The Waste Land

It’s being quite a strange week. I must be living in some parallel universe (maybe like an avatar of myself) and having my life broadcasted so I can watch myself helplessly doing nothing at all.
Strange as it sounds, which (by the way) it really does, it has a good explanation. Past tuesday I had three sebaceous cysts removed by surgery. It’s a simple operation, they make a small cut, remove the staff and put some stitches to help the wound scar. Problem arises when the fecking cysts are behind your ears and anesthesia doesn’t work as it’s supposed to. You can feel the scalpel working your skin; and that damn needle… whish, whish.
But this is not really too much, provided you are not pain-phobic like me myself (there are other ways of putting it, but I won’t even consider that vocabulary in my blog; not applied to me at least). Well, as I was saying, have you ever tried to sleep with stitches on both sides of your head? No? It’s high time you tried. Really, that’s an experience. In case you get to sleep, please, tell me how. Two days in a row with no sleep, apart from the usual quarrels with Morpheus.
At least, the pain is diminishing, I hope/beg/would kill for a good sleep tonight. Have some unneeded lorazepam? Here’s your opportunity to get rid of it. Get in touch…

Moving to more musical and less painful matters, could someone recommend something? I’ve just listened to Craig David’s new album and, geez, not that his first album was genius or something but, geez, this is soooo lousy (borrowing from Graham Norton). I’m now listening to The Go! Team, just out of curiosity, after my mate Marcos commented on it, following word from his Scottish friend Kellie. Sorry, people, they don’t really work on me, though they’re worth listening to. I think I’ll download a preemptive backup of Ms Dynamite’s new album, Judgement Day or of Floetry’s Flo’Ology. Back to urban, I guess. Had forgotten about that since UK garage died quite a while ago.

Some poetic relief to finish today. I’ve chosen one of my favs, from W.B. Yeats’s The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Hi, there! It’s been over a week and still no comments. I wonder if anyone is reading this. Ok, Ok, maybe if I told people the address… Anyway, this kind of explains the waste land title.
I told the last (and first and only so far) time I would explain why I chose to write in English when it’s not my mother tongue, but an adopted one. Thinking thoroughly about it I reached several conclusions, probably any/some of them will do as a good enough explanation.

First of all, as some of you know, I have a degree in English. It took five years of my life, which is really fine because it comprises five years. My final year I spent in Portstewart (Northern Ireland), where I attended the University of Ulster and got really good grades, including the highest marks in English among all Erasmus students. I love that, I have to admit it. I’ve always been good at being good. Here we have quite a good reason for my writing in English, it was my language of study (that is, of relating to the world of ideas, which I hold so dear) for five years.

Second, I am now preparing for the exams to become an English teacher. I will extend on this topic some day, just say this educative system is just producing assholes at an incredible rate. And, worst of all, any loser who knows his thing can get a post for life, independently of his ability to teach. In short, bad teachers (and the bastards are a majority) cannot be moved. Well, I got a bit carried away. Back to the point, the examinations are in perfect English, so I have to practice.

Third, and this may sound a bit… psychotic. I don’t know why (ok, I do) but I express myself better in this shakesperian language. When I say express myself I mean talking about myself. I feel I can explore myself (psychologically, wanking is a non-linguistic activity) better this way, because I am not attached to the vision (and let’s not forget that personal constructs are totally subject to the language we use) I have of my original self in Spanish. Thus, I can re-construct a new self without (all) the constraints of 28 years of experience. Even if I can’t (don’t want to) erase everything, I can choose more freely who and how I want to be. I even remember using this particular topic for a dissertation in the very last module of my degree.

And last but not least, my girlfriend threatened me in case I wrote it in English, because she won’t be able to read anything. Ok, ok, that’s not a reason, but she did and the world deserves to know. I love that sentence, if we somehow listed all we deserve to know according to different people, we’d make another Encyclopedia Britannica.

So, as this is an interactive blog, choose your own reason for the English question and comment at your leisure.

Two final remarks:
I am now listening to the soundtrack to Kikujiro no natsu (Kikujiro’s Summer, El verano de Kikujiro) for the first time. It’s deliciously delicate, those strings are fantastic, a pleasure to my poor and uneducated ears.

And for your lazy eyes, some T.S. Eliot poetry, the first lines of “The Waste Land”:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.