21 / SIR ALGERNON PARSLEY

Sir Algernon Parsley, well known in learned circles for his valiant contributions to postmodern semiotic epistemology, after having worked on his acclaimed but controversial essay Towards the profound roots of ancient Celtic hermeneutic, was charged by  EUPHORIA (European Union’s Popular and Historical Operation for Reeducation of Identity Agency) to undertake  anthropological research in order to uncover the core of semantic intercultural symbols where, possibly, the European idiosyncrasy may be found. Parsley worked on this ambitious project assiduously, devoutly, compulsively. A good example of this execution (in more than one sense) is the English adaptation of the famous Rafael de León’s Ojos verdes.

On the bawdyhouse’s doorjamb she leant,

Gazing at the opening of the night of May
Men passed by and she smiled at them
Till I stopped my horse at her doorway

“Honey, give me a light and I'll give you this flower” 

"Come and take it, so my lips will give you fire"

I dismounted to glance closer at her face 
and those eyes, to me, were bright stars of May

 Those green eyes, green as basil is green
 Green as green wheat, green as lemon is
Those Green eyes, green with dagger's light 
They are deeply stuck in my very heart
To me, there are no more suns, no moon nor stars,
It’s only those eyes that make me feel alive

Those green eyes, green as basil is green

We saw the morning breaking from the room
The Vela Tower announced the dawn
You left my arms in the clear daybreak
And in my mouth, your cinnamon and mint taste

“Honey, I want to give you money for a new dress”
“You’ve done your bit for me, I need no more”
So, I went away fast as the wind, riding my horse

And, never after, have I lived such a beautiful night

Wonderful version in this magic copla-flamenco- jazzy way by Miguel Poveda.

20 / DIVINE DINAH

Do you like jazz? Do you like jazz singers? Do you like those wonderful voices, true sources of inspiration and magic? I love then all, from Bessie Smith to Diana Krall. However, my favorite one is, without a doubt, Dinah Washington. Don’t ask me why.

Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones (August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963), was an American blues, R&Band jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues". She is a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

19 / ENOUGH (fine-tuning our writing 2)

It was very early in the morning and Martin was alone. Still in bed, hands under his head, he felt inevitably awake. “Thoughts roam around unsuspected places when sleep flyes away” he murmured when he realized he was missing the bells. The bells of the alarm clock, the bells in the school, the bells of the church, all those damned bells he had hated through his whole life, resounded now in his mind like echoes of joyful. That was an unexpected feeling since he certainly went into retirement as a prisoner reaches his release. Fed up of schedules, timetables, bosses, at last, fed up of people in general and particularly one by one, retirement appeared to his mind as a new brilliant world  full of vague promises of liberty, revived passions, and tranquility of the soul. But that morning had broken odd and his living apart paradise seemed, under the first pale sun lights, a huge amount of empty time.  There was a worm growing inside Martin. There was a worm scratching deep, in the soft thing. “Enough!” he exclaimed, “enough!”

The man jumped out of the bed, dressed up and made some tea, like a captain commanding his soldiers, with discipline and martial accuracy. Then, being the universe controlled again, took a book and started to read by the bedroom window. Morning seemed perfectly calm and quiet except for the birds singing outside, in the garden, mainly in the great old elm, which Martin’s great grandfather had planted according to the family record. That old tree had had a life longer than all of them. On the one hand, that great tree, on the other hand, those little lives, with their little business, insignificant troubles, pusillanimous joeys and sadness, little deaths and births.  All of them are the same as those birds which stirred up the leaves. “A huge amount of useless efforts” thought the worm. And Martin: “enough, enough!”

He closed his eyes and, suddenly, there was such a deep silence that Martin was affected. He looked again through the window and discovered a boy under the tree. He surprised he didn’t noticed him before, since the vision was totally out of the context. The boy was there, deeply concentrated, reading a book, as it was his habitual place of reading, a corner of his own garden. After a while looking at the boy but still not very sure about the reality of his vision, Martin decided to creep downstairs and, carefully, he opened the glass door onto de garden. He paced to the tree. “It seems a good book, doesn’t it?” For the first time, the boy looked away from the pages and, smiling in a shy but charming way, said: “It is the book of my life”.

Astonish, Martin looked at the boy for a long time while the boy got back to his book. He didn’t understand anything. Martin thought (or was the worm?) that that boy could be himself, or his father, or his grandfather many years before. “So, this is thing, the old wheel of eternal return start a new, the long series of little lives under the tree never end” And he thought (or the worm) that all the business under the tree are nothing but a huge amount of empty time. “ENOUGH!” shouted Martin. And the boy, suddenly, disappeared.

