Cuando se metió en la casa de su infancia fue poco a poco desempolvando los recuerdos de una familia y un pueblo con mucha vida y juventud. Una familia entre otras muchas familias. Una infancia entre otras muchas infancias compartidas en juegos, en aventuras, en alardes de imaginación. Había escuela, y los domingos la mujer del Reverendo Cullspy les daba grandes trozos de brownies cuando respondían las preguntas sobre la Biblia correctamente. Había vida. Comunidad la necesaria. Pero todo eso quedaba en un pasado remoto cuando las minas de hierro todavía funcionaban. Ahora el pueblo y él acabarían languideciendo juntos.
COMING BACK TO TOWN
ResponderEliminarStrange. Odd. You never know how a person can change in so many years. One doesn't understand how much one has changed himself in all these years either. Changes have taken place, but what is the essence of all those changes? Free-floating abstractions hover our minds all the time, but unless one is willing to face the sheer facts of life as facts that touch our lives one way or other; our abstractions are none other than worthless free-floating illusions with no real meaning whatsoever. They deserve to be erradicated, erased, blot out. Better to face life as it is than imagining it as it should be. But that lesson comes late in life. And when we realize we've been cheated most of our lives, then something happens, something wonderful happens: real life is much more interesting and mysterious than all those aimless wondering phantoms which haunted the mind for so long. Hoping for what's real regardless its silence and distance.
CONVERSACIONES PENDIENTES
ResponderEliminarHabía mucha conversaciones pendientes. Quería tener tiempo para hablar de lo divino y de lo humano. De lo divino con el Reverendo Cullspy y de lo humano con la madame Sherry Murmann. Buscaría tiempo. Había recuerdos de infancia y de juventud que buscaba aclarar. Incógnitas que despejar de alguna manera. Aunque hay incógnitas que jamás se pueden aclarar y hay que dejarlas pervivir en ese inconsciente inabarcable, equívoco, escurridizo, misterioso; muchas veces inhumano. Dejarlo ser. La mujer del Reverendo, Mary Garland, siempre acababa dando brownies a todos los chicos por malas que fueran sus respuestas en aquella escuela dominical. Era una mujer bondadosa. Es decir: una de esas personas donde todo acaba siendo comprendido en términos de compasión por la congénita debilidad de la naturaleza humana, pero sin llegar a negar la efectividad de conculcarnos un imperativo categórico de deber hacia la vida y los demás: un cierto autocontrol moral necesario para nunca perderse en un mundo peligroso. Todas sus clases bíblicas iban enfocadas en esa dirección.
Sherry Murmann también sabría hablarle de los subterfugios del deseo.
THE DAY PASTOR CULLSPY BECAME A TRUE BELIEVER
ResponderEliminarReverend Cullspy started being a believer when he went through the process of abandoning all his previous beliefs. One day he realized he didn't have any proofs for any of his articles of faith and so he tried to disengage himself from such a rigamarole, but to no avail. They were deep entrenched into his being and as much as reason pulled to one side, faith pulled even stronger to the other. The result was a deep crisis and he almost went mad. But one day when he woke up a spark enlightened his soul with a solution. It was like the voice of a father talking to his child: “Be true to yourself. Don’t cheat yourself. All those beliefs of yours are there for a reason, but they won’t disappear unless you have the strength and courage to explore them. They could end up giving out, but if they won’t give out and persist, then be sure it's because those beliefs respond to the depths of your being. All your efforts to erase them won’t succeed. You’ll be reaching an ideal form of your experience and that is quite significant!
Should you get rid of those ideal forms or archetypes or you'd rather allow them to energize your life at the same time they act as landmarks within the unconscious domains of your personal experience? And the test won’t be difficult to apply: if those archetypes increase your joy for life and instill love and compassion for your fellow men, then you’ll be on the right path. If the opposite, then pray to disengage yourself from such an evil entrapment.”
That day he got up feeling a new person.
THE CHRISTIAN MATERIALISM OF REVEREND CULLSPY
ResponderEliminarPastor Cullspy knew that we act the way we're compelled to act. In other words, we are what we are because meaning has to do with our deep affections and our deep affections are the confluence of many things which are unconscious to us, but nevertheless they conform our egos in ways we can't transcend because this is what we are and period. Wow!
Another way to put it would be: the essence of our being comes from our body energy and that is what it is.
Being true to ourselves, therefore, it's a question of being able to attune with our affections in a productive way; but in order to do that our egos must go beyond any pretense, any simulation, any fake appearance, any fraud. To take ourselves at face value is the essential step of a real Christian conversion. It's the recognition of our basic material constitution (materiality), and that for a good calvinist means the miracle of grace. That full realization of our materiality isn't possible from the inmanence of our egos. Grace. Revelation is needed. Trascendence has to intervene into inmanence. Thus, once the miracle of conversion has taken place, then true ethics and morality begins.
And conversely: when we struggle to be what we are not, then appearance and simulation take hold of our lives and evil does its work under the guise of pretense, sentimentalism, role play, fraud, a con person in the act. Deep down there in our lives there is a full distrust of ourselves and towards our fellow men.
