Belladona: o, angustia existencial (una alegoría)

Desde los balcones de la casona se dejaba ver: aquel laberinto de flores y ramas al que la palabra “jardín” le quedaba corta. A los puñados de narcisos y jacintos y lirios de todos colores los entrelazaban curvados caminos de piedra, tibia bajo el sol, y adonde no habían flores había césped verde y suave como las nubes de algodón. Nudos de árboles abrazaban a los leves soplidos de brisa que pasaban, y frutos y arándanos de todo tipo escondían sus dulces sabores entre la música de las hojas.

En las grises mañanas, bajo un cielo de papel blanco, y también en las tardes pintadas de naranja acuarela, bajaba Antonela a merodear por su jardín. A veces se quedaba hasta que le caía encima la noche, con un violeta gouaché. Se paseaba entre las flores y ramas, con la nariz metida en las orquídeas, con lilas trabadas en el pelo, hablándoles y cantándoles a las azaleas.

“Dichosas flores,” pensaba una de esas tardes Bartolomeu, el señor de la casa, mientras tomaba una taza de té negro desde uno de los balcones, y mirando de reojo a su esposa que se paseaba abajo. “Nada más le falta a esta mujer ponerse a leerles cuentos de cuna a los claveles.”

Bartolomeu pasaba ocupado con las numerosas e indistintas ocupaciones que tiene un hombre de importancia, generalmente optando por dejar a Antonela a seguir sus floreados caprichos. Cada día había flores frescas perfumando cada recobeco de la casa, y tanta era la cantidad de flores y ramas que nunca faltaban éstos en los jardines por más que se propagaran, por manos de Antonela, a todo florero, jarrón y vaso que ella pudiera encontrar en la casa. A veces a Bartolomeu le picaba la nariz de tener tanta fragancia flotando por todos lados, pero era un hombre práctico y de pocas palabras, y no le importaba lo suficiente como para confrontar a su esposa. Simplemente fruncía el ceño y se devolvía a sus muy ocupados asuntos.

The sealed demon

eviscerate Life!
and hold her silv’ry entrails
in tremulous hands.

To thine own mask be true

We’re all one swashing salty sea;
And we’re the but the world, when it ponders itself
And we’re one entity, of a million identities
Because no man will be twice born,
and yet—all who are born, are one.

Viva la Revolución

Have you any idea how grave a mistake it is to mar a young mind? And no, I’m not talking about beating children, or subjecting them to brutal work. I speak of an abuse far more subtle, a slow and lethal poison that seeps through the skull and corrodes the mind, threatening to squash the humanity out of the human heart.
I speak, of course, of the educational system.

As they join the ranks of schools, youths are force-fed an assortment of over-inflated values and priorities which constitute a forlorn and frightening mindset.

Indeed, youths are force-fed, binding them to a chair of eternal conformity. They’re teaching you all you need to know to go to college and get a job and a car and a family, so why would you bother looking for knowledge yourself? School has conveniently prepared a flimsy set of answers to the questions of the world, and bullies us into memorising them all. If we refuse, school sees to it that we are shunned as uncooperative, lazy, and misguided.

As if memorising answers flexed the mind at all. The most anyone could get from witless memorisation is a feeble semblance of self-discipline, which is rendered meaningless anyway as it cannot be applied to anything which has a worthwhile practical use.

—No worthwhile use? But how, if we just said that school will get us a job and a car and a family? Yes, it will. And that’s just fine. But see, the incentive process, for an average school-goer, goes something like this: You’re in school only so you can get good grades and get into college. And you would want to go to college just so you can find a job, and proceed to climb the interminable corporate ladder. And what’s at the end of all this? I dunno. No one really knows. It’s something extremely vague, like, oh, happiness. Or self-realization. Utter bollocks.

Not that I have anything against the white-collar life, or the working class life. What irks me is the neverending toil to a an end that is wholly meaningless. Working relentlessly simply to keep up with a difficult status quo holds no true significance and very little satisfaction. The small, hollow consolations it does offer are obtained at the tolling cost of losing something as dear as the mind’s potential, or the interest to tap it.
Such an existence is glaringly mediocre at best, and I wouldn’t call it worthwhile.

But of course, it is just this existence which our school system so champions, and urges us into. It is, perhaps, like snatching newly-hatched birds from their nests and forcing them to pilot bird-sized hang-gliders to and fro in embarrassingly straight lines, instead of allowing them to learn true flight.—Unnatural, criminal!

And then there’s the teachers, the great and ruthless secret police that holds up this rotten regime. The system is such that it not only allows ignorant people to teach, it calls for them, and they do their job magnificently.
There are some scarce wonders with something good to teach, but those few are, in someone else’s words, like drops of water in the desert. For the most part, entire class hours are reduced to either bravely enduring or dozing off to stupendously incoherent lectures ridden with fallacies and examples that hardly apply. Fascinating subjects are distorted into mechanical and thoughtless penwork. Overbearing counselors coerce you into taking SAT prep and registering on collegeboard.

And as opportunist corporate gluttons make millions by administering rubbish tests and other services, the students must suffer a watered-down parody of education in order to be able to support their businesses.

