mascarillas

 "They were days fording that cauterized terrain. The boy had found some crayons and painted his facemask with fangs and he trudged on uncomplaining."

Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006)

(nostalgia for 2008, mascaras del Mueso Rafael Coronel)

Luis Sepúlveda, 1949-2020

 Luis Sepúlveda;

October 4, 1949 (Ovalle, Chile)—

April 16, 2020 (Oviedo, Spain)

“That was why he had to go away from time to time: as they [the Shuar] explained to him, it was good for him not to be one of them. They wanted to see him, have him with them, but also wanted to feel his absence, the sadness of being unable to talk to him, and the joy in their hearts when they saw him again.”

“Por esa razón debía marcharse cada cierto tiempo, porque--le explicaban--era bueno que no fuera uno de ellos. Deseaban verlo, tenerlo, y también deseaban sentir su ausencia, la tristeza de no poder hablarle, y el vuelco jubiloso en el corazón al verle aparecer de nuevo.”

The Old Man who Read Love Stories / 

Un viejo que leía novelas de amor (1989)

Dickinsonday 4: (591)

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -


also: "A lesson in self-isolation from 'the queen of quarantine'"

The Plague Ravages the City / La peste azota a los mexicas

“While the Spaniards were in Tlaxcala, a great plague broke out here in Tenochtitlan. It began to spread during the thirteenth month and lasted for seventy days, striking every where in the city and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot.

“The illness was so dreadful that no one could walk or move. The sick were so utterly helpless that they could only lie on their beds like corpses, unable to move their limbs or even their heads. They could not lie face down or roll from one side to the other. If they did move their bodies, they screamed with pain.

“A great many died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their beds.

“Some people came down with a milder form of the disease; they suffered less than the others and made a good recovery. But they could not escape entirely. Their looks were ravaged, for wherever a sore broke out, it gouged an ugly pockmark in the skin. And a few of the survivors were left completely blind.

“The first cases were reported in Cuatlan. By the time the danger was recognized, the plague was so well established that nothing could halt it, and eventually it spread all the way to Chalco. Then its virulence diminished considerably, though there were isolated cases for many months after. The first victims were stricken during the fiesta of Teotlecco and the faces of our warriors were not clean and free of sores until the fiesta of Panquetzaliztli.”

“Cuando se fueron los españoles de México y aún no se preparaban los españoles contra nosotros, primero se difundió entre nosotros una gran peste, una enfermedad general. Comenzó en Tepeílhuitl. Sobre nosotros se extendió: gran destruidora de gente. Algunos bien los cubrió, por todas partes de su cuerpo se extendió.

“En la cara, en la cabeza, en el pecho. Era muy destructora enfermedad. Muchas gentes murieron de ella. Ya nadie podía andar, no más estaban acostados, tendidos en su cama. No podía nadie moverse, no podía volver el cuello, no podía hacer movimientos de cuerpo; no podía acostarse cara abajo, ni acostarse sobre la espalda, ni moverse de un lado a otro. Y cuando se movían algo, daban de gritos. A muchos dio la muerte la pegajosa, apelmazada, dura enfermedad de granos.

“Muchos murieron de ella, pero muchos solamente de hambre murieron: hubo muertos por el hambre: ya nadie tenía cuidado de nadie, nadie de otros se preocupaba.

“A algunos les prendieron los granos de lejos: esos no mucho sufrieron, no murieron muchos de eso.

“Pero a muchos con esto se les echó a perder la cara, quedaron cacarañados, quedaron cacarizos. Unos quedaron ciegos, perdieron la vista.

“El tiempo que estuvo en fuerza esta peste duró sesenta días, sesenta días funestos. Comenzó en Cuatlan: cuando se dieron cuenta, estaba bien desarrollada. Hacia Chalco se fue la peste. Y con esto mucho amenguó, pero no cesó del todo.  Vino a establecerse en la fiesta de Teotleco y vino a tener su término en la fiesta de Panquetzaliztli. Fue cuando quedaron limpios de la cara los guerreros mexicanos.”

from The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico / Vision de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista

(Miguel León-Portilla)

related: the plague in Athens

Dickinsonday 3: (844)

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.

Dickinsonday 2: (202)

“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!

"God is a virus."

"God is everything, then. God is a virus. Believe that, when you get a cold. God is an ant. Believe that, too, for driver ants are possessed, collectively, of the size and influence of a Biblical plague.
. . .
"I was boggled by the array of creatures equipped to take root upon a human body. I'm boggled still, but with a finer appreciation for the partnership. Back then I was still a bit appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microbes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting for the dollies. We and our vermin all blossomed together.
. . .
"Five million years is a long partnership. If you could for a moment rise up out of your own beloved skin and appraise ant, human, and virus as equally resourceful beings, you might admire the accord they have all struck.
. . .
"Back in your skin, of course, you'll shriek for a cure. But remember: air travel, roads, cities, prostitution, the congregation of people for efficient commerce-these are gifts of godspeed to the virus."

--Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

Dickinsonday 1: (236)

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.