Evil.
PASTOR CULLSPY THINKS ABOUT EVIL
ResponderEliminarMorals. Morality. Ethics. It's not a question of freely choosing to be one way or other. It's not so easy. Choosing implies a place from where to choose, but interesting enough there's not such a place as place. The point from where to choose freely and unconditionally receds into infinity. We can't never find the stillnes from where to take a firm and absolute stand. All our choosing, our elections, are always done from provisional points in time/space, from an ever-changing, a never-stop, always desplacing "place". And that "place" is within the constitution of our body, and our body is within the social milieu in which we live. We deal with ourselves and with the world at large within interpretation, within an already given language or codification. Our conscious life can take place within certain constrictions, but the infinitude of the universe is always there revolving around us; acting as an unconsciousness in the background. Within and outside. Our body energy/afections and our interpretations/codifications are permantly interplaying to keep a balance, a sense of meaningful existence.
Not all the bodies (not everybody)are the same; not all the energies and affections can express themselves in the same way. Not everybody has the same character structure (borrowing from Erich Fromm). Our peculiar and singular "human nature" can be endowed with a more or less pliable or refractory intensity of being--genetic code, inheritance--, and that can determine the amount of creativity or destruction, of our performing of evil and good we'd end up bringing to the world.
Nobody considers himself/herself being basically harmful to life. We're all good people who do their best. We feel we're always in the right regardless our mistakes. However, the problema of evil touches everyone at one time or other and everything is highly equivocal in our lives depending on the moment and circunstances. It goes beyond politics, ideology or moral codes. It also goes beyond religión.
Paul talks about this in the New Testament. The Bible touches the problema of evil in a way we should consider.
CONVERSACIONES TOMANDO CAFÉ
ResponderEliminarFui tomando apuntes de las largas conversaciones con el Reverendo. Todas las mañanas, mientras su mujer languidecía en la silla de ruedas totalmente ausente de la vida, el Reverendo y yo hablábamos de hasta dónde se puede llevar el pensamiento cristiano por la vía y la senda del mayor realismo posible. Una cosa eran las ideas y otra la vida del día a día con sus complejidades, sus rutinas, sus hartazgos, sus desgastes; o también, sus sorpresas, sus inesperados cambios de rumbo, sus dramáticos vaivenes. Si el cristianismo no era capaz de incorporar esas ambigüedades y contradicciones del vivir; o esas ambivalencias morales de las que nadie escapa; o esas dudas donde todo queda en suspensión y uno puede gritar sin freno alguno: "¡A la mierda todo!" (Quizás porque al final la vida ni es luz ni tinieblas, ni bueno y malo o blanco y negro y todo se mezcla de una manera incoherente muchas veces).
La teología del Reverendo tenía un regusto que me atraía. Resultaba extremadamente imaginativa y libre. La imaginación y razón humana tratando de visualizar esa posibilidad de Dios en una existencia tan complicada. Había algo de razonamiento matemático en su teología: necesidad de clarificaciones, de incógnitas a despejar; de explicaciones claras en lo posible. Pero al mismo tiempo estaban lo abismos de lo desconocido, de lo irreal, de las oscuridades cósmicas. Intrigante. Resultaba intrigante y la horas nos pasaban sin darnos cuenta mientras Mary Garland vivía en un absoluto de inconsciencia.
WHY IS LIFE SO DIFFICULT?
ResponderEliminarDissonance. There's radical dissonance when we try to convey our thoughts. Not everybody works in the same frecuency. Frecuencies diverge in amazing ways. We've been made to believe we're all equal and therefore we share a common humanity, but in practice when we phrase our thoughts and experience not everybody can grasp what we really mean. The riddle starts right there in our self, because the "what" (or the "it") of what we're trying to convey doesn't yield itself as a clear cut thing/object we can delimit and define. And at the same time we must "communicate" with each other in order to function as normal human beings. Meaning has to be negociated if we want to be accepted by others; to being able to live as social beings. But in what terms are we supposed to negociate our communication; our "whats" and "its"? This is the gist of the matter. Language and discourse come into play as intercommunication; but the rules of the game of intercommunication are up to the referential meaning that functions within communities of speakers. Communities. Territories. Subjective communities of believers, or the circunscribed universe of meaning within ideologies/parties/organizations/institutions/academic diciplines/science; or the private languages and dialects of distinct social sub-groups/sects/gangs/age/levels of education, and so on.
There many different frequencies and levels of communication of meaning, and one has to be careful where he is speaking and to whom. It's easy to know what to say or not to say when living in a dictatorship or when one is talking or working in a certain context. However, it's not so easy to negociate meaning with people in general; even people you know and you think you are safely communicating--it works the other way around)--because we suppose we share assumed affinities. It's hard to know sometimes what individuals interpret when one tries to convey something. There are many surprises in store when friends, wives, husbands, or work peers suddenly and unexpectedly show signs of discontent or even explode with accumulated anger since s/he'd never really understood what one thought it was well understood.