18 / QUADROPHENIA AND THE BROKEN DREAMS

Sometimes dreams make their travel like a Stone thrown in the beach. Firstly, they gain height in a fast, brilliant flight. Then, from the top of some vague goal, inevitably, they fall down even faster than they rose before. That fatal way is traced not only by personal dreams but by time’s dreams.  The counterculture spread out Europe and America in the 1950’-1960’ in the form of the beat generation and the hippy movement. It was a big stone’s travel, full of a huge amount of new ideas, new aesthetic conceptions, critical thinking, political activism and, of course, dreams. The dream of a new identity for human being beyond borders and flags, the dream of a new better world of freedom and equality, the dream of living in peace…

The dreams turned into fashions, devoured by the establishment. The stone fell down and sank in the sea, where every broken dream ends. 

I know for sure that Pete Townshend didn’t want to do a historic metaphor with his Quadrophenia, but in fact, it is. Quadrophenia is one of the so called rock Operas. In a strong and symphonic conception of rock, this work was recorded by The Who in 1973.   Later, in 1979, became the sound track of a film, directed by Franc Roddan and with Sting as Ace Face.  You can watch Quadrophenia on TV tonight (La 2). 

17 / Oliver Twist

I have to confess that one of my favorite pleasures is – and it has ever been from my early years- to listen to someone who read aloud a book, specially,  while I am in bed or reclined in a sofa. In this case, the one who read is a cold machine but, you know, in this rushed times, persuading some human reader to do this for you became quite hard. So, I (and you) can resign myself with the following thing:

And now the corny and sickly sweet but delighlful Oliver that everybody knows

16/ WDL

Look at this fantastic site     www.wdl.org

The World digital library has stated that its mission is to promote international and intercultural understanding, expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences, and to build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and among countries. It aims to expand non-English and non-western content on the Internet, and contribute to scholarly research. 

It contains maps, texts, photos, recordings and films of all time and explainations of each of these jewels and cultural relics of all libraries of the world in seven languages.

 The project has been coordinated by Abdelaziz Abid, and UNESCO and 32 countries have participated in its confection. Among the ancient documents are some pre-Columbian codexes, thanks to the contribution of Mexico, and the first map of America, drawn by Diego Gutiérrez for the King of Spain in 1562, explained Abid. The treasures include the Hyakumanto Darani, a Japanese document published in year 764 and considered the first printed text of history;  works of Arab scientists which show the mystery of algebra; bones used as oracles; the Gutenberg’s Bible…

ENJOY IT!

15 / (THIS ISN'T) CHARLES DICKENS

(THIS IS NOT) DAVID COPERFIELD

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

According to these fateful expectations and as an appropriate portrayal, my general anatomy was developing, throughout the years of my childhood, a mystical gloomy air, fairly emphasized by the deep look of my dark eyes. When I was old enough to become conscious of my appearance, little could be done. My back had already grown a bit arched and my chest sunken; my head tend to be bowed and my hands hidden in the trousers-pockets; and all of myself was held up by long thin legs which insisted on creeping most of the time to my mother’s opinion, as she often expressed in her blunt manners: “damn boy!, do you want to kill me in a fright?”

Had those old hags failed in one of their ominous predictions, I would have consider myself lucky. However, the truth is that I have been carrying the weight of the questionable ability to get on well with ghosts, goblins, phantoms and other spectral creatures through my entire life. Being surrounded by this unusual company, you, kind reader, could easily imagine that my everyday matters get worse and worse. Never can I enjoy a single moment of tranquility and relax. Never can I follow the course of a simple conversation without some disgusting ectoplasm interrupting me.

A few years ago, I decided to turn the necessity into virtue founding a business on spiritual contacts. I prepared a welcoming office to receive my clients who were eager to ask or be answered by their loved deceased. But contacting with the right ghost and making him or her to behave properly was almost impossible, due to the typical essence of spirits. Obviously, they don’t care about human wishes, questions or anguishes.  When I invoked one of them, usually, a crowd of bored floating souls came to the meeting with their animated talk, silly requirements or sour discussions. Sometimes, the correct one answered my call, but most of the times, he or she had forgotten my client, or the things which my client was worried about. Often, a joker ghost, just to enjoy himself for a while, pretended to be the one I was waiting for, confounding me till desperation.  

Those awful spectral games finished with my business and my nerves. At last, my rare, and I have to confess, sometimes violent behavior during my spiritualism séances, caused my forced confinement in this mental hospital where I have been living until now. If living could mean this kind of existence. Here, time passes slowly in the company of mad men, who pretend to be Mozart, and the ghost of Mozart, who has forgotten who is who.