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*As in "Welcome to" and where "Gator Country"
means "Los Angeles"
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Gator Country: the altar of writing will always be demanding sacrifices
POEMA 20
Pablo Neruda
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: «La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.»
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.
indeed. love is so short and forgetting is so long.
sunday i spent most of the day with shon at the beach. we sneaked a six-pack of tall boy budweisers in our backpacks and sat cross-legged addressing the dark green pacific eating mcdonald's chicken sandwiches. a spanish-speaking dad got buried in the sand next to us by his kids. peddlers came down the beach and we bought roasted pumpkin seeds for a dollar. he told funny stories about the things he and elliott s. used to talk about on tour, including elliott's theory that there were no gay sailors, only guys who "helped each other out" when you're at sea that long. the sun was hot, the waves were ice cold at first, then surprisingly warm, and i purposefully didn't put on any sunscreen. we body surfed. tried to jump over breaking waves. and talked about our favorite movies. i mentioned shawshank redemption, & told him my favorite line from it: "the pacific has no memory." we agreed that the big green rollers go right through your skin to your soul.
two cops on quads drove up to us and politely asked us to throw away our beer (no alcohol on the beach). so shon threw away half a tall boy and also, to my amusement, gathered up 4 empties to throw away too (ha!). after they drove away, he popped the tab on the sixth beer to the applause of some college kids nearby.
afterwards, when the sun started to turn the sky purple, we headed to the lobster restaurant (at the santa monica pier), & sat at the bar eating kumamoto and royal miyagi oysters, a big iceberg wedge with blue cheese and tomatoes, and i took sips of his lagavulin scotch. we closed our eyes and smelled it -- which instantly transplanted us back to the little coastal towns near the isle of skye in scotland where we travelled for almost an entire month. you walk around those towns and you can smell the peat burning in all the fireplaces. we reminisced about the black water of loch ness and how day after day, night after night, we were able to find little inns where you can stay that have their own restaurants downstairs. at the one in applecross, on the far west side of the world in scotland, we lay upstairs in our room after dinner, drifting off to sleep and listening to the scottish folk songs still being played downstairs by a trio of boys from the town.
when we got the bar/dinner bill at the lobster, it was less than half of what it should have been. i think it was because the bartender saw us with pacific salt crystals on our pink faces, our surfboard shorts, my "rock it if ya got it" tshirt, and flip flops (compared to the overdressed beautiful people all around us), comparing our tans, closing our eyes in rapture eating oysters thinking of the ocean earlier that day, and smelling the lagavulin, remembering the smell of peat smoke in sleepy hidden scottish towns. in less than a month, i will be down in baja, led by shon on an 11-mile hike east from the main road to find a secret oasis of clear spring water and palm trees that is supposed to exist back there. he says he was there in '99 and it is really something else. i cannot wait to see it and jump in.
i'm in kansas city, kansas as i type this. kansas. it's not as i thought it would be. i wandered around after working today missing being half-clothed exuding heat from a day's worth of staring at the sun. my skin is still warm though. but this city: it's more missouri than kansas. like all things, to know it well, i think it deserves a trip further into the heartland.
yesterday, too, made me think again about mexico and its overriding elements: blue water, blue sky, white sun, white sand, brown skin. there's a magical simplicity to that formula that works a number on me everytime. so i'm reading pablo neruda, since i thought about him yesterday while the peddlers on the beach strolled by with their mangoes and watermelons. you can crush a fruit right onto your face and wash it off in the sea if you like.
i absolutley adore this poem, btw:
Every Day You Play
Pablo Neruda
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.
You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars
of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes
The birds go by, feeling.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night
to the sky.
You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.
Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
yesterday gave me a glance of the indomitable soul. it and some special individuals saved me from never wanting to write again. and love *is* magic. i will willingly pay the price again to avoid coasting through life as a vanilla automaton, afraid of loss and feeling. return follows risk.
you play you win, you play you lose, you play.
"every day you play". a terrific goal. so yeah, i'm back to playing again.
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