with their bare fingers, or too scared or shy or... In any event, the genius of the book lies in it's bold storytelling.

Bloom gave a twist to nearly all the cliches she had to use--after all this is a book about a poor Eastern European Jew who drops off at Ellis Island searching for that elusive American Dream until the thing that propelled her out of Turov pulls her back.

When our heroine passes through Chicago on her way to the Yukon Territory where she plans to travel by boat and on foot until she crosses the Bering Strait into Siberia, there are black pimps and hos. Of course, they are cousins. But who should guess that the ho in question, Gumdrop, nee Clothilde, has a deliciously indecent speciality. Oh, the Oriental submissiveness won't do. Why, a grown woman of diminutive stature and child-like proportions who dressses in neat frocks, socks with lace trimmings and little Mary Jane heels.

Unusual characters abound in this 1920s world but they are not flappers and swingers. A pimp who is so fiercely into Moroccan decor that he imports his items. Poor Jewish immigrants living in tenements in New York. A gay Jewish theatre star who takes a lover in Central Park by night and a fiancee by day to please his mother. All the characters are hungry. Hungry to exercize power, hungry to gain power, or just plain belly-grumbling hungry.

The pith of the book is Lillian's quest to travel from New York to Siberia on foot begging, working, or conceeding any ---and any means any at all --favors that might help her get there. Her daughter, lost during a Jew-hunt in Turov, during a nightmarish night when her entire family was slaughtered, may or may not be there.

Maybe can feed a lot of dreams or deliriums.

Totally worth a read or even two. Enjoy!

Kafka on On The Shore of Nonsense

2009-10-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

Susan Sontag apparently said "books are funny little portable pieces of thought." I didn't hear her say it but I read it and I believe almost everything the Oprah Magazine prints. Anyway, that citation was printed on the bookmark I used while reading this book and it strkes me as particularly apropos for this book.

Kafka on the Shore is a collection of thoughts. The famed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is apparently known for his unusual style. I would have liked it better if he had gutted the plot and thrown it out. This is not a story; this is a book. A literary work if you will. If you're looking for storytelling, umm, you've come to the wrong side of the Entrance (a cryptic reference Murakami makes to something akin to the fine separation between this world and other worlds, other realities).

Simply put, the book is nonsense - highly intellectual nonsense but still nonsense. Alice in Wonderland is nonsense and it is the most enthralling nonsense. The magic of the book remains even though you understand that no matter how Carroll explains verdict before judgment will never make sense.

If you take Kafka as anything other than nonsense, you may feel like your brain is being squeezed. Murakami has apparently called his strolls into fantasy, philosophy and legends, riddles.

But they are such awfully boring riddles. Why would a 15-year-old believe that his father, a detached, deranged sculptor would be capable of putting an Oedipal curse on him and make it come true? The teen, Tamura, whose mother left him when he was a child, runs away from home in order to avoid the curse. The subsequent journey: erotic dreams amidst a medley of stray philosophy quotes dripping from the mouths of unlikely characters at the most awkward moments possible.

Reaction to the book will not be a question of understanding but of appreciation. I think it would be ludicrous and somewhat insulting to suggest that people may not understand the book. There is a serious possibility that after reading the book you will feel that you have wasted your time.

The characters were all shades of one character and that character seemed to be a less knowing form of the the omniscient narrator. They is no realness to them...I don't mean similitude or realism. I mean realness in the slangy sense of the term. All of them seem like literary devices. The only well developped character is Oshima - he is amusing, self-aware, and says things you'd expect a cultivated Japanese man to say. His character is consistently strange from jump - a hemophiliac transexual man who likes to speed and spend time alone in the forest.

There is also the predilection for a Maupassant-type realism. In real life people often repeat the question asked before answering it. In art, it is grating. Some people's jobs consist, metaphorically, of throwing stones over a wall, walking over to the other side and picking them up. Who wants to watch that!

There are some lucid passages and I got my hopes up but then I'd fall into the abyss again with cats that talk, incestuous dreams, gore and spirits that take on the appearance of Colonel Sanders. Yes, the chicken guy! The parts are so disconnected, I nearly tore a page.

Maybe it would be more enthralling if I were high. Food for thought!

Halloween: Back from the Dark

2009-10-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

I am long overdue for an actual post of quality. I had been traveling in Argentina and upon return, have had to office-work quite a lot. But the trip was phenomenal, I tell you, you, the three of you who continue to read this blog even though I have lapsed in posting from time to time. I promise nothing but I aim high so hopefully regular posting will resume and even improve.

I thought it would be fitting to resurect the blog today since it is Halloween
This is my first real Halloween. I mean I'm actually getting into the spirit of it; I carved a pumpkin.
And, as if to celebrate this gloom-fest, I have shed many fears and vanquished several monsters. Denial won't do. You have to go into the forest.
I will not have a costume; I will be myself unfiltered all day long :)

The carving reminds of Three Witches from Macbeth.

Cfpereda indugled the dork that I am and accompanied me in a reading.

P.S: If lost in a forest, you must walk in straight line. Eventually you will get out :)

I am in Argentina

2009-10-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Talking about life is great but there is nothing more pleasurably than digging deep into life. This is consonant with my main goal in life: to fill the hour with unfettered joyful acts. So, I bought a ticket and am in Buenos Aires for a week...to be continued.

Photo Lab: Looking Forward

2009-10-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

"Regrets are a waste of time.

They're the past crippling you in the present."

There's no point lamenting the things you did not do yesterday. Do them. Today!

Book Review: Art Imitating Life

2009-09-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

A classic, for the rainy days.
There are many reasons to love Lolita. There are many reasons to hate Lolita.