--Emily Dickinson, 1864

Virus (2000)

Werner, Hanksville

Werner, Hanksville from Vimeo.

By now, we have forgotten what we thought we came for

But here, in the high desert, what we find is a boneyard, of sorts
A museum of curiosities. A wunderkammern, so to speak.

Articulated and frozen in arc-welded postures
Lovingly, painstakingly static.
Who has made all this?
Lo and behold, here, just as in our own, fleshy menagerie,
We find God, as it were, away on business
Having left us with the proverbial watch on the heath.

In her place, quasi-religious aphorisms
Ranging from word salads of self-actualization slogans, to scriptural runes, mystical cosmovisions
And laminated against the ravages of weather and time
They dangle, as though to say
“this is the thing, implacably silent
but this is what it would speak to you
were it on a cosmic book tour
or propped up in front of a cannabis dispensary.”

All these Devonian lizards, crocodilians, avian reptiles, coelacanths
Some of our first vertebrate ancestors.

Across the street, their descendants now, we congregate
Sunburned and squinting
At Stan’s Burger Shack
We unrack hoses and refill the tanks
Of extended-cab pickup trucks
Harnessed to these are the pleasure boats, glittering with pearlescent finishes
Like that of bowling balls, or flame decals in mother-of-toiletseat resin inlay.

Standing in the afternoon daylight, pump running
With the very essence of ancient forests and sea beds
Distilled and decanted over millions of years
We pause in these fumes of petroculture oblivion.

Hose still running, the dials counting up, and higher up
We order, for the road, a pistachio malted milkshake.

But, something whispers, not entirely forgotten:
These grimacing specters of primer and rust
Reclaimed wreckage and the detritus of our road-world.
This road that now calls us onward to some place
We don’t know, we have never seen.

"You Can't Blame the Youth; You Can't Fool the Youth"

You can't blame the youth
You can't fool the youth
You can't blame the youth
(Of today)
You can't fool the youth

You're teachin' youths to learn in school
That cow jump over moon
You're teachin' youths to learn in school
That the dish ran away with spoon

So you can't blame the youths
(When they don't learn)
You can't fool the youths
(Can't fool the youth)
You can't blame the youth
(Of today)
You can't fool the youth

You teach the youth about Christopher Columbus
And you said he was a very great man
You teach the youth about Marco Polo
And you said he was a very great man

You teach the youth about the pirate Hawkins
And you said he was a very great man
You teach the youth about the pirate Morgan
And you said he was a very great man

So you can't blame the youths
(Of today)
You can't fool the youths
You can't blame the youths
You can't fool the youths

All these great men were doin'
Robbin', rapin', kidnappin' and killin'
So called great men were doin'
Robbin', rapin', kidnappin'

So you can't blame the youths
You can't fool the youths
You can't blame the youth
(None at all)
You can't fool the youth

When every Christmas come
You buy the youth a pretty toy gun
When every Christmas come
You buy the youth a fancy toy gun

So you can't blame the youth
You can't fool the youths
You can't blame the youth
You can't fool the youths

But what was hidden from the wise and the prudent
Is now revealed to the babes and the sucklin's
What was hidden from the wise and the prudent
Now revealed to the babes and the sucklin'

Lord, call upon the youth
'Cause He know the youth is strong
Jah, Jah, call upon the youths
'Cause He know the youth is strong

So you can't blame the youth
You can't fool the youth
You can't blame the youth
(Save the children)
You can't fool the youth

Don't blame them, not their fault

Peter Tosh (1977)

https://globalclimatestrike.net/

https://globalclimatestrike.net/

The Fly Who Dreamed He Was an Eagle

Once upon a time there was a Fly who nightly dreamed that he was an Eagle and that he found himself flying over the Alps and the Andes. The first moments of the experience always made him deliriously happy; but after a time he would begin to feel uneasy, as he found the wings too long, the body too heavy, the beak too hard, and the claws too strong. Indeed, all this great apparatus made it difficult to settle comfortably on rich cakes or people’s turds, or to do a conscientious job of bumping against the windows of his room. The fact was he really didn’t like great heights or open spaces at all.

But whenever he awoke he would deeply regret that he wasn’t an Eagle who could soar over mountains, and was enormously sad about being a Fly—and this accounted for all the nervous flitting about and spinning and buzzing, before he could slowly settle his head onto his pillow.

Augusto Monterroso 1969

La oveja negra y demás fábulas/The Black Sheep and Other Fables, translated by Walter Bradbury

Faith and the Mountains

At first, faith moved mountains only as a last resort, when it was absolutely necessary, and so the landscape remained the same over the millennia. But once faith started propagating itself among people, some found it amusing to think about moving mountains, and soon the mountains did nothing else but change places, each time making it a little more difficult to find one in the same place you had left it last night; obviously this created more problems than it solved. The good people decided then to abandon faith; so nowadays the mountains remain (by and large) in the same spot. When the roadway falls in and drivers die in the collapse, it means someone, far away or quite close by, felt a light glimmer of faith.

Augusto Monterroso 1969

La oveja negra y demás fábulas/The Black Sheep and Other Fables, translated by Walter Bradbury