Dissonance is there all the time because there's never the possibility of being real transparent, or because your apparent transparency could be understood as a threat or arrogance by others who don't share your affections/interests/motivation.
Or what is even worse: we're forced many times to come to terms, to negociate, not because there's ressonance or empathy deep down there in our "what" or "it", but to avoid complications we'd rather opt for simulation, pretense, fake; until the relationship becomes unbearable.
MADAM MURMANN
ResponderEliminarLa madame Sherry Murmann no sabia asentar su voluminoso cuerpo en el sillón de cuero ajado por los años. Echó un tiempo para sentirse realmente cómoda. Se me quedó mirando con ojos de madre bonachona. Por su local habían pasado todo tipo de personas y todas habían sido servidas con profesionalidad. Nunca había tenido ninguna queja y sí muchos regalos de gente que se sentía muy agradecida por los servicios del Gallo Burlón. En su palacio del placer se habían iniciado muchos jóvenes de muchas millas a la redonda. Muchos hombres aburridos con sus matrimonios lograban solazarse de vez en cuando con alguna mujer de carnes apropiadas a sus libidinosas y oscuras fantasías. Respetables hombres de la vida de Alta Town y otras poblaciones cercanas sabían entrar por la discreta puerta trasera disimulada por un enramaje y sombras oportunas
MADAME MURMANN (II)
ResponderEliminarSi las iglesias cuidaban del alma y de lo incorpóreo, el templo de Sherry cuidaba del cuerpo y sus pasiones. Para ello había que ofrecer un espacio libre de interferencias y de prejuicios morales. Una especie de oasis exclusivamente para un cuerpo por un tiempo marcado por una tarifa y un intercambio mercantil donde
el valor del dinero compraba milagrosamente el placer y descarga de flujos e intensidades confusas, de aguas estancadas, de imaginaciones juveniles ansiosas de aventuras perfectamente prohibidas. O también la pulsión del dominio o el ejercicio de una soberanía siempre resbaladiza. Quizás también el inseguro placer de masculinidades marcadas por las carencias y los fracasos; o quien sabe si el goce que produce la clandestina subversión o la sobreabundancia de una libido abocada a la lujuria sin freno y sin remedio. Quién sabe. Madame Murmann procuraba con buen ojo de empresaria que todo ello tuviera su adecuado y seguro escenario.
"Hay una cosa que te quiero decir, Bitt,--me dijo con la mirada fija y seria--la vida es complicada para todo el mundo y nadie logra saber realmente lo que hay dentro de cada uno. Cuanto más rufián y más cabrón se es, más mierda tratamos de ocultar, más frio hay en esas puñeteras cavernas del alma. Si unos somos fuego, otros somos glaciares y tundras. Otros tienen miedo al mismo hecho de vivir. Sólo los fríos y los cínicos de corazón logramos controlar la situación. Sabemos adaptarnos con la mayor astucia. Sabemos mucho de las oscuras artes de la manipulación. Y eso ocurre en todos los negocios serios, en todas las empresas tanto materiales como espirituales, amigo Bitt.
Si bien es verdad que nunca dejé de pagar mis impuestos, también es verdad que siempre supe cubrirme las espaldas con la amistades y los sobornos adecuados. Mis chicas eran camareras decentes que servían sus copas a los honrados clientes, unas veces en la barra o en las mesas, pero otras veces lo hacían en espacios más discretos, más íntimos. Mi negocio era muy profesional y la satisfacción del cliente era lo primero sin importarme para nada los escrúpulos y falta de escrúpulos de cada uno. Allá cada uno con su vida mientras tratasen con dignidad a mis camareras. Mis chicas eran contratadas en las mejores ciudades del país y como premio a sus servicios recibían buena propinas. Y eso era todo. Muchos quisieron hundir mi negocio, pero jamás pudieron probar nada sustancial. Un buen salón de entretenimiento ha de construir su muro de poder para sobrevivir y para ello habíamos de contar con la complicidad de la ley y el orden. Faltaría más."
WITHOUT APOLOGIES
ResponderEliminarI often spend time walking around town. I keep visiting all those places that bring old memories, but most of those sites were abandoned a long time ago. I feel a great relief at the realization of being away from my serious obligations in life. Now I'm free to roam about any nooks or creases in the universe without having to stay put at any mandatory given place. At times the most inconspicuous things in life once freed from overused perceptions suddenly reveal those past refreshing experiences from my childhood which I thought they were buried forever. The mystery is there and expectant. Ready for whoever breaks free. Alta Town is mine to recreate any way I want. It'll become my ghost town full of my own phantoms. Sheriff Morton is keeping an eye on me walking awkwardly at a distance. He's lost in a town where law and order no longer depend on him. He doesn't know what to do with his worn out life. It isn't hard to picture Mary Garland staring at meaningless forms. Sheer impressions with no sense.
Time to go back home. It's time to wander and wonder without apologies.