Some of the most beautiful, enigmatic language ever written in English. It does not hurt that there's plenty to learn in the way of history through his encyclopedic allusions from Proust to 1950s American pop culture. Everyone, I'm sure, will enjoy the puns and the ever-growing list of euphonious adjectives he laces through the book that makes Lo's scent ubiquitous: loll, dolorous, redolent, etc. The literary acrobatics are not bad either. Most notable is the use of foils and doubles. Clare Quilty, a shameless pedophile, is Humbert’s doppelganger. Humbert marries two adult women and falls in love with two nymphets.
In an allusive kingdom by the sea, Humbert Humbert and Annabel are two children at play –experiencing the first pangs of lust. Their furtive caresses may remind us of other famed kid-couples: Finn and Estella from Great Expectations, Julien and Sophie Kowalsky from Jeux d´enfants.

Kid romances are cute and tickle our most tender spot. I mean the heart! Alas, the azure waters of the Riviera littoral are rough and unsteady as a gale blows in. There is a creeping sense of melancholy, even from the beginning of the book. Before Humbert and Annabel have time to give full blast to their passion, she dies of typhus. All of this makes reference to the epynomous poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Here, the narrator presents the reader with a magic ball so beautifully woven that you ache as you gently unwrap it, layer by layer, sentence by setence.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea

Edgar Allan Poe married Virginia Clemm when she was 13 and he 27. Obviously, this is Humbert’s fantasy, as an adult. Secondly, both men share a nearly pathological adoration for their lovers. In Poe´s defense, his obsession seemed to flourish only after Clemm’s untimely death from TB.
Humbert is keenly aware of the connection and submits Poe's case for comparison against his. He also submits Dante. D. was enthralled with Beatrice, a young woman whom he met when they were both children. After her death, he cultivated an almost religious love for her.

There is a rumor around that Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator. I cannot understand why we would not believe him. Even if he has not set down all of his criminal acts, enough of them have been detailed and savored for the audience to discern what Humbert is.

Roman Polanski, famed director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, has become our modern-day Humbert this week. They both plied their prey with drugs and lured them into their nets under false pretenses. Have you noticed how Polanski’s supporters avoid the word “innocent?” Like Humbert, he confessed.
Yet, both men seem to elicit favorable regards. So what if you loved and labored over the arcane allusions in Humbert's ode? So what if you think Chinatown is one of the greatest films ever written? (And it is)
Maybe in the company of extremely open-minded people, you could make a case for pedophilia as a natural sexual relationship. Hisotrical expamples abound to be sure. Socartes may have foistred himself upon pubescent Olympic athletes. But, in ancient Greece, these relationships had a completely different meaning and so may not have caused any psychological damage. And, even if your mind were as open as as the Grand Canyon's widest chasm and could accept pedophilia, it could not admit rape. And that's precisely what these men did. Regardless of his colossal love for Lolita, in the end, Humbert deceived her and ruined her childhood. Regardless of how little Geimer protested or how she was dressed that day for the shoot, Polanski deceived her and continues to make her life a nightmare.

Photo Lab: Have You Ever Seen the Rain

2009-09-29T16:17:00.001-07:00

...falling down on a rainy day.

Today is one of those days when the sun plays hide and seek with the clouds and you don't know weather to go to bed early or go dancing. I say, dance :)

Art Review: A Crutch is a Ladder

2009-09-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

La vida es sencilla, somos quienes la complica. La belleza tambien es sencilla, somos quienes la ensucia. He encontrado a un fotógrafo completamente original y su originalidad se debe precisamente a que haya sabido coger en las manos la belleza sencilla. Completely unostentatious, I give you Chema Madoz, whose name reminds me of Mago de Oz (Wizard of Oz). Puns and wordplay abound because he is a conjurer of spell-binding photos.

Madoz is a Spanish fotographer from Madrid whose work uses the juxtaposion of simple objects to create metaphors, humor, irony. etc. Galleries of his work displayed on his website, title-less, so that the viewer can make his own interpretations.
My favorite pieces are Earrings because of the confluence of hearing/ears, jewelry/headphone/accessory - a multifunctional artifact.

I also loved the Latter-Crutch which mixes, in my understanding, elements that are conventionally opposed - weakness and strength. Latter makes me think of ascension, higher, better whereas crutch is emblematic of needy, weak, handicap. This photograph says to me that they are two sides of the same beast - ingenuity. A crutch is a ladder.

So, if you need a punch of inspiration, hop to to one of his exhibits or check him out on the internet.

P.S: Have a creative day!

Photo Lab: The Long Day is Over!

2009-09-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

Bitchin': You Will Never Get Enough

2009-09-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

...of what you don’t want

I was reading Huffington Post and came across an article in the Living section. Sometimes, they are thought-provoking, sometimes not. This article was part of a series on why “positive thinking” does not work...

At the time, I could not seem to get satisfied with anything in my life. I would brainstorm, gut out all my ideas about my dissatisfaction. I would brainstorm y in a journal or as suggested for optimum creativity, on a board-- just throwing out all ideas and letting them branch into new ideas. Every two weeks, I would have a meltdown and have to start over. The last “plan” had not been quite right. I needed to tweek it. Eventually, my optimism would dwindle and into the dingle of despair I would drift.

All the while, one sentence from that article haunted me: You will never get enough of what you don’t want. The problem was not “the plan” or how I brainstorming.

With each plan I sought to “improve” whatever the difficult thing, situation, etc that faced me. But, I was improving situations I did not want at all, relationships I did not cherish, things I did not want to keep. And, I took on things I was not sure would give me satisfaction.