The system is deteriorated and doddering, severely entangled in faux-bureaucratical rules and regulations. Aptitudes are caricaturised and curiosities are squashed.
The very joys of life are rudely confiscated, one by one, as the system tries to take itself seriously.
And the very epitome and most cherished treasure of mankind—thought, of course—is mercilessly bastardised.

Come now, comrades, the system must be done away with. The time for revolution is nigh.

With that said, congratulations, graduates— you, who have braved classes and still retain a love for knowledge, are heroes; emerging triumphant against the perversity of the system.

Flowers for the aesthete

I.
Remembrances are the warmth that soaks the viscera,
while idle speculation ventilates the lungs
and beauty is the scarlet that rolls in the blood.

II.
Addicted to the whimsies and antics of Life, and dying by the day.
Death overtakes all that ventures to live, snatching the softness of flesh and the sweetness of voice, leaving only bones, calcified regrets– vestiges of grace.
But it is because his most favourite flowers will shrivel by tomorrow that they smell so sweet to him today.

III.
The aftertaste of melancholy will always linger over the aesthete, for his paintings are more human than he– who lived the lives of a thousand colorful portraits, but left his own frame unfilled.

Portrait of wry remarks

Cynic is he who
laughs heartily, not with Life
but at her, instead.

The most raucous musical box

The host with a flourish bids everyone welcome
to the gaudy and grandiose banquet alfresco
that is Life when unmasked.
The crackers surrender their colorful prizes
as hanging piñatas hide garish surprises.
The band is cacophony chiming delightful,
the names on the place-cards all parody spelling.
The wine is served lukewarm and sour!

But if still you should want to attempt the endeavor
of deducing some order from turmoil so lively
Alas! Then you leave empty-handed.

the Ides of March

It was in the midst of such a night, so very long ago, that they had conversed in hushed voices in the candlelit halls of the Caesar’s manse. The patches of yellow light flickered meekly, unfolding themselves over the surrounding furnishings but unable to stretch their rays very far. In those hours before dawn, the blackness was heavy and pressed around the two figures, chafing fiendishly at the meager beacons the little candles posed, as they lay timid and melting in their ornate holders.

Calphurnia was troubled. This man– her husband, he was, and no less than Julius Caesar himself– this man was wearing such an impassive face for one faced with so many a sinister omen. Death sneered at his visage, breathed its vile breath upon him. But he was unmoved. Somewhere deep within her, she knew her efforts were futile and he would not be stopped from doing what he pleased. But she still persisted, she still begged him stay.

Had she not been his wife, Calphurnia would have thought him an incurable fool of a man, –what demented arrogance! what arrogant naïveté!– But she understood. He would go out to where he pleased when morrow came. Nefarious omen or no, he would go out carrying his impassive expression of always.

Said she that such recklessness was empty, that there was no merit in his follies.
A million poems can be writ and a myriad ballads sang of heroes and braves, but is a romanticised death worthier than a gamble at life, however bland? She kneeled before him.
Her words did not reach him. They were lost, they were entangled in his pride and dissolved into his solemnity before they could reach his ears.

The heavy stillness, the clarity of mind that the darkness allowed for had erased the frivolities that daylight tends to reveal. For those were Calphurnia’s woes, of course: frivolities. Entirely valid in their own right, of course, but frivolities still.

He dismissed all the warnings in the world, for he knew them to be flimsy and without sense. Death meant nothing to Caesar, and as it breathed down his throat, Caesar still looked at it with the same dignified stoicism, ever unwavering.
He would go out when morrow came.

pastel-coloured reverie

Ah, isn’t it lovely how we always seem to sit and stare at things in obstinate defiance, awaiting for epiphanies to somehow reveal their succulent secrets to us? But they always come uninvited anyway, in their own time, so there’s no point in rushing them. The secrets of life are covered inside such an exquisite candy wrapper. We might as well unravel them slowly.
Even when unsatisfying days seem to pile up, gathering in little rows of diagonal marks on calendars, surely the skies, at least, are still beautiful; and if you but look closely, so are the myriad foibles and fallacies embedded in loose, everyday words.

Life is a cake of two equal parts frustration and fun– any other ingredients are merely faint flavourings and colourants.

Each sees a different panorama–or perhaps the same scenery in a different light, but what gives. (Humans are interesting things indeed, look at them ponder universality as mere individuals!)

It would be so wonderful to sidestep everyone’s masks, just brushing them away! And instead, gaze at the same scenery they see, as it is reflected in their own eyes. (Points of view are, after all, the epitome of identity.) If I could be allowed a merit, oh, that would most definitely be it.

Respice post te, Hominem te esse memento

The parade tore air itself asunder
as trumpeteers unfurled their great fanfares,
so heralding the imminent thunder
of lordly stallions pulling gilded chairs.
This revelling in triumph no man spares.
Even in lofty Olympus so high
no god would dare claim men’s glory not theirs.
Disgraced were those who’d staked the Dux defy
yet the shamed alone knew they were to die.
A crown lingered o’er the general’s head;
stain and vice his godly robes did belie.
A slave held the wreath over him, and said:
Look behind you, your glory fleeting is.
You are but a man, do not forget this.