domingo, agosto 30, 2009

jueves, julio 23, 2009

The last photogram

Dilapidation processes are organized yieldings.
Emily Dickinson, 997

Luisa Gonzalez

“ The windowpanes shatters and an angel with splintered wings appears. He remains weightless for a while, and then he rises up gazing at the small town, its walls, further on from the castle, made of mist and snow. The mountains and the smoking volcano lay far away. A murky ocean surrounds everything. There’s a fire far, far away.
Slowly he descends
When the militia chased me away from everywhere, I was outcast to my brother’s chemists’ shop. One day Mario Cicarrelli turned up at the shop, a Canon perfume representative, before that, a university professor.
There’s Mario Ciccarelli, from Canon – I told my brother Roberto , who was snooping from the laboratory back room.
Roberto came up to the counter to greet the ex professor and ex journalist. They chatted for a while about politics in a casual way while Ciccarelly sharpened his pencil to take note of the order.
Roberto reminded him about the unflattering press release he had written. Cicarelli made fun of him saying that Roberto was supporting the Peronist right wing out of mental confusion.
Mario Ciccarelli had been very happy during university times, his intelligence surrounded him like a halo, he showed it off in bars where he truly held his chair but this paradise was short lived, just one year, hell became loose, false police groups would visit us with chains, iron bars and threats. That was the time when lecturers were discouraged with bombs that would explode at their doors.
After Perón’s death, breakdown speeded up. Isabel handed the fury of power onto Lopez Rega, the necromancer. He was granted an open way for murdering opponents to government from his Argentinian Anticommunist Alliance.
With Videla’s coup in March 1976, evil grew on, most of the lecturers and professors landed in different universities in Latin America and Europe but Mario stayed on devoted to developing that grey state of matters which we may call inner exile, that is, going unnoticed, talking as little as possible about politics and trying to keep revolutionary notions in some deep brain repository to survive.
When democracy came back, we returned to University like shadows, Mario recovered his chair but like a ghost.
Many of those who returned, bright revolutionaries in their days, were selling their ideological transvestism to political realism stepping on each other’s feet – as in super stores sales- to see who would get first to become “researchers” in Cepal, Oea, Unicef, Ford Foundation and other paying acronyms. From that standpoint they produced scores of toothless briefs – precision abandoned- reporting the obvious: Poverty; children’s poverty, education poverty, extreme illiteracy, crime and Latin America’s dependency on EEUU. With their papers and briefs condoned by their social democrat bosses and a cheque on its way, they went home to watch their favourite cable television program in their slippers, sprawling on their settees.
Mario chose to remain , wrapped in his gruesome jokes, in his pathetic Althusser and his film project: “Lencinas’ murder” in his mind.
From his chair in Sociology, Mario was becoming more of a bore and less of a charmer. He basked in the sun in the University swimming pool. He looked like an old and tired lion, lurking for his prey. When he found an adequate one, the predator stood up and launched his attack using his wit.
More seldom than often he would return, his prey in his claws to last him for a while, but most of the times he would suffer the brunt of being reckoned as a dirty old man, slobbering, pathetic.
His teaching became disastrous, his vocation focussed on consulting hours with girls not above 24, he would invite them for coffee in the centre and he would single out the one who went along with his chatting.
I learnt about what had happened to Mario through an offhand comment from a friend who assumed I knew. Mario suffered from Parkinson which affected his winsome ways.
He seldom left his house. Silane was among the few friends who visited him. He never saw a photogram of his alleged film except for drafts of a story board sketched on paper napkins from bars.
-He would tell me about a scene – Silanes said –I am game to spin a yarn and I would tell him to include one thing or another and we would engage in a visionary chat for three or four hours absolutely out of touch with surrounding reality (surrounding is a shitty word) I mean prevailing ( no, not this one either) , the reality of others, this is exactly what happened.
Silanes was one of the few people who noticed how ghostly Mario had become, how something was missing there. On the other hand Mario dreaded having his spirited away condition discovered; this is why he kept to his inner exile: walking the same streets, wearing the same face and smile, they didn’t know he was a ghost.
In the night of 18th November, Mario, like Peter Pan and having told no one, flies off from his window. He hasn’t been whisked away by the light holes some books talk about. He’s wearing his spectacles, his hair, his short sleeved shirts even in winter; in those moccasins of his with the silver buckles. There he is with his briefcase, his brown trousers, their bottoms tattered. Nobody can welcome him because Mario doesn’t know nothingness doesn’t exist.