I remember being completely intrigued by Kim Clijsters during the US Open games after seeing an interview with her. She said, 'When I was invited, I asked myself if I wanted to do it. I gave it a few days to see if the desire remained or passed with time. And when I said yes, I will, I asked what is the best I can realistically hope for and will that be enough for me in the end.'

A situation you do not want will never be enough for you, regardless of how good it becomes. If you do not like to sew, even if you become the most renowned designer in the world, you will not be satisfied. Sounds simple but how many times have you bought three things you kinda wanted instead of the one thing that would have given you bliss? How many times have you indulged friendships that did not make you happy because you were afraid of being alone? How many times have you said "yes" when you'd rather have all your molars removed sans anesthesia? (I had them removed with anesthia, painful!)

if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. - Joseph Campbell

P.S: Did you get your Red Baloon today ?

Photo Lab: Peppered Up!

2009-09-23T10:44:00.001-07:00

browsing..

choice is made.

the bounty...

and the pick!

I guess most major cities have farmer's markets on the weekends. I strongly recommend taking advantage of them because if you are city mouse like me with a penchant for things "fraiche" and "au naturel" and a little bit of countryside nostalgia. People from the farms always seem so dang cheerful. Also, the farmers' market is a great way to introduce your household to new foodstuff that will delight your palette. On Sunday, I had pluots for the first time. Much like plums but juicier.

Indulge Your Appetite: Falafels

2009-09-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

As promised, the first food post. If you're visiting DC Amsterdam Falafelshop is your worth your 6 dollars or (equivalent in Euros, they accept that currency as well). Blended chick peas and assorted spices topped with peppers, cheese, etc. will equal falafel. A simple twist on that old dinner routine. I thought I was supposed to put some water in the blend so it came out soggy. If you make this mistake, a little baking flour will seal the deal. Give it a try!

Ingredients: a can of chick peas, soft taco shell, your choice of cheese, spices. My faves are rosemary, oregano, hot pepper. Fresh lettuce, peppers, and olive oil. Bon Appetit!

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

2009-09-17T18:57:00.000-07:00

Three Cups of Tea
In honor of Ramadan and because I wanted to pad my paltry knowledge of the Middle East, I decided to read this book. I usually prefer non-fiction but sometimes reality is ever better. One of my goals in life is to embrace people and I can't do that if I don't know anything about them :)

Three Cups of Tea is about an American mountaineer Greg Mortenson and his arduous quest to educate girls in the impassable mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. After failing to reach his goal of climbing Karokoram 2 and living a climbing fiend’s life in California, Mortenson set out to follow a personal conviction and promise he made to the people who rescued him and nursed him back to health in rural Pakistan.
With the Taliban forming and fundamental madrassa schools cropping in the hills of Pakistan, Mortenson believed that education was the key weapon against violence. These kids would not want war, if they had better opportunities, Mortenson thought. He studied the local languages of various tribes including Pastun, Balti and Wazir and built strong bonds with the local people. With the help of some generous people and Mortenson's endless series of public talks to spread his message of peace through education (especially for women), he has been able to build 81 schools in a little over 10 years.

To do for us without out is to do against us
While the heavily armored US army struggles to make progress on various Middle East fronts, pours money into the governments, and screams its message of democratic liberation, Mortenson has found a humbler and more effective way of waging peace. Before starting every new project, he visits the people to hear what they want and then together they join hands and build.

If you were young when September 11 happened and do not quite understand the mayhem surrounding words like mujahideen and Taliban, read this book! I don´t usually read about politics because I am bombarded with it every day at work but this was a quick, educational, and at times funny read.

“Here in Pakistan and Afghanistan, we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, the third you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything – even die.”
This book will be useful to everyone who is thinking of taking trips abroad. There is no shortage of stories about Americans’ inexcusable rudeness in host countries. I have met people in Spain who complained that there were two many churches and said it offended them to take part of the group tours that included several cathedral visits. I am surprised when college educated people ask me if there are a lot of Black people in Haiti. And, Barcelona is not, believe it, in Mexico.
This book shows why people do not hate Americans but hate American cultural incompetence.
The message of this book is worth repeating: if you want to change the world, let the world change you.

Photo of the Day

2009-09-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

reaching toward the sun

Two things of note for today

One: growing is hard but it's even harder if you're groping in the dark. You have to reach toward the light, even if it's just one crack leaking through the oppresive darkness. You have to reach, damn it!

Two: To satisfy our demanding palates, we have decided here at Cocina de Dyane to make three new recipes every week. Today is falafel day. I will post pictures of massive disasters and delectable delicacies. Yum.

P.S: Share your favorite dishes and I will cook them! I will eat anything except things which would feed on humans or human refuse so the snake tail is out and so our bugs. But anything else, write me up!

Scavenger: I found...

2009-08-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

A few things that I have made me smile this wkend may work for you:

Vivo per lei by Andrea Bocelli- I know it's become popular to take a practical approach to feelings. In He's Not that Into You (or, He's An Asshole, I'm a Spinless Dormat) Ginnifer Goodwin taught us that being too interested is a turn-off. But I still love the torrid unambiguous "yes" instead of "yeah, maybe we could like hang out." This song is just such an avowal - unabashed passion dripping like warm honey from his throat. What a voice. The song is dedicated to his muse, Musica. But I think it doubles as a love lyric too.

I like a good family saga as much as the next person but movies about brave people are in themselves brave becasue they dare to be conspicuously philosophic, introspective and even sentimental. If you have been under a rock, perhaps you have not heard of Meryl Streep's latest trip through the gourmande Julia Child's life. Even Mrs. Child would agree with Writer-Director Nora Ephron: "Meryl plays all of us better than we play ourselves."
Poppy by Zee Avi. Young artist, produced by Jack Johnson's Label. Hazy voice, sharp digs, ironic narratives. My personal favorite is Honey Bee, it´s delicate in sound but trenchant in content. filmfreakcentral. net and it's twin blog - for someone who listens to movies in the shower, I don't know why it took me so long to find this website. Perfect example of don't judge a website by its front page. At first site, filmfreak is dark, a bit tacky and frankly seems disorganized. But then I read this incisive description of the website: and swooned. Wheee. A new crush.

Roman Polanski's character in The Tenant asks his beatnik girlfriend a great philosophical question, which I'll paraphrase here: If I cut off my arms, I say, "This is me, and these are my arms." If I cut off my legs, I say, "This is me, and these are my legs." But if I cut off my head, do I say, "This is me, and this is my body," or "This is me, and this is my head."? What right does my head have to say it's me?
I know how I'd answer that question.
I love to write. I love to watch movies. I love to read. Film Freak Central is for people who share these passions.
This is me, and this is my website.
-Bill Chambers, Editor-in-Chief

shop-a-matic - I enjoy getting clothes but I hate to shop and I especially hate to shop for diaphanous rags that I can put my finger through. New York Magazine, which is quickly running up my list of favorite webs, has put together a list of ideas and their Shopping section puts up a Best-Buy buy every day. I found these multi-purpose boots...Ride in them, splash in the warm summer rain, storm through cold autumn puddles. Incidentally they are kinda sexy. Functional is sexy. And, they remind me of Betty Draper's horse riding boots.

Rewind: Glad for Mad-ness

2009-08-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the most hedonistic age, it was the most conservative age. Every generation has its progressives and regressives.

It is the exploration of perennial themes that makes the AMC tv show Mad Men so appealing. It is set in the 1960s, it is set in the 1990s. We like to cast frames around things to compensate for our insufficient grasp of complexities. But, Matt Weiner, the man from whose brain the show sprung, refuses to give easy characterization of the decade and its people. Nearly every character on Mad Men is a mystery. And, though, we might like to draw sharp contrast between 1960s society and ourselves, the show deftly avoids stereotipical "60s" bait.

Maybe in the 60s people were bound by social conventions and suffered in silence over their respective spleens and ours is in an age of heedless obsessive openess. But hiding in the closet or getting on stage in the end amounts to the same thing.

Sterling Cooper resident ad designer Salvatore hides his homosexuality 'neath a veneer of intellectual schtick and artistic posturing. The Queer as Folk dude is a staple at stuffy dicky shops. Instead of hiding out we now take off our clothes to mask emotional turmoil.

I will probably only be adding a speck on the mountain of bon mots that bloggers and papers have dropped about MM. We have been lying in a pool of anticipatory drool for the third season. Vulture, the NYmag.com culture blog, has shot off at least 105 posts mentioning Mad Men.

I recently stumbled on Mad Men some two weeks ago and have been watching it with glee (sans commercials online).

The show is lovingly photographed with artful transitions where possible though I've noticed a predilection to jump cut in the SterlingCooper office. The flashbacks which could have been a narrative hole and disruptive to the viewer's engagement with Don Draper's current life are more like a dimple in the sequence because they have clever transitions that make then feel plausible. Like in Season 2 Episode 11 when Anna ( the real Mrs. Draper) puts a bag of clothes on Draper's stomach and walks out of the room. When she comes back in the room they are several years back celebrating Christmas together and Don announces that he will ask Betty to marry him. Nicely done.

The writing is minimalist and incisive. 'Every woman is a Marilyn or a Jackie but Marilyn really is a Joan, not the other way around.' Joan to whom Christina Hendricks has generously loaned her expressive eye-lashes and frame is a character that could easily be a stereotype: a 1960s woman with generous bossom who sleeps around. But Joan is also an intelligent, respected professional.

Since I posted "Watching TV or Amusing Ourselves to Death" I have found two reasons to watch tv again: re-runs of the Golden Girls and Mad Men baby.

Indulge Your Appetite: The Best Salad

2009-07-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

tomatoes, fried tofu, avocado, romaine lettuce, merlot lettuce, chips, salsa.

Bitchin': Flaunting my disdain for small talk

2009-07-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you are stuck in one of those conversations you'd rather not have. May I interest you in some talk over scones, ice cream or cones? Maybe cooks, books, or crooks?
The coffee machine?
That coffee machine is dripping slow today
Yeah, it's always slow. I don't know.
Sometimes you do know that the coffee machine is a derelict appliance that has been fixed and prodded many times that month but you ask anyway.
Do you think it'll hold through the day? There are a lot of people who need their regular doses? Ha ha. I know. This is my third cup already.
At least it's good for you, has anti-oxidants.
Oh, really, I always thought it was really bad for the skin.
No...
And here you have intro to talk about that article you read about coffee and anti-oxidants.
When I was little, we moved a few times, enough for me to have a ritual. When we had cleared everything from the old place, I would go back in and say something aloud to hear my echo back. These conversations are the same. I say hi, you say ho. Hi ho. Hi ho. And so we hi ho all day long across the gulf between us.

P.S: Comment with your favorite small talks! While having them can be awkward, later they always seem hilarious.

Book Review: Is that A Televsion Set?

2009-07-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Watching TV or Amusing Ourselves to Death?

Time travel

I spent several years without a TV in my home. I spent half of those years sleeping on a plastic matress on the floor of my apartment because I was a poor college student. After I um um got a job, I still could not come around to buying a television. If I had lived three years without one, I could go on for many more.

Let it stand that I am frugal. You may say cheap. Potatoes, potahtoes. The money I would have to spring every month for the cable bill was an effective deterrant to watching TV.

But late into the 2008 election season, I caved. People became socially awkward if they did not watch Obama run rhetorical laps around McCain during the last debate. Moreover, I work at the news, I sometimes had to edit these speeches; I simply had to keep up. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? I could not read the prints about them and get a sufficient idea of how well they had argued their points. I could not see the smirks or the blind stares during which Mr. McCain would begin to recite a litany of slogans he had programmed to fill up space when he ran out of fuel.

So, I broke down and bought a television set.

It sat on the floor for weeks on a polyester burgandy table cloth my mother made me. (My mother sews things-- boho dresses, heart-shaped pillows, couch covers, anything into any shape you like. When I was in kindergarten, the school principal would reprimand her for the outré outfits she sewed for me.) Finally the election was over, I outfitted my new tv with a stand and thought I might start using it for leisure.

I decided to learn where the WB was and what was on it. Turns out it's now the CW.

Something weird started to happen and it made me suspicious. It was like time travel: I was losing half hours, sets of hours, trios yet I only had a faint glimmer of what I had screened.

Then I shut the tv off and read this. I lost five hours but it was a good read.

Whatever happened to good TV?

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman is a fast rant about the effects of television on popular culture.

Now, back in the day, I loved Frasier, I watched Friends until Jennifer Aniston begin to look like Mona from There's Something about Mary. Even further back, you had to do the Babysitters' Club on Disney and the Wonder Years will always be endearing.

But I had to agree with Postman that TV has become kinda trashy. (Why? it used to be so great, My So Called Life anyone?) Lately I just cannot find anything that I can watch without my mind going numb or getting seriously appalled. The Fat shows are just cruel, the bitch-fights are embarrasing to me as a woman and I do not have HBO or Showtime.

People do not question how TV affects them because it has become mythic, ubiquitous. Everything is offered through TV. Every other medium is filtered through it: magazine offers, radio announcements, the newspaper, film ads, etc.

As we have become accustomed to fast-moving images, our attention span has shortened. One of my greatest pet-peeves are people who cannot go through a dinner without checking their phones, blackberries or whatever.

Television is the pinnacle of that context-free information ladder. It presents every new item disconnected from the previous one in rapid fashion that obliterates the need to search for content. You are constantly and consistently titillated so that you do not need to think. You just watch.

Can be this be good for your brain?

People have tried to use TV as a means for serious discourse but it backfires because it does not lend itself to this kind of content. TV5, the international French channel's "literary" shows where people sit around and talk of books for about 2 1/2 hours are just queer and risible.

How do you use your tv? Are you watching any good shows? Do share because mine is gathering dust.

Deja que te cuente: la insensibilidad oficinista

2009-07-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Un cuentito

Ha venido una tía, de finlandia, con el pelo rubio de esos pueblos perdidos del norte, a nuestra oficina. Empezó a saludar a todo el mundo como si fueramos viejos amigos. Se acordaba de algunos nombres porque habíamos trabajado juntos hace... Pasó por la habitacion del Garrote (mi jefe) sur la pointe des pieds como si fuera una niña que se atreve a pasar por el despacho de su padre sin avisar.
Puso la cabeza en la puerta, con el cuerpo todavía escondido detrás de la pared y le cantó los buenos días. El otro, muy cabrón e insincero, hizo como si no le hubiera oido venir. Esta mujer chillaba a todos "que tal, how was your ho-lee-day...I just returned from my ho-lee-day in Finland but I'm back in business now." El muy aspero le dice, "me alegro verte" pero con voz monotona, sin música, sin sinceridad. La verdad es que da igual que venga, que se vaya, que le atropelle un coche.

El Rubio, mi compañero, se ha cortado el pelo- estilo Van gogh con oreja en el suelo, periodo azul.

Photo Lab: TGIF

2009-07-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday! Good weekend to all.
Song of the Day: Rosana, 'Pa ti no estoy

Que te vaya bonito. Mis mejores deseos que en la vida recojas lo que siembres de bueno. Que te vaya bonito. Que no te vaya mal y que el tiempo te deje donde tengas que estar...quisiste ser universal eclipsando mil sueños. Que Dios te proteja en la celda de tu soledad... yo me voy a plantar al campoo a la orilla la marea. Deseo que todo te vaya de vicio. Me voy ahí te quedas. Me voy a vivir tranquila, sin pausa pero sin prisa. Deseo que todo te vaya de lujo. No espero visita así que no vayasque pa´ti no estoy ... yo pa´ti no estoy ...

Photo Lab: Cross that bridge...

2009-07-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

...when you come to it...

Almost over the hump - happy wednesday. Celebrating hump day with a voluptous nap.

Bitchin': The Future is Now

2009-07-21T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Future is Now

The future is now. what poisons existence is thinking too much abut the finish line. You'll have lots of time to think afterwards when you've lost or when you can't run anymore. Life is movement, it's dance--justine levy

Frank McCourt got me thinking about fulfilling my life.

It is right that Mr. McCourt's death should prompt introspection. He was a self-probing type and he did write the incisive Angela's Ashes about living in penury in Ireland while maintaining his goodness and humor.
Poverty makes people mean. I hope I am not mean but struggling to drag yourself above destitution may have made me desperate. Desperate for financial stability, desperate for emotional security, desperate for respectability. And, desperatation is nothing but well-dressed fear. If I think I am desperate, it is not my fault. But I admit that I am afraid, then I am a ripe-banana-yellow wuss.
Out of fear, I was carefully planning every day.
But lately, I've been thinking that maybe I had the wrong context. I hear people, especially "adult" people extol the goodness of prudence and careful planning (A and B). But, that is a never ending task. What if we just said "fuck it." Fuck it is nice. You might as well make mistakes you enjoy since there is no innoculation against failure. Fuck it is now.

P.S: Any advice for this recovering control freak?

Bitchin': Grave Digging

2009-07-14T01:16:00.000-07:00

Grave Digging

Working at night may have its advantages. You can unceremoniously scratch your nether regions, take a nap on the toilet or spend an entire hour dancing to Eric Hutchison. Yes, he is a dorkified preppy-dressed, hippy-thinking white boy but he's alright with me.
But the midnight watch is not for everyone. I have co-workers whose fingertips have been burned by the midnight oil. One woman felt so nauseated she had to lie on the dirty, staple-strewned carpet in.
The most obvious side-effect to me is this unabatting desire to tear a living thing apart, one limb at a time. (where's your imagination...don't be so literal).
I am not a night owl; more like a morning lark.
In a past life, my people walked with Ra and took pains to mimick Him. I wake up with the sun and my body begs me to lay it down soon after the sun drifts below the horizon line. Even when I was in college, I did not often pull all nighters.
Don't get me wrong. I can stay up after 11 pm but then I just don't want to be chipping away at any "serious" endeavour. All activities past the 23rd hour must be fun, licentious or innocent, depending on the mood...

Flaunt your dark secrets

2009-07-09T18:50:00.001-07:00

Dark Corners

- What's the place like?

- Good. Good. Full of dark corners for doing dark deeds. - LoveActually

Last night we went to dinner at Saigon Bistro, a little DC gem of a Viet restaurant, conveniently off the Red Line metro. I am addicted to their food especially the shrimp vermicelli. As usual, the food was excellent. What was unexpected was the flurry of strapping young black men and some sexagenarians who walked up and down the block as we snarfed down large chunks of food between clumpsily held chopsticks ---when in the Saigon Bistro, do as the Viets.

Two by two these individuals would walk out of a nearby club and disappear under Nyx's cape into an alley one block up the street.

We tarried a while longer, eating slower as our bellies got full...

Every now and then the Romeos would saunter out of the alleys; some as if they had never met before. One man obviously had forgotten to zip it up.

P.S. What are you hiding?

Photo Lab: The Tempest

2009-07-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

Hell is empty, all the devils are here - The Tempest, Shakespeare.

Rough gale blowing all the papers off my desk...this is a day for paella and long naps.

(I filched this picture from cfpereda , edit mine)

Photo Lab: Your Local Art Scene

2009-07-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

DC Art-O-Matic: Weirdoes Welcome

This show was advertised in the papers and promised to buzz the mind with 8 floors of visually stimulating art. So, I had to heave my hind there. Below is a sampling of the weird and freaky that dominated the scene.

me trying to capture the scene. the light was dismal, one of those days when the Light sat at dawn and refused to take on any more color.

Titsperverts. Recreant piece that obviously flaunts its rebel flag high. Titspervert - Mr. Fitzherbert whom Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones' Diary always remembered at Mr. Titspervert because he always stared at hers...

Jesus comes in box. I enjoyed this renegade painting. Laughed out loud. The expression on the child's face is priceless.

trolls on camels. I got an Arabian fantasy vibe but the lifeless grins of the trolls killed it.

Title: "Where to invest for Growth" by T´Kes Guerilla Art Foundation...Besides the sadistic nature of this picture, I was confused by its title. If you didn't catch it, that's a gun pointed at the baby's head.

Title: Abortion Clinic. By Baxter Studio, Art from Trash. I thought perhaps this piece was about child safety as they can suffocate if they are allowed to play with plastic.

While at the show, a stranger walked up to me and said, "I just love this piece; both the texture and the composition. "It reminds me of Mary Had a Little Lamb," quoth I, who knows less than a speck of art theory. I think she had hoped for a more profound repartee.

The Redistricting Project melded old and new photographs of particular DC localities to make a kind of flashback composite. Very cool. See more about it www.jts-art.com/redistricting.html

Filmoteca: Mad as a Hatter

2009-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

I am tittered by the news that Tim Burton will regale us with his rendition of Alice in Wonderland. When I was little my favorite sequence was the tea party which in the Disney version was the unbirthday party. "A very happy unbirthday. To me? To you. To me!.."

I have just reread the original text in English and the nonsense logic that befuddles the Mad Hatter is so funny and relatable. He was accused of murdering the Time and after this quarrel, "he won't do a think I ask," the Hatter laments. Time won't let him move the clock and so he is stuck at tea time every day, every hour, and every minute.

I am looking forward to the anthropomorphic flowers. The Red Queen already looks vicious, and John Depp as the Mad Hatter is right on.

Sometimes I feel that Time mocks me. It´s true that at times I insist on beating him (I can be cruel, it´s true) or even kill him with idle occupation. When I treat him like a friend I can stuff everything I like between dawn and dusk. He is a jolly companion; he chuckles at your stumbles yet breaks your fall...

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/06/first-look-tim-burton-takes-alice-to-weird-wild-wonderland/

Flaunt Your Rage

2009-06-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday and so I have to rehearse my smile because tomorrow is what we referred to in Catholic school as "La rentrée." Haven't thought about office all weekend but tomorrow I and the rest of the unlucky stapler weilding folks will put on our liveries and drudge up slowly to our posts. Sometimes I feel like Milton Waddams in Office Space...

Just kidding, folks!

The Other Michael Jackson

2009-06-27T12:40:00.003-07:00

Everyone who knew MJ personally have said lately there were two Michael: the performer and the woefully disturbed child. On stage, he was in control, he was brilliant, he was THE RHYTHM (No offense to Janet). But every time I saw him in an interview, I had to avert my eyes. I had a high school teacher who used a MJ photograph as a screen saver - MJ post massive surgery. When I asked him why he chose that photograph, he told me it was a student repellant.

