Autor: sylvia

So the conversation continues. Drug lords write messages on corpses, and these messages say fuck you to the border control and its 370 criminal arrests. Poets get ideas and they get visas and they get on flights to Los Angeles. They tell Americans about Mexicans in a little barrio called Comales. They get home and the cartels are exploding grenades that tell them: Stay home and shut up. Everyone is trying to talk loudest. Everyone is simply hungry for the chance to speak.

Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams.

mi madre murió hace un año siete meses. extraño hablar con ella por teléfono. extraño oírla reír. extraño oírla decir “ay, hijita,” frase que aplicaba a 1)mis sandeces, 2)mis bobadas, 3)mis accidentes o incidentes.

mi madre murió hace un año siete meses y todavía no me hago a la idea de no verla. pero, en realidad, no es que quiera hacerme a la idea. es mejor así, no hacerse a la idea, no acostumbrarse a su ausencia, quererla, quererla siempre, quererla aquí a un ladito, quererla al otro lado de la línea.

quererla y ya.

“I answer that I try to write true stories but that at a given point the story becomes unbearable because of it’s very truth, and then I have to change it. I tell her that I try to tell my story but all of a sudden I can’t-I don’t have the courage, it hurts too much. And so I embellish everything and describe things not as they happened but the way I wished they happened.

She says, “Yes, there are lives sadder than the saddest of books.” I say, “Yes. No book, no matter how sad, can be as sad as a life.” 

 

Ágota Kristóf

He vuelto al terruño después de cinco días angelinos. He vuelto en crisis, o semi-crisis, o con una pizca de crisis. Pero las crisis son buenas a veces. Yo ahorita vengo perdida, ¿qué sigue en mi vida? empleo o estudio, empleo o nada, nada o nada. Fui a un congreso de escritores y uno de esos días, en la calle, un señor como de unos 70 años me pidió que le leyera una carta. Al lado de él estaba una señora como de unos 90 años, que le decía, “no, mijo, no.” El hombre me dijo que tenía muchos años viviendo acá pero aún no sabía mucho inglés. La carta estaba en inglés y en español, así que lo que también ocurría era que él no sabía leer. Vine a un congreso de escritores y aunque aprendí muchas cosas, lo mejor que hice fue leerle a alguien una carta de Medicaid. Caminar por Los Ángeles significó también caminar por muchos países, muchas otras crisis, la gente vive en la calle, tiendas de campaña o casas de cartón por todos lados. Carritos de supermercado atiborrados de mundo y amarrados a este o a aquel poste. La ciudad entera un baño. La ciudad entera un hogar que no acoge.

He vuelto al terruño después de cinco días de aprender que la vida no está en la gran ciudad ni en la pequeña ciudad, la vida está en pinches uno.

We don´t do it very often. Really, we don´t. But that day we decided to take a walk around our neighborhood. We were talking about I don´t know food, or RV´s, camping, running away. Yeah, we were probably talking about running away. Lately that´s all we talk about. Leave everything behind, sell everything, keep only what we really need, and  travel around the country. Camp our asses off, take photos, think about nothing or everything. We sound like a couple of retired seniors, I know.

Anyway, we were walking and talking, walking and talking on Rio Grande. Then, it happened.

A woman started calling us, waving. My husband said: “She is talking to you, I think, do you know her?” No, I didn´t. “Are you sure?” I was. We kept walking, elpasoan wind on our faces. We were not even half a block away when another woman called us, “They are calling you, they need you.” Our puzzled faces. “The lady, the lady from that big house, she fell, they need your help.” We didn´t even think about it, we simply walked back.

The woman who had called us earlier said, “Thank God you came back.” No one has ever told me, “Thank God you came back,” so obviously I did not know what to answer. I smiled. “What happened?” My husband asked. “The lady, she fell, I can´t lift her up, I need help, I saw you and called you, thank God you came back.”

This is when I tell you that my husband studied nursing. My husband wanted to be a nurse. My husband wanted to learn to help. But then he got sick and, being a nurse is no longer a plan. Living, living is the only plan. So my husband who was going to be a nurse ran inside to help, as he could.

This was a big house, you have probably seen it. It was probably a luxury mansion one of the many on Rio Grande that housed rich texan families that left and left only stories and half broken houses. This was a half broken mansion. What probably was once an elegant living room was now the bedroom of this lady. Furniture from a hospital, or from a thrift store.

The woman was on the floor, her face up. Was she crying? It was hard, she was scared, heavy. It was hard. My husband lift her from shoulders after sitting her down, we helped as we could. The woman had a cast on her neck. Yes, she was crying. It was hard, once she was up we tried to sit her on a chair, she blamed her slippers, she blamed her rug, she blamed her old body.

The place was surrounded by old photos, curtains, little pieces of a past life. The place was surrounded with a sadness I cannot describe. We made sure she was fine, my husband kissed the old lady and we walked out. Quiet, we walked out. “Dios los bendiga,” I heard the old lady say. Or maybe not.

I turned to my husband and he was crying. My husband is happy all the time, laughing all the time, finding reasons to be in a good mood all the time. But he was crying and could not explain why. He didn´t need to, of course. I knew why.

Today, we were driving on Rio Grande Street, there was an ad outside that house. “Hospital Bed for Sale.” It was the same type of ad you see all over, everyone seems to have something for sale. But, this was different. Nothing good comes when you see that a hospital bed is for sale.

El feminismo fue, para mí, un instrumento de aprendizaje. Pero no escribo libros-manifiesto. Estoy siempre detrás de mis historias y de mis personajes.

Elena Ferrante Dixit

We answer: ‘We don’t want to work for you, madam. We don’t want to eat your soup or your bread. We are not hungry.’
She asks: ‘Then why are you begging?’
‘To find out what effect it has and to observe people’s reactions.’
She walks off, shouting: ‘Dirty little hooligans! And impertinent too!’
On our way home, we throw the apples, the biscuits, the chocolate, and the coins in the tall grass by the roadside.
It is impossible to throw away the stroking on our hair.

 

Ágota Kristóf’, The Notebook

How about this: first
I’ll jolt the gutter,
ache for its town
without mourning—
nothing is unfixable
in light of the inevitable.

Then I’ll taste the blood
you left on the letter opener.

You’re gone;

you’ve always been gone,

Canon of Disassembling an Iceberg, Kristi Garboushian 

I had a dream. Someone called me and told me “You are hired.” I was jumping happily until this person said, “so, you need to move here by the end of March.” No, I don´t mind, I certainly would not mind moving. But can you imagine, move to a different town in less than two weeks? In my mind, that of the dream, I made a list of eeeeeverything we have: books, shoes, clothes, books, camping stuff, bikes, Son, furniture, books, books. Cat.

I have lived in five different places since I moved to El Paso in 2010. Moving is not what I love the most, but when you dream about a job, moving is just that horrible thing that, at the end, works out just perfectly well.