lunes, marzo 23, 2009

Carta de amigos de cahuinadencul

Hola amigos de las plantitas hermosas!!! El miercoles pasado despues de enviar el boletin de novedades y mientras pintaba mi Temazcal, llego uno de los momentos que siempre estuvimos esperando, un allanamiento policial en nuestra casa y en nuestras oficinas, procedimiento en el cual fui detenido junto a las dos personas que nos ayudan.
Desde hace mas de tres meses estabamos en conocimiento de una denuncia en nuestra contra y sabia fehacientemente que este dia llegaria, por lo cual ya estabamos preparados para eso.
Hace ya mas de siete años asumimos un gran compromiso al momento de decidir crear a Cahuinadencul, la primer tienda especializada en productos etnobotanicos de Argentina y Latinoamerica. Sabiamos que se trataba de un camino dificil, inexplorado y que tendriamos que sortear muchisimas dificultades para mantenernos firmes y no titubear al recorrer este camino.
En este caminar nos planteamos objetivos claros para cumplir con la mision que teniamos por delante: facilitar el acceso a los saberes ancestrales que el ser humano estuvo desarrollando a traves de miles de años, especialmente en lo que respecta a la utilizacion de plantas sagradas y medicinales de diferentes partes del mundo. Nada mas y nada menos que con ese espiritu nace Cahuinadencul.
Al principio no estaba seguro si era un loco soñador!! Con el correr del tiempo nos fuimos dando cuenta de que no estabamos solos en esta busqueda, eramos muchisimos mas los que sentian y pensaban como nosotros.

En el allanamiento se llevaron bastante mas de 200 cactus sagrados, entre peyotes y sanpedros, yage, cebil, y unas pocas plantas de efedra. Pueden ver algo de lo que salio en los medios a traves de los siguientes links:

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-121851-2009-03-20.html
http://www.elpopular.com.ar/diario/2009/03/21/nota.html?idnota=48361
http://www.infoeme.com.ar/noticia.asp?id=15349

En el desierto de Wiricuta en mexico aprendimos que la mejor manera de acercarse a la medicina es sin verguenza y sin miedo, y hoy mas que nunca estamos orgullosos de hacer lo que hacemos.

La resolución que firma el juez Antonio Saladino señala severa fallas en la investigación del caso aunque apunta que se necesitan mayores pruebas para la imputación que la `simple tenencia de especies vegetales o semillas que en mayor o menor medida contengan alguna de las sustancias prohibidas por la ley´. El magistrado introduce una segunda consideración sobre este punto: `la presencia de sustancia prohibida es algunas veces desconocida y otras tan ínfima que la rentabilidad de su utilización para el narcotráfico resulta prácticamente nula´.

Estoy seguro que los policias que llevaron a cabo tan espectacular investigacion desconocian que los arboles de cebil son plantados por el gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires en plazas y paseos publicos, ademas de que existen miles de hectareas con bosques de esta planta en el norte de nuestro pais. Seguramente desconocian que el sanpedro crece naturalmente en en las provincias, de La Rioja, San juan, Salta, Catamarca, o que las semillas de ipomeas que vendemos se pueden conseguir en practicamente cualquier floreria decente del pais.
Es un hecho, que los peyotes que vendemos en la pagina, son bebes, que necesitan mas de 15 años de cultivo para que puedan llegar a obtener la cantidad necesaria para poder utilizarlo en forma ritual, ademas de tener unos cuantos por supuesto. Y los sanpedritos, que el unico daño que han hecho ha si pinchar las piernas y manos de varios policias.
Ni hablar de las casi 40 plantines de efedra que secuestraron, las cuales tenian poco mas de 5 centimetros, y que en su conjunto no alcanzan ni para preparar un tecito para calmar la tos.
Los policias seguramente tambien desconocian que nuestras computadoras estaban protegidas por sistemas de encriptacion sumamente avanzados y gracias a los cuales no podran acceder a ninguno de nuestros datos ni de nuestros clientes.
Todo esto nos causa mucha verguenza ajena, pero en el fondo sabemos que en el momento en que sucede, va a ser una gran puerta que se abrira para que en el futuro no sucedan estas cosas, para que cada cual pueda tener en su casa las plantas sagradas que desee sin tener que preocuparse porque vengan los señores de azul.