No one ever seemed to care for this grown up Lost Boy in Neverland. No one liked him enough to tell him, dude you need a psychiatrist. But he was asking for help in his own way. What is this song, if not a public cry out for help?

RIP Michael Jackson

Rewind: Politically Incorrent Humor

2009-06-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

The Politics of Jokes

Maybe it's that I was too drunk today (Saturday) after attending the RTCA dinner last night but I started thinking about current jokes in the media. (News people drink a lot. How else can they ever get to loosening their frantic fingers long enough to stop black-berrying, texting, phoning, etc? I have a picture in mind of a newshorse swiftly texting with one hand while stroking his genitals with the other...otherwise he might fall outta touch. Communication is not a variable. Anyway...)

Obama had klutzily delivered one cautious joke after another at the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner. But, the crowd obliged him with laughs. They were not all honest laughs but I think he was just shooting for kindness from the crowd. Humor is not his forte. Looking suave as he measures his swagger - there he gets an A+ every time.

Everyone remembers that debacle with the Special Olympics. What is the deal with funny? The whole point of funny is that it is a departure from reality. A hyperbole or understatement. Either way, a divergent road we must travel to arrive at funny. So, what is up with the "you went too far" criticism (Governor Palin). I stray when people begin to call jokes "tasteless". What is a tasteful joke? Someone might volunteer: jokes for children. I will take you on that but then they are not funny. And even children know when they are being insulted and condescended to. If you want to make me laugh, I want it to hurt.

Funny got Cartoonist Chip Bok into the Sotomayor cartoon scandal.
Oh, did he say Latina and piñata in the same breath? The fact is that the piñata is a cultural artifact of Mexico. No, not all Hispanics are Mexican. Noted. If we were in the Senate hearing for her appointment and someone started talking to her about her legacy as a Zapatista descendant and how that might influence her opinion on the bench, that would be embarrassing. But a cartoonist putting a known signifier (piñata) in a different context (skip the fiesta, head over to Capitol Hill) to create humor is....well humorous.

Insulted and laughed at are not the same. Maybe Bok and the angry folks at Fox News laughed at Sotomayor's statements regarding her Latina-ness and how it influences her legal judgment but Bok was insulting her...by saying hey if you were like a Mexican piñata, then Mr. Obama putting you forward like this would be like asking the Republican kids to hit you until they got all the candy out. Ha ha.

Flaunt Your Little Triumphs

2009-06-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

Progress

...is made by putting one foot in front of the other. Sprinting is enticing to me, you get a rush and it comes fast. I sound like I regularly strap my arm down and flood it with an exciting elixir.--- But I mean all that metaphorically. I am re-learning what it is to be not analyze everything and literally put one foot in front of the other.

Bus Rides and Impatient Passengers

2009-06-01T18:35:00.000-07:00

If you looked at her face you would think, clean but unfortunate victim of greasy skin and cheek bones too prominent for such a small head. The gentleman looking at her chest might think ah there is a redeeming quality. But looking at her seat, where she had plunked down her massive rear, you would think ah it makes sense that she peeled off her eyebrows in an effort to better frame her eyes and wears such a fashionable suit. Stubby little stubby feet, too. A strange physique that seemed like it had been squeezed out from a platic tube. Like icing. Sometimes the icing came out in smooth, even, thin elegant lines and at other times it came out in chunks and then dribbles.

She had been sweating and now the grease coated her strained features despite the air conditioning.

As we took a turn around a circle, she began to fidget and suddenly it came out.

"I can´t stand this, I hate this, I don´t understand. You have so much patience," she told the bus driver. "I could never drive a bus. I´d just want to shout…it´s not that difficult people: just follow the circle." She squirted a nervous little laugh.

"There shouldn´t even be a 42 bus because this line has too many stops. A person can walk 2 blocks to catch the bus. There should just be the 43. When it goes under the bridge. When I take the 43 on this road, it takes 6 minutes to get from apatment in Mount Pleasant to K street. When I take the 42 it takes 20."

Someone mumbled she needed to stop complaining because on a rainy Friday afternoon when everyone is trying to find a bar to fill up and then a bed or someone to pass out on and it began to stink horribly in the bus because the wet floors had been trod on by too many tired feet, no one wanted to hear another person complain about the very same problem the y were having. Everyone wanted to move faster but the best we could do at that moment was enter that warm womb of denial and wait until it was our time to come out.

Flaunt your Love for NY

2009-06-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

The itch to travel

It´s not that I´m not enjoying the wonderfulness that is the District, with its newly minted, rock-star President (people are still wearing glittered obama hats on the bus), it's just that there is a place I am itching to see again. Just for a day or two. Certain songs sound like a place that you have been. Like Ismael Serrano always sounds like Madrid, but Regina Spektor sounds like the East Village, NY. That's where I want to go, back to NY.

Sometimes, you feel assaulted in New York because there are so many people rushing in distinct directions, kids being pushed on 45th and Broadway on their way to eat as many chocolates as they can get away with in the Hershey store. But then, there are quiet streets in Brooklyn and Manhattan where you are in New York and it feels energizing and mezmerizing. You turn right, there´s something that calls your attention then you turn left and there´s a guy using the wall as his personal canvas and you want to see what he has to say in such vibrant colors.

Flaunt Your Courage and Dream Big

2009-05-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Yates Was an Unlucky Son of a Bitch

Breaking up with Yates. I read his huge collection of stories and that innocent-looking but ultimately devious, poignant Revolutionary Road. We're breaking up because Richard Yates tells the kind of the truths that people do not often want to hear. And, he is so frank- there was no artifice in the stlye- that you could not blame him. Sometimes you just want someone to lie to you. Just a little? Maybe? No? C'mon...