Nuestra pagina fue dada de baja por el pobre administrador del servidor, pero estamos haciendo los tramites para que vuelva a estar online muy pronto. Hemos recibido todos los mensajes y pedidos, pero vamos a necesitar un poco de paciencia y unos dias para volver a funcionar como antes, o incluso mejor.
Mientras tanto pueden usar la web alternativa:
http://www.cahuinadencul.net

Tambien les agradeceriamos que aquellos que quieran expresarse firmen nuestro libro de visitas (en vez de escribirnos email ya que tenemos las cuentas un poco saturadas). Pueden hacerlo desde aqui:
http://gbooks1.melodysoft.com/app?ID=cahuinadencul&do=sign

Los mantendremos informados de las novedades que vayan sucediendo!!!

Como ya saben, podran cortan todas las flores pero jamas detendran la primavera

Abrazos

Javier Perez
www.cahuinadencul.net

sábado, febrero 28, 2009

Van Helsing

Not to be noticed, that’s the motto in Transylvania, the Count’s eternal sleep must not be disturbed, nobody knows for sure whether he’s dead or alive. But everyone knows about stonings and impalements.
In the town’s inn, a stranger walks inside the gloomy hall, people whisper and take furtive glances at that man in a jacket and a tie carrying a briefcase, ¿what is he carrying there? they mutter.
A girl whose blue eyes gleam in the darkness of the hall takes his command. After soup and a vine that has made him giddy, she takes him to a room and fiercely makes love to him. Van Helsing has never had it so good. He feels his body rested from his weariness, he feels weightless, as if floating, restored from the brutish two week’s journey.
At dawn his briefcase has disappeared and he notices his image is not returned by the mirror.
Raul Lilloy Traducido por Luisa González de Castejón

viernes, febrero 13, 2009

Revista cultural de Cuevas del Almanzora en Ingles

Revista en Ingles
http://issuu.com/isaperez/docs/one_year_to_remember
Me la envía uno de sus autores: Luisa González de Castejón: es profesora de inglés del Instituto Secundario Jaroso y alienta en los alumnos, la construcción de castillos en el aire.

Cockroaches : big footed monsters

Raul Lilloy Traducido por Luisa González de Castejón


The cockroach is a beast million years older than man. Because of hidden reasons, they decided not to mutate. They live in holes, caves and crevices near sources of warmth; kitchens, boilers and stoves, even in our soft warm beds.
Zoologists have not been able to find out why they got themselves exiled from outdoor life in woods and meadows to dwell our foreboding homes. Danger has only increased since devastating insecticides were invented after II World War.
Nevertheless, cockroaches have continued to stay in gutters, cesspits, sweet smelling kitchens; anywhere their youngsters con be fermented by heat. Blatella Germanica and Orientalis are the most common western varieties. The first one is small with blond back and a swift stride, their females are very fertile and have short reproductive cycles, this allows them to swarm rapidly, covering every inch of the house. The Blatta Orientalis, black, bigger and less fertile, needs to stand back to take shelter where food and warmth are scarce. Their young ones are crunchy high energy delicacies for their cousins, the Germanica.
Night sets in; there is not longer any human smell, no lights on. Silently they crawl over the table looking for meat leftovers, egg shells and other titbits, they munch on and they mutter. I can hear them from my bedroom. I must scare them away; I go to the kitchen barefooted. I feel a kind of dampness and something crunching under my feet, my heels, more precisely.
I switch on the light and they scuttle to their holes. Some heavy females can’t manage to hide; they release their foetuses they had rammed up their buttocks and wait helplessly for the boiling water or disintegration under my slipper.
They will survive us, untouched by radioactivity and the acid dawning of the big nuclear night. They will leave their hiding places. For months they will feast on the festering remains on the shelves. Some of them, the ones with a scientific mind, will find us out, like in Pompeii, in our bedrooms, our snoring interrupted. They will wait for the decomposition of our proteins and fatty acids. Their dinner will turn us into dark shadows.
They will grow on and multiply, now out of danger, once the towns are empty of food they will get back to forests and meadows. They will remain watchful for evolution from some insect into homo sapiens for millions of years longer. Meanwhile they will retell their children about those times of big banquets and they will scare them with wonderful stories about towering footed monsters.