(Ok, we're not breaking up, but we have to take a break)

---

His writing is compelling because there is no tragic element in that Shakespearian, Aristotelian sense of the word. No great harmatia that we can point out and say "there, there he stepped on a faulty tile and so he fell into the hole." There is only a luckless son of bitch who always rolls his die off the table. He didn´t even stand a chance in the game.

Yates' writing is good and by that I don't mean that I quiver with fantasies while reading it but he can crack the irony loud enough to make you laugh. His style titilates the brain waves and gives me pause every now and then.

But, mostly, I am stuck on how fucking unlucky these fuckers are.

It always strikes me as enormously funny when people congratulate themselves on an accomplishment and say that it happened because they are smart or talented or...What if you are smart and talented and dedicated and determined and yet your life is a smartless, inept fumbling of forced meditations and Sisiphean drive?

All of the characters are shrinking into small lives. Yates reminds me of John Patrick Shanley, another very keen observer of humble tragedies.

When life gets saucy with us, we get assertive, even aggressive. Big challenges demand big courage or at least a big show of courage. But, out prudence, we dream small, we shield that dream, we crouch around it protecting it with our whole being because it is so so fragile. We risk failure in a tragedy so small, so self-conscious that it leaves no space for heroism.

I don't mean heroism in that Sully Sullenberger on the Hudson way. I mean, we become so self-effacing that all that is left of us is that little dream and so when it fails...nothing left.

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

Basket case or Richard Yates in the spotlight

Flaunt Your Mood

2009-05-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

Take Off Your Shoes...

...and stay awhile.

Flaunt Your Spiritual Sanctuary

2009-05-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Peace be With You

A certain look...

the call to prayer: "Come and let us rejoice..."

through the gate

into the light

"Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."

and take curiosity in God's creations

then go in peace

out of the gate.

I will not let thee go except thou bless me – Jacob

Flaunt your favorite movie montage

2009-05-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

Movies: the Montage

I rented Last Chance Chuck...because I love Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman has given me some of my longest laughing bouts in my life (Watch Meet the Parents and he will service you as well!) Horrible disappointment. Particularly irritating was the montages that signify "passage of time." No, no, no please. Sometimes just two good scenes will do the trip or light changes (night and day you are the one...).

Last time I saw this, the montage done mosly with stills and few actually moving pictures, was just too tacky to believe. But, it was a movie about a cute dog so perhaps I should not have expected too much. Marley & Me, which seems to have spawned new dog food commercials and provided great emotional catharsis to people who steel themselves against human dramas, news that does not involve Mr. Obama and friends' bad days, displayed a montage of stills several minutes long to show how the main character and his dog bonded: Marley jumping on dinner guests, Marley at the dog park, Marley etc etc.

The montage, in my humble opinion, can be done well a la When Harry Met Sally, using only movies pictures: Harry and Sally walking, Harry and Sally posting mail, Harry and Sally getting the Christmas tree. Used sparingly, with good music or excellent dialogue voice-over, this technique can make you feel you have known the character long enough now to invite him/her over for Christmas dinner. Or, a la Fatih Akin's Im Juli (In July). He uses pictures but they are excellent postcard pictures which suits the theme of the sequence: road trip!

Domingo de Duelo

2009-05-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hoy ha sido un dìa un tanto pesado. Hacia mal tiempo después de una noche de lluvias, que a mi me gustan. Me encanta la lluvia por la noche. Pero, claro, es que habia muerto Mario Benedetti. Lluvia de lágrimas. Ha muerto el compañero más solidario del mundo.

Compañero usted sabe

puede contar conmigo

no hasta dos o hasta diez

sino contar conmigo.

De talento deslumbrante, este señor me impresionó tanto que yo, después de leer su cuento, Sabado de Gloria (de allí viene el titulo de este post), lloré media hora y no me hacia falta leer el resto de ese mes. Me quedé tan asombrada que me da miedo no hacerle justicia a la Palabra.

no me ensucie las palabras
no les quite su sabor
y límpiese bien la boca
si dice revolución.

Me muero de vergüenza cuando me acuerdo del miedo cobarde que me quita el boli de la mano, cuando huyo la verdad y digo lo que no creo, cuando gana la pereza y no busco la palabra adecuada. Cuando me miento a mi misma y digo que no quiero.

Para los que no conocìan a este un escritor uruguayo, aquí teneís los hipervìnculos...O sea que sin excusas :)

http://www4.loscuentos.net/cuentos/other/2/5/13/

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/poeta/compromiso/elpepucul/20090517elpepucul_6/Tes

Written in bricks

2009-05-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

Nature, in every way, inspires us. Louis Khan apparently said that "to express...give presence..we must consult Nature." Because we need only follow Nature's design and we will find where we should put this piece and that piece. Perhaps writing is like that too.

" Even a brick wants to be something," Kahn said. "A brick wants to be an arch." In the same way, words ought to be something, something more than just their denotation. And the design, I guess would be literature.

Mi estado mental

2009-05-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

El sol inconciente y libre

El sol, inconsciente de nuestra dependencia,

va y viene.

juega al escondite inglés con las nubes.
sube o baja.

El sol, quién es rey del patio celestial

no entiende oraciones ni promesas.

Ven, baja, que aquí en la Tierra te queremos también

Libre, el sol baila y suelta su cabello marrón
o de color melocotón

De su propio brillo, goza

Goza, como de su risa, la nina caprichosa...

Los días sin sol me afectan mucho, hay que ir buscando los colores en cada esquina, hoy